Final thoughts and rating
The introduction of 45nm dual-core chips has been a long time coming from AMD. We reckoned they would ship at the turn of the year, alongside their quad-core siblings, yet the company steadfastedly kept releasing budget 65nm CPUs in the form of the 7000-series.Now, though, the Austin outfit has brought the benefits of a more-refined manufacturing process and Phenom architecture to bear on models costing £50-plus. Available in two flavours - with or without L3 cache - they fit in well with AMD's range, which is sub-divided into clock-speeds, caches, and form factors.
The Athlon II X2 250 clocks in at 3.0GHz and is equipped with 2MB of L2 cache and a 65W TDP. Our benchmarks show that it's competitive in the £50-£65 range and taken the platform into account, paired with 780G, would suit most systems costing £250-£300. What's more, DDR3 compatibility should keep it future-proof to some degree. AMD, too, should make margin on it by dint of the die-size, 117mm², and we imagine that the Athlon II range will be fleshed out with other models in the very near future.
Add another (estimated) £15 to your budget and the Phenom II X2 550 BE looms large. Equipped with a higher clock-speed, 6MB L3 cache, and the tantalising possibility of unlocking 'dormant' cores, we'll take a close look in a follow-up review.
Bottom line: AMD's filled out its mid-range offerings with a couple of dual-core, 45nm chips based on Phenom architecture. Importantly, if pricing comes in at what we'd expect, then they should do well, but such is the current AMD saturation of dual-, triple- and quad-core models in the sub-£150 space, that you need to determine whether cores matter more than clock-speed, or vice versa.
HEXUS Rating
We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
The rating is given in relation to the category the component competes in, therefore the CPU is evaluated with respect to our 'budget components' criteria, where value plays a larger part in the overall score.
AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU
HEXUS Awards
AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU
HEXUS Where2Buy
TBC.
HEXUS Right2Reply
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