Athlon II X2 250: two strong cores
I had practically never been involved in testing and writing reviews of various hardware. But when personal interest works in tandem (an adept of Intel decided to change the platform to AMD) and a good luck, it’s impossible to resist. So, the new “home” dual-core AMD Athlon II X2 250 processor is in focus.
On sale AMD Athlon II X2 250 processor appeared in the summer. And a couple of months ago and now for AMD this chip is a double bet. First, after the Phenom three- and quad-core CPUs, this is the first dual-core processor based on the 45nm process technology. Secondly, this is another attempt to make a worthy competition to Intel in the segment of mid-budget processors, since AMD's dual-core CPUs have lately been, to put it mildly, not very good. Of course, the output of AMD Athlon II X3 and AMD Athlon II X4 at a price also related to the category of about $ 100, can deprive the X2 of the attention of not having the means of gamers, but still as a home processor for budget machines this chip can be quite "in the subject." But first things first.
The Athlon II X2 250 is not a “castrated” half of the Deneb cores (in the world of Callisto), but originally a dual-core crystal called Regor. The list of advantages - the already mentioned minimum technological standard of 45-nm and a small area of ​​the crystal - only 117.5 mm². Add here a 2 MB (1 MB per core) second-level cache (L2), an operating frequency of 3.0 GHz and a TDP of 65 watts.
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The obvious disadvantage is the absence of a third-level cache as such. This, however, is by no means as seriously affecting performance as it might seem at first glance. If we compare the Athlon II X2 with another new, more “advanced” dual-core Phenom II X2, then our hero has a second-level cache twice and lower than the TDP. Given the cost of a quarter of a cost, a barely noticeable decrease in performance in applications and games is almost nothing. Of course, this can be considered trivial if the system uses fast RAM. Slow RAM, not so much critically affecting performance if the processor has a third-level cache, in the case of the Athlon II X2 250 will be the bottleneck. Therefore, to obtain the maximum from the available hardware and as a reserve for the future (DDR2 - yesterday), the Athlon II X2 250 system should be equipped with DDR3 memory with a frequency of at least 1333 MHz.
Test stand
It is for this reason that I ordered 4 GB when completing the test stand, though not the most expensive, but the brand Patriot PSD32G16002 at 1600 MHz. The rest of the stuffing: the Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P mainboard is a mid-budget product worth up to $ 100, meanwhile, almost as expensive as many expensive analogues, Palit GeForce GT250 512 MB video, Samsung HDD 400 GB SATA 7200 revolutions per minute. For the power of all this, the InWin Power Man 450 Watt was responsible. Not the best option for assembling a PC "for growth" with plans to replace the video card with a more productive one, but at the moment it’s what you need. Yes, Windows 7 64-bit RC assembly 7600 was installed on the stand.
Subjective tests
I will not give tables with numerous tests of the work of the CPU in various applications. They are already full of reviews of leading thematic sites. Like all sorts of comparisons . Instead, I will focus on measuring performance in daily work and play.
In idle mode, the Windows 7 operating system with all the enabled "chips" Aero consumed only 2-12% of CPU power. And 12% - in the case of running programs Chrome, QIP, Download Master, a pair of Windows Explorer windows and MS Word 2007, in which, in fact, typed this text. Such a low consumption of processor power, of course, indicates a good optimization of software, especially in terms of working in the background, but it should be noted that it will take at least a few browser pages with running flash banners to boot up the processor, without fail.
Speaking of Flash. The work of only one such element (the page of characters from the new game Bioware Dragon Age ) in Chrome loaded an average of about 30% on the processor. But the multiplayer browser-based action based on Adobe Flash "Tanks Online" , has managed with the Athlon II X2 250 much tougher, taking into circulation already 75-80% of processor power. At the same time, the temperature after 10 minutes of play has risen to 30 degrees with a tail for each core. Although it is expected due to the TDP of 65 W, it is still a good result.
No less worthy Athlon II X2 250 showed itself when playing video. The Media Player Classic player, supplied with the K-Lite Codek Pack codec when playing the immortal "Fight Club" in HD-resolution of 1280x720, loaded the CPU by only 40%. With the "accelerated viewing" processor load increased on average to 50-55%, with peaks up to 70%. The video went without delay, out of sync and other negative phenomena. So if you do not decide to shift the care of processing the video stream onto the shoulders of the GPU, which is generally even preferable, then the Athlon II X2 250 processor will be more than enough for comfortable viewing of the video in 1080p resolution. With simultaneous background launch of a pair of programs, whether for example, a browser or a download manager.
Archiving files, as a process that depends on processor power, also did not become a disappointment, although it gave somewhat ambiguous results. I operated a folder of 1.7 GB containing 5351 files in 30 folders. WinRAR Archiver coped with the task of compression (compression method - normal) in 2 minutes 57 seconds. At the same time, 7zip spent much more time archiving the same folder - just over 7 minutes. In this case, in the first case, the processor load did not exceed 50%, in the second it reached 100% (archiving was not carried out in the background). This result is logical: if you set the best compression method in WinRAR, then the time required for archiving 1.7 GB automatically grows from 3 minutes to 15. And 7Zip is famous for its ability to quickly archive with maximum compression. The indicators are quite adequate, though not outstanding.
Despite the overall sufficient system performance, in some games, no overlap has not done. For the most part this applies to poorly optimized masterpieces such as Gothic 3 (a huge number of crooked scripts, a non-optimized engine, etc.) and STALKER Call of Pripyat (the symptoms are the same as for Gothic 3). In the absence of any fall in FPS due to the fault of the graphics subsystem, these games, with an excessive processor load (a large number of “actors in the frame”), started to slow down pretty much. Checked: in the system using the Intel E6750 2.66 GHz processor (as well as twice as less memory), such symptoms are not observed. However, in a number of other Athlon II X2 250 games (in particular, the new NFS Shift and Risen) proved to be perfect: there wasn’t any difference in performance with the slightly more expensive (albeit relatively outdated) E6750.
Finally, there was the PCMark Vantage test.
The total points earned by the Athlon II X2 250 based system turned out to be 4864 “parrots”. For comparison, a system based on Intel E6750 2.66 GHz earned 4758 pcmark'ov. Strange, but the difference between 2 GB DDR2 and 4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz in the Memories Suite was only about 300 parrots (3917 systems on Intel and 4232 on AMD).
findings
Given the subjective impressions of the work and the results of simple tests, I would call the AMD Athlon II X2 250 chip a more than reasonable choice for use in a home PC. The price is from 2600 rubles , the performance is quite comparable, for example, with the older models of the Pentium Dual-Core line and not much less than that of the more expensive Intel and AMD chips. Of the nuances - the mandatory spending on the smart memory, without which the overall impression of the speed of the processor may not be so rosy. This somewhat increases the cost of the upgrade, but it is still not so impractical to consider this step a disadvantage.
Advantages:
45-nm process technology
Low TDP
High performance for a budget chip
Low competitive price
Disadvantages:
Missing L3 Cache
The presence of competitors in the face of AMD Athlon II X3 and AMD Athlon II X4, taking into account not too much difference in price
Specifications Athlon II X2 250
PS I thank the First Computer Company for the equipment provided to complete the test bench.
On sale AMD Athlon II X2 250 processor appeared in the summer. And a couple of months ago and now for AMD this chip is a double bet. First, after the Phenom three- and quad-core CPUs, this is the first dual-core processor based on the 45nm process technology. Secondly, this is another attempt to make a worthy competition to Intel in the segment of mid-budget processors, since AMD's dual-core CPUs have lately been, to put it mildly, not very good. Of course, the output of AMD Athlon II X3 and AMD Athlon II X4 at a price also related to the category of about $ 100, can deprive the X2 of the attention of not having the means of gamers, but still as a home processor for budget machines this chip can be quite "in the subject." But first things first.
The Athlon II X2 250 is not a “castrated” half of the Deneb cores (in the world of Callisto), but originally a dual-core crystal called Regor. The list of advantages - the already mentioned minimum technological standard of 45-nm and a small area of ​​the crystal - only 117.5 mm². Add here a 2 MB (1 MB per core) second-level cache (L2), an operating frequency of 3.0 GHz and a TDP of 65 watts.
')
The obvious disadvantage is the absence of a third-level cache as such. This, however, is by no means as seriously affecting performance as it might seem at first glance. If we compare the Athlon II X2 with another new, more “advanced” dual-core Phenom II X2, then our hero has a second-level cache twice and lower than the TDP. Given the cost of a quarter of a cost, a barely noticeable decrease in performance in applications and games is almost nothing. Of course, this can be considered trivial if the system uses fast RAM. Slow RAM, not so much critically affecting performance if the processor has a third-level cache, in the case of the Athlon II X2 250 will be the bottleneck. Therefore, to obtain the maximum from the available hardware and as a reserve for the future (DDR2 - yesterday), the Athlon II X2 250 system should be equipped with DDR3 memory with a frequency of at least 1333 MHz.
Test stand
It is for this reason that I ordered 4 GB when completing the test stand, though not the most expensive, but the brand Patriot PSD32G16002 at 1600 MHz. The rest of the stuffing: the Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P mainboard is a mid-budget product worth up to $ 100, meanwhile, almost as expensive as many expensive analogues, Palit GeForce GT250 512 MB video, Samsung HDD 400 GB SATA 7200 revolutions per minute. For the power of all this, the InWin Power Man 450 Watt was responsible. Not the best option for assembling a PC "for growth" with plans to replace the video card with a more productive one, but at the moment it’s what you need. Yes, Windows 7 64-bit RC assembly 7600 was installed on the stand.
Subjective tests
I will not give tables with numerous tests of the work of the CPU in various applications. They are already full of reviews of leading thematic sites. Like all sorts of comparisons . Instead, I will focus on measuring performance in daily work and play.
In idle mode, the Windows 7 operating system with all the enabled "chips" Aero consumed only 2-12% of CPU power. And 12% - in the case of running programs Chrome, QIP, Download Master, a pair of Windows Explorer windows and MS Word 2007, in which, in fact, typed this text. Such a low consumption of processor power, of course, indicates a good optimization of software, especially in terms of working in the background, but it should be noted that it will take at least a few browser pages with running flash banners to boot up the processor, without fail.
Speaking of Flash. The work of only one such element (the page of characters from the new game Bioware Dragon Age ) in Chrome loaded an average of about 30% on the processor. But the multiplayer browser-based action based on Adobe Flash "Tanks Online" , has managed with the Athlon II X2 250 much tougher, taking into circulation already 75-80% of processor power. At the same time, the temperature after 10 minutes of play has risen to 30 degrees with a tail for each core. Although it is expected due to the TDP of 65 W, it is still a good result.
No less worthy Athlon II X2 250 showed itself when playing video. The Media Player Classic player, supplied with the K-Lite Codek Pack codec when playing the immortal "Fight Club" in HD-resolution of 1280x720, loaded the CPU by only 40%. With the "accelerated viewing" processor load increased on average to 50-55%, with peaks up to 70%. The video went without delay, out of sync and other negative phenomena. So if you do not decide to shift the care of processing the video stream onto the shoulders of the GPU, which is generally even preferable, then the Athlon II X2 250 processor will be more than enough for comfortable viewing of the video in 1080p resolution. With simultaneous background launch of a pair of programs, whether for example, a browser or a download manager.
Archiving files, as a process that depends on processor power, also did not become a disappointment, although it gave somewhat ambiguous results. I operated a folder of 1.7 GB containing 5351 files in 30 folders. WinRAR Archiver coped with the task of compression (compression method - normal) in 2 minutes 57 seconds. At the same time, 7zip spent much more time archiving the same folder - just over 7 minutes. In this case, in the first case, the processor load did not exceed 50%, in the second it reached 100% (archiving was not carried out in the background). This result is logical: if you set the best compression method in WinRAR, then the time required for archiving 1.7 GB automatically grows from 3 minutes to 15. And 7Zip is famous for its ability to quickly archive with maximum compression. The indicators are quite adequate, though not outstanding.
Despite the overall sufficient system performance, in some games, no overlap has not done. For the most part this applies to poorly optimized masterpieces such as Gothic 3 (a huge number of crooked scripts, a non-optimized engine, etc.) and STALKER Call of Pripyat (the symptoms are the same as for Gothic 3). In the absence of any fall in FPS due to the fault of the graphics subsystem, these games, with an excessive processor load (a large number of “actors in the frame”), started to slow down pretty much. Checked: in the system using the Intel E6750 2.66 GHz processor (as well as twice as less memory), such symptoms are not observed. However, in a number of other Athlon II X2 250 games (in particular, the new NFS Shift and Risen) proved to be perfect: there wasn’t any difference in performance with the slightly more expensive (albeit relatively outdated) E6750.
Finally, there was the PCMark Vantage test.
The total points earned by the Athlon II X2 250 based system turned out to be 4864 “parrots”. For comparison, a system based on Intel E6750 2.66 GHz earned 4758 pcmark'ov. Strange, but the difference between 2 GB DDR2 and 4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz in the Memories Suite was only about 300 parrots (3917 systems on Intel and 4232 on AMD).
findings
Given the subjective impressions of the work and the results of simple tests, I would call the AMD Athlon II X2 250 chip a more than reasonable choice for use in a home PC. The price is from 2600 rubles , the performance is quite comparable, for example, with the older models of the Pentium Dual-Core line and not much less than that of the more expensive Intel and AMD chips. Of the nuances - the mandatory spending on the smart memory, without which the overall impression of the speed of the processor may not be so rosy. This somewhat increases the cost of the upgrade, but it is still not so impractical to consider this step a disadvantage.
Advantages:
45-nm process technology
Low TDP
High performance for a budget chip
Low competitive price
Disadvantages:
Missing L3 Cache
The presence of competitors in the face of AMD Athlon II X3 and AMD Athlon II X4, taking into account not too much difference in price
Specifications Athlon II X2 250
PS I thank the First Computer Company for the equipment provided to complete the test bench.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/73504/
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