AMD Athlon II X2 215 AM3 CPU Review

Wed 2010-03-17 - Posted by Patrick "MACMAC" MacMillan

iXBT Labs have posted a review of the AMD Athlon II X2 215, the lowest-end dual-core processor in the AM3 lineup. This model is clocked at 2.7Ghz, features 1MB of L2 cache, and no L3 cache.

Here's what they had to say:

"In the end, there is no miracle. Athlon II X2 215 is a bit faster than Celeron, but slower than Pentium. It's positioned on a par with the lowest-end Celeron anyway. Besides, it works well with DDR3 memory. Something which LGA775 processors, especially low-end, cannot boast of. So Athlon II X2 215 is not meaningless. Though there isn't much sense either, its performance is low in today's terms. And since you do not usually upgrade every month or so, and since CPU price is not the only factor to consider, we still believe that saving too much is not reasonable. If you do want to upgrade often, you might want to buy the latest and cheapest first (probably with a few older parts thrown in), then you'll upgrade the PC a bit, then hexacore CPUs will probably go on sale, so you'll be able to buy one and enjoy high performance. But while seemingly attractive, this approach is not quite sensible. Besides, it's only possible if you upgrade your PC yourself. Regular users should consider Athlon II X2 215 as another ultralow-end CPU, which is still a part of an up-to-date platform."

This is a $70 processor, for ~$25 more you can get a Intel Pentium G6950 which will crush the Athlon II X2 215 in every possible situation. Furthermore, since the G6950 is manufactured on the 32nm process, you can overclock it to 4.0Ghz with ease. It's a no-brainer in my opinion.

Click here to read the full review.

---

Please head over to our discussion board to talk about this news (registration not required).