Introduction

Computer costs are rapidly dropping, especially with the introduction of the inexpensive netbooks into the consumer market. This drop in pricing across the board has lead to the need for the major chip manufacturers to begin producing CPUs with a low price point but with good performance. Intel answered the call by releasing their new line of 1156 Core i5 processors with exceptional performance to price comparisons. These processors, however, still have price points at $200 or more making them still mainstream chips, rather than entry level or budget quad cores.

AMD has long led the charge in the mainstream and budget CPU markets, and with the call for true Multicore performance at around the $100 price point, AMD would not stand by idly without developing a processor to fulfill this need and do it without sacrificing performance. Until now, this price point has been filled with several capable dual core processors from both the Athlon and Phenom families, but until now they were limited to that. They were limited to dual core CPUs.

The AMD Athlon II X4 620 is the first quad core Athlon to meet this price point of $100. The AMD Athlon II X4 620 features true quad core design on the AM3 socket to allow full use of the DDR3 memory technology. AMD has recently extended the Athlon family into the AM3 socket technology with the dual core 250, and it seemed only a matter of time before an AM3 Athlon II quad core was possible. This is now a reality that will make a push in the entry level and budget minded systems with the ability to build a quad core based system that can achieve levels of budget pricing unheard of until now.