AMD Athlon II X4 620 CPU Review

Written by Richard Swinburne

October 26, 2009 | 09:33

Tags: #28ghz #45nm #620 #95w #athlon #benchmarks #cheap #core #cpu #four #ii #oc #overclock #perform #performance #processor #quad #review #x4

Companies: #amd #test

Lavalys Everest

Download from: www.lavalys.com

Everest is a comprehensive suite of benchmarking tools that can gauge the theoretical performance of every sub-system and component of your PC. We use the Memory and Cache benchmark to see how data flows into and out of the CPU.

Open the application and go to the Tools menu. Then click Cache and Memory Benchmark and click the Start Benchmark button. Everest will test the speed of all levels of CPU cache as well as memory throughput.

Everest Read Test

  • Athlon II X4 620 (4x3.5GHz, 2.45GHz NB, 2.2GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X3 720 BE (3x3.5GHz, 2.4GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X2 550 BE (2x3.8GHz, 2.6GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Athlon II X4 620 (4x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Core 2 Duo E7400 (2x4.2GHz, 1,600MHz FSB)
  • Phenom II X2 550 BE (2x3.1GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X3 720 BE (3x2.8GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Core 2 Duo E7400 (2x2.8GHz, 1,066MHz FSB)
  • 9385
  • 8613
  • 8532
  • 8526
  • 8121
  • 8090
  • 8065
  • 6318
0
2500
5000
7500
10000
MB/s (higher is better)

Everest Write Test

  • Athlon II X4 620 (4x3.5GHz, 2.45GHz NB, 2.2GHz HTT)
  • Core 2 Duo E7400 (2x4.2GHz, 1,600MHz FSB)
  • Phenom II X3 720 BE (3x3.5GHz, 2.4GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X2 550 BE (2x3.8GHz, 2.6GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Athlon II X4 620 (4x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X2 550 BE (2x3.1GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X3 720 BE (3x2.8GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Core 2 Duo E7400 (2x2.8GHz, 1,066MHz FSB)
  • 8420
  • 8071
  • 7708
  • 7501
  • 6954
  • 6702
  • 6584
  • 5660
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
MB/s (higher is better)

Everest Copy Test

  • Athlon II X4 620 (4x3.5GHz, 2.45GHz NB, 2.2GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X3 720 BE (3x3.5GHz, 2.4GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X2 550 BE (2x3.8GHz, 2.6GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X2 550 BE (2x3.1GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X3 720 BE (3x2.8GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Athlon II X4 620 (4x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Core 2 Duo E7400 (2x4.2GHz, 1,600MHz FSB)
  • Core 2 Duo E7400 (2x2.8GHz, 1,066MHz FSB)
  • 11395
  • 10857
  • 10682
  • 10116
  • 9817
  • 9774
  • 8392
  • 5910
0
2500
5000
7500
10000
12500
MB/s (higher is better)

Everest Latency Test

  • Athlon II X4 620 (4x3.5GHz, 2.45GHz NB, 2.2GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X3 720 BE (3x3.5GHz, 2.4GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Athlon II X4 620 (4x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X2 550 BE (2x3.8GHz, 2.6GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X2 550 BE (2x3.1GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Phenom II X3 720 BE (3x2.8GHz, 2.0GHz NB, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • Core 2 Duo E7400 (2x4.2GHz, 1,600MHz FSB)
  • Core 2 Duo E7400 (2x2.8GHz, 1,066MHz FSB)
  • 46.1
  • 51.6
  • 52.5
  • 52.6
  • 54.9
  • 56.4
  • 61.4
  • 76.7
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Nanoseconds - lower is better

The read performance is surprisingly good: the Athlon II X4 matches the Phenom II X2, overclocked to 3.8GHz at around 8,500MB/s. The write performance is similarly superior as even though it's CPU clock is slower and the CPU-NB clock is the same 2.0GHz, it still manages a few hundred MB/s more than the Phenom II X2 and X3. Copy performance doesn't see the same advantage but it's clear that AMD has optimised the memory controller slightly by a few nanoseconds.

When overclocked, the Athlon II X4 is clearly superior, outshining all the other CPUs by a significant margin despite not having the highest clock speed.
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