AMD Athlon II X4 620 Processor Review

[kazuya]

AMD is launching a new series of affordable quad-core processors today under the Athlon II brand name. Based on the 'Propus' architecture and built using a 45nm design process, the new series is intended to help AMD secure the low-end portion of the market, as Intel's Core i5 750 and LGA1156 platform have clearly made life difficult for them on the mainstream front.

This is essentially the same Deneb architecture that is used by the Phenom II X4 series, except for the L3 cache which has been removed from the Athlon II X4 parts.

With models ranging from 2.20GHz through to 2.9GHz on the horizon, AMD has decided to unleash the Athlon II X4 620 first, clocked at 2.6GHz and expected to retail for just $100. The amazingly low price tag puts this chip in a category of its own, as there are currently no quad-core parts competing here.

AMD Athlon II X4 620 Processor Review - TechSpot

[alpacino]

Competition is good for price balancing. Seems good for AMD, I really hope they can catch up with Intel, or we consumers are the only ones who will lose with this.

[Nobody]

I think AMD has an edge.

Whereas Intel keeps rolling out it's i9/i7/i5 line which require different motherboards, AMD announced it's new six-core processors will be backwards compatable with the AM3+ architecture. Meaning users with older motherboards can still upgrade, unlike the Intels.

Eventually they're going to have to upgrade their architecture, but for the time being I think they've found a somewhat unique niche.