AMD Athlon II X2 250 & Phenom II X2 550 BE Reviews

• AMD Athlon II X2 250 reviewed:
  
  

  "AMD’s Athlon II X2 250 performed well in all of my tests. It’s a very solid performer for a dual-core chip, especially considering its relatively low price point. From a power user’s perspective it may not elicit much excitement, but budget conscious consumers and silent HTCP (home theatre PC) aficionados should take notice. Coupled with a decent 790GX-based motherboard and 4GB of DDR2 RAM, for example, and you’ve got yourself a relatively high performing entry-level system for under £250. All that’s missing is the L3 cache, which was obviously dumped to cut costs. But due to the lack of this L3 cache, power consumption has been cut down by around 10% compared with the dual-core Phenom II. The Athlon II X2 250 is a brilliant chip for the price, but overclockers and gamers on a budget should stick to AMD’s Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition."

  
  Click here to read the full review.
  
  
  
• AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition reviewed:
  
  

  "The latest Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition is the first dual-core Phenom II chip. And it’s great for gaming and multitasking. The 3.1GHz processor performs very much on par with Intel’s 3GHz dual-core E8400, but costs £50 or so less. Furthermore, for the reduced price you’re getting an unlocked processor to play with. The downside is that power consumption is a tad high for a dual-core processor. On the flipside a complete AMD-based system is much more energy efficient than an Intel-based rig. The Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition is an awesome budget processor for enthusiasts - if only it could roll over the 4GHz barrier! It’s not the most powerful at running heavy workloads - that’s what quad cores are for - but for general computing duties and gaming it’s an outstanding buy."

  
  Click here to read the full review.