AMD Athlon-II X2-255 AM3 Processor Review

In late January 2010, AMD released a new series of processors that fills in some of the gaps in their Athlon-II and Phenom-II Dual, Triple, and Quad-Core Lines. Most of the newly released processors are really just 100Mhz clock speed bumps on the old versions. Today at Benchmark Reviews we are focusing on the newly released ADX255OCGQBOX AMD Athlon-II X2-255 AM3 processor. Based on the Regor core, the Athlon-II X2-255 has a 3.1Ghz clock speed, up 100Mhz from the Athlon-II X2-250 at 3.0GHz which was released last summer. The Athlon-II X2-255 is at the very low end of the newly released processors and represents a very value based market at only $74.99 over at NewEgg.com. Benchmark Reviews is going to use the Athlon-II X2-255, with its support for DDR2 RAM up to 1066Mhz as well as DDR3 RAM up to 1333Mhz, to show some of the great upgrade options available for consumers who have been waiting for a low-cost option to a better computer system.

AMD is quickly moving into the leader position in the low to mid-range computing world. Their firm grasp on the sub $200 market is expanding rapidly. The lower end of their processor line, the Athlon-II line, has expanded from just X2 (dual core) CPUs last year to the X3 (triple core) and X4 (quad core) processors like the Athlon-II X4-620 which brings quad core processing to under $100. AMD is also breaching the high end of gaming PCs with their Phenom-II line. The black edition series of processors, including the Phenom-II X4-965BE which won an editor's choice award here at Benchmark Reviews, can be overclocked to extreme highs, making them great gaming CPUs. They can't beat the raw power of the i7 series, but with the 965BE coming in at only $179, the bang for the buck is appealing to computer enthusiasts everywhere.

The Athlon-II series is built to be a less expensive alternative, while still offering a lot of great features. The chips are designed without any L3 cache at all, allowing for those lower prices. Many computer enthusiasts, myself included, often wait a long time after the purchase of a computer before considering an upgrade. I know many of you reading this are the same way. According to the Steam Hardware Survey for January 2010, almost 21% of gamers (remember, the hardware survey is based on Steam users) are still using single core processors in their systems. And that's coming off one of the most sale studded holiday seasons ever. Quad core use is up, but still only amounts to 20% of users. That means that there are more gamers out there with single core processors than quad cores. The bulk of the users use dual core processors with speeds between 2.0 and 2.6GHz. This leaves a lot of room for upgrade.

In this article, Benchmark Reviews will be upgrading from two Intel dual core systems currently used as media PCs and for playing popular games, and converting over to an AMD system using the Athlon-II X2-255 AM3 Processor. This will give us a good idea of the differences in performance and it will allow us to see if the lower-than-ever-prices being offered by AMD for its processors can justify the upgrade. After all, we would all love to have a powerhouse computer, but it comes down to what we can afford to spend on our computer gaming vice. We will also overclock the AMD Athlon-II X2-255 to see just how much power we can get out of it. Join us now as we take apart AMD's latest entry in their lower end Athlon-II line.

About Advanced Micro Devices, Inc (AMD)

"Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home, and play.

Over the course of AMD's three decades in business, silicon and software have become the steel and plastic of the worldwide digital economy. Technology companies have become global pacesetters, making technical advances at a prodigious rate - always driving the industry to deliver more and more, faster and faster.

However, "technology for technology's sake" is not the way we do business at AMD. Our history is marked by a commitment to innovation that's truly useful for customers - putting the real needs of people ahead of technical one-upmanship. AMD founder Jerry Sanders has always maintained that "customers should come first, at every stage of a company's activities."

We believe our company history bears that out."

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