In many different areas, it becomes easy to lose focus of what it actually is that you need, to accomplish your goal. When you are shopping, marketing departments are paid huge sums of money to make sure you are thoroughly confused and have the impulse to ‘overbuy,’ rather than simply buying the most cost effective piece for your needs. This seems to be even more prevalent in the world of computers and their components, where rapidly changing technology makes every purchase seem dated a week later, or underpowered next to the ‘Next Big Thing.’
However, the fact of the matter is, there are appropriate choices for appropriate applications when financial constraints are involved. Let’s say you're building a computer for your home office. The primary function of the computer is going to be for office tasks, but you may want to do some casual gaming as a stress reliever. Every review you read tells you that a graphics card must be able to play Crysis at high res with AA at a minimum of 40fps to be worth anything. But, every graphics card that can, eats your entire budget….and you don’t play Crysis. What to do? And processors….if this one is 3.0Ghz, and so is another, why do you need to spend more? The answer is, you don’t, necessarily. You want components that will run the programs you actually want to run, effectively and efficiently. You want the most ‘Bang For Your Buck.’
AMD has upped the ante with new CPUs, in their low priced Athlon II line, that promise performance beyond expectations. The new Athlon II X2 265 raises the speed of the Athlon II line to 3.3Ghz, while the new X3 450 pushes tri-core to 3.2Ghz. With the Athlon II’s architecture, based off of the Phenom II, these CPUs promise to be no lightweight in performance, right out of the box. Featuring AMD’s C3 silicon, these new Athlon II CPUs also hold the promise of some overclocking, as well as some great flexibility.
<hrdata-mce-alt="Technologies" class="system-pagebreak" title="Technologies" />
Technologies
The Progression of the Athlon II
The Phenom die structure allowed for L3 cache to be integrated into the CPU die for quicker data processing performance. This gave a performance boost over the Athlon chips but came with the higher cost of producing the larger chip die to accommodate the L3 cache. The Athlon die was updated to the newer AM3 socket, with the same architecture as the Phenom IIs, to allow growth within the new Athlon II series, as well. This update came at an important time in the progression to DDR3 memory, as the prices on RAM are coming down.
Now that the Athlon II has been born, with the introduction of the 250, the family is seeing a first for the AMD line of processors. The Athlon II family has held the economical standing for AMD by featuring low costs in die production by not including the L3 cache, giving the edge in the lower mainstream and budget markets to the powerful yet economical AMD Athlon family.
We are now seeing the next launch of the Athlon II line of processors. With this next line of processors, AMD is increasing the speed by 100MHz. This will drive down the existing model's prices and create a new line of affordable processors. Most notable is the price drop of the Athlon II X4 640 to $99.00, making a 3.0Ghz quad core available for less than $100. The processors will remain AM3/AM2+ compatible and make a perfect match for all of the recently released 800-series chipsets. These new Athlons are also made with revision "C3" silicon. Here is their new list of processors and pricing scheme.
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AMD Athlon™ II X2 Dual-Core Processor |
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AMD Athlon™ II X3 Triple-Core Processor |
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The AMD 800-Series Chipset
The new 8-Series of AMD Motherboard chipsets introduce both USB and SATA 3.0. USB 3.0 draws its power from the NEC host controller; this is a Dual Simplex link that is bi-directional and, unlike USB 2.0 which is Half Duplex (one –way), it transfers data more efficiently.
Unlike SATA 3, which was first seen on Intel motherboards (Marvell chipset/3rd party), the AMD 800 Series motherboards run native SATA 3 via the 850 Southbridge chipset, which is a direct link to 6 SATA ports, alleviating the middle man. (Marvell)
The 890GX chipset contains an ATI HD 4290 integrated video, which is DirectX 10.1, has a 700MHz core, 40 unified shaders and with added SidePort memory is the most powerful integrated video card produced by AMD to date. The HD 4290 is also capable of Picture in Picture Blu-Ray Playback and upscaling to 720p.
Other features include Hyper-Transport 3.0 (5.2 GT/s), HDMI, VGA and DVI video outputs, two PCI-e 2.0 (1 x 16/1x8) for discrete video, support for DDR3 1333 MHz memory and onboard HD audio.
<hrdata-mce-alt="Review Philosophy" class="system-pagebreak" title="Review Philosophy" />
For this review we will focus on three areas:
First let's take a look at pricing:
Here are a few combinations and prices on the various upgrades available.
Extreme Budget System
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AMD Athlon II X2 265/X3 450 |
$76/87.00 |
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Keep Old AM2+ Mobo |
$0 |
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Keep Old DDR2 RAM |
$0 |
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Keep Old Video Card |
$0 |
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Total |
$76/87.00 |
Budget System
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AMD Athlon II X2 265/X3 450 |
$74/84.00 |
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ASUS M4A88T-M/USB3 AM3 AMD 880G |
$95.00 |
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G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 |
$89 |
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Onboard Video / Keep Old |
$0 |
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Total |
$258/268.00 |
Mainstream System
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AMD Athlon II X2 265/X3 450 |
$74/84 |
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GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H AM3 AMD 890GX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI ATX Motherboard |
$140 |
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G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 |
$89 |
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XFX Core Edition GS250XYSL4 GeForce GTS 250 512MB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card |
$100.00 |
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Total |
$403/413.00 |
Enthusiast System
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AMD Athlon II X2 265/X3 450 |
$74/84.00 |
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GIGABYTE GA-890FXA-UD7 AM3
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$246 |
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CORSAIR DOMINATOR-GT 4GB DDR3 1600 |
$145 |
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EVGA 015-P3-1480-AR GeForce GTX 480 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card |
$479 |
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Total |
$944/954.00 |
There are obviously many directions you can take your system, depending on your needs. Fortunately, the AMD Athlon II line opens many different roads to take. If your focus is on gaming, a graphics card upgrade, rather than a motherboard/RAM upgrade, is obviously going to do more for what YOU want to do and, in many cases, will be a less expensive option with much more pronounced results. AM2+/AM3 compatibility allows you to upgrade individual components, with each having a pronounced performance improvement. The Athlon II offers incredible flexibility and performance, all without breaking your wallet.
<hrdata-mce-alt="Specifications and Features" class="system-pagebreak" title="Specifications and Features" />
Specifications for the Athlon II X3 450:
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Model Number & Core Frequency |
X3 450 / 3.2GHz |
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OPN |
ADX450WFK32GM |
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L1 Cache Sizes |
64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (384KB total L1 per processor) |
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L2 Cache Sizes |
512KB of L2 data cache per core (1.5MB total L2 per processor) |
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Memory Controller Type |
Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller * |
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Memory Controller Speed |
Up to 2.0GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management |
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Types of Memory Supported |
Unregistered DIMMs up to PC2-8500 (DDR2-1066MHz) -AND- PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333MHz) |
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HyperTransport 3.0 Specification |
One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 4.0GHz full duplex (2.0GHz x2) |
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Total Processor-to-System Bandwidth
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Packaging |
Socket AM3 938-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA) |
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Fab location |
GLOBALFOUNDARIES Fab 1 module 1 in Dresden, Germany |
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Process Technology |
45-nanometer DSL SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology |
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Approximate Die Size |
169mm2 ** |
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Approximate Transistor count |
~300 million ** |
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Max TDP |
95 Watts |
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AMD Codename |
“Rana” |
Specifications for the Athlon II X2 265:
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Model Number & Core Frequency |
X2 265 / 3.3GHz |
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OPN |
ADX265OCK23GM |
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L1 Cache Sizes |
64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (256KB total L1 per processor) |
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L2 Cache Sizes |
1MB of L2 data cache per core (2MB total L2 per processor) |
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Memory Controller Type |
Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller * |
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Memory Controller Speed |
2.0GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management |
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Types of Memory Supported |
Support for unregistered DIMMs up to PC2-6400 (DDR2-1066MHz) -AND- PC3-8500 (DDR3-1333MHz) |
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HyperTransport 3.0 Specification |
One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 4.0GHz full duplex (2.0GHz x2) |
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Total Processor-to-System Bandwidth |
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Packaging |
Socket AM3 938-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA) |
|
Fab location |
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Fab 1 Module 1 |
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Process Technology |
45-nanometer DSL SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology |
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Approximate Die Size |
117.5 mm2 |
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Approximate Transistor count |
~ 234 million |
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Max TDP |
65 Watts |
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AMD Codename |
“Regor” |
<hrdata-mce-alt="Testing Methods" class="system-pagebreak" title="Testing Methods" />
Benchmarking
To test all systems, processors, and motherboards, Hi Tech Legion has compiled a list of popular programs to test performance; these benchmarks are taken from programs that are available to the public. We have compiled these to create the Hi Tech Legion Benchmark Suite, which includes system, graphics, processor, rendering, compression, and word processing. All scores will be graphed for each specific test under its category: video benchmarks (gaming will be rated in FPS: Frames per second), system scores will be graded by numbers which are given as results by their respective programs, higher will be better unless otherwise specified. If file compression is chosen, then all times will be in seconds. All temperatures will be measured in Celsius. For the gaming benchmarks, only the resolution of 1024 x 768 will be utilized, due to the limits of the integrated graphics processor on the Gigabyte motherboard. This system is being tested as an inexpensive system with integrated graphics and will be tested accordingly.
For comparison, we will be looking at the test results from two recently reviewed Athlon II processors, the X2 240e and X3 435. These two processors were tested in a very similar configuration also using ATI’s IGP. Only benchmarks of identical tests will be compared, and further tests were run on the X2 265 and X3 450.
Systems
| Test System |
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Comparison System |
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Benchmarks
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System Benchmarks
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Gaming Benchmarks
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<hrdata-mce-alt="Benchmarks (World Bench)" class="system-pagebreak" title="Benchmarks (World Bench)" />
World Bench
World Bench is a system benchmark that tests the rendering, DirectX, video encoding, file compression, data entry, and overall performance of your system. World Bench 6 Beta (stable) gives a base score of 100 for a baseline comparison when different systems are chosen. For our tests, these scores will not be valid; all benchmarks are run individually and will reflect times in seconds as given by the program. If you would like more information here is a link. World Bench 6
<hrdata-mce-alt="Benchmarks (PC Mark)" class="system-pagebreak" title="Benchmarks (PC Mark)" />
PCMark Vantage
Designed for Windows Vista, PCMark Vantage benchmarks your system with a variety of tests including video, photo editing, gaming, and communications. For results, a total PCMark score will be given (default setting) and individual scores for the tasks that are tested. To learn more about PCMark Vantage visit Futuremarks website.
<hrdata-mce-alt="Benchmarks (SiSandra)" class="system-pagebreak" title="Benchmarks (SiSandra)" />
SiSandra
One of our favorites, Sandra from SiSoftware is a system benchmark that individually tests all components of your system. For our benchmarking purpose, we will use the processor section, which includes Processor Arithmetic, Multicore Efficiency, and Multimedia. We will also use the memory section to test the X2 265 and X3 450 for Memory Bandwidth, Latency and Cache. All scores will be listed as given by benchmark, higher will be better unless otherwise stated. SiSandra
<hrdata-mce-alt="Benchmarks (Everest)" class="system-pagebreak" title="Benchmarks (Everest)" />
Everest
Everest is a diagnostic and benchmarking tool. Everest will be used for its Cache and Memory benchmark. System memory, L1 cache, L2 cache, and L3 cache will be benchmarked for latency, read, write, and copy. Lavalys is the producer of this software.
<hrdata-mce-alt="Benchmarks (Cinebench)" class="system-pagebreak" title="Benchmarks (Cinebench)" />
Cinebench R10 and R11.5
Created by Maxon, Cinebench R10and R11.5 tests rendering of your CPU and GPU and scores their performance individually. We will be using the CPU rendering portion of the program and benchmark single CPU and multiple CPU performance.
<hrdata-mce-alt="Benchmarks (3DMark Vantage)" class="system-pagebreak" title="Benchmarks (3DMark Vantage)" />
3DMark Vantage
3DMark Vantage is a gaming benchmark used to test the DirectX performance of your graphics card. There are four tests plus a custom setting that can be run: Entry (1024x768), Performance (1280x1024), which is the default setting, High (1680x1050), and Extreme (1920x1200). In each resolution, a total score, a CPU, and GPU are generated. Futuremark
Max resolutions used for gaming benchmarks will be 1024x768. Remember, we are upgrading our system and are working within a budget. Average users are still working with 19 to 22 inch wide screen monitors which will not exceed 1680x1050.
<hrdata-mce-alt="Gaming Benchmark (Resident Evil 5)" class="system-pagebreak" title="Gaming Benchmark (Resident Evil 5)" />
The fifth installation of the Resident Evil Series, which is a first person shooter. You are a member of the World Bioterrorism Team and are sent out to stop a new infestation of the virus created by the Umbrella Corporation.
Since we are using the IGP for these tests, our concern is whether or not the game is playable, and what is the highest quality that can be achieved with a playable fps.
Settings
Comparison
<hrdata-mce-alt="Gaming Benchmark (World in Conflict)" class="system-pagebreak" title="Gaming Benchmark (World in Conflict)" />
World in Conflict
Do you have what it takes to conquer your opponent? World in Conflict is a DX10 game where, if you don't defeat your opponent, you don't gain. This is an all out, winner-take-all, modern war scenario.
Settings
Comparison
<hrdata-mce-alt="Gaming Benchmark (Battle Forge)" class="system-pagebreak" title="Gaming Benchmark (Battle Forge)" />
Battle Forge is an MMORPG that is free to play with its download. You choose from mythical characters and battle until your opponents are conquered. Battle Forge is the first game to support Direct X 11. Since it is a very GPU intensive game, our integrated solution will be pushed to it’s limits.
Settings
Comparison
<hrdata-mce-alt="Overclocking" class="system-pagebreak" title="Overclocking" />
Overclocking
The Athlon II X2 265 and X3 450 are not Black Edition CPUs, so their multiplier is locked. This does not, however, necessarily mean that you do not have some headroom to overclock. An overclock in this situation will be achieved through an increase of the HT ref. clock. In addition to a CPU speed gain, you will be increasing the speed of your memory and north bridge speeds. Depending on your memory, typically achieving a maximum overclock will involve decreasing the memory multiplier. This way, as the HT ref. clock is raised, your memory will start increasing back towards its optimum speed.
There are many arguments made that overclocking can shorten the lifespan of a CPU or kill it completely, due to overvoltage. I set out to find out what the Athlon II X3 450 was capable of at its recommended 1.3v. I was able to push the HT ref. clock up to 241 and boot into Windows, but the combination was not stable under any stress. Backing it down, the Athlon II X3 450 settled in at an HT ref. clock of 230, for an overclock at 3.688Ghz on stock voltage with RAM timings untouched. A very impressive increase on stock voltage using an older MB and entry level RAM
GPU Upgrade
I stated in the ‘Review Philosophy’ section that there were different upgrade paths available depending on your wants and needs. If you do any gaming or intensive multimedia, the biggest impact you are going to make is upgrading the GPU. The Athlon II X2 265 and X3 450 are not the weak link that caused the low fps in our game tests, the IGP is. Adding a moderately priced card, such as a $99.00 nVidia GTS250 that I have used here, is going to give you that immediate and substantial performance gain you are looking for.
As you can see, the Athlon II X3 450, when mated with a better graphics solution, turns in some impressive results. For $184.00 upgrade, you get a build with excellent productivity results that can stand up to some substantial gaming.
<hrdata-mce-alt="Conclusion" class="system-pagebreak" title="Conclusion" />
Provided By: AMD
No compensation was received for review of this product.
Price Point
Price: X2 265 $76.00, X3 450 $87.00
Class: Budget
At a price point of $76.00 and $87.00, the AMD Athlon II X2 265 and X3 450 fall into the Budget category for CPU processors.
Performance
The performance of both processors was very strong. Both turned in benchmark results that far exceeded expectations from a cost standpoint. Temperatures of both chips remained low and stability was flawless.
Reviewer's Opinion
It’s easy to get caught up in the hype surrounding high end components. Too easy, as a matter of fact. Understanding your needs, the capabilities of a component and how they fit together, is crucial when building a system on a budget, or any system, for that matter. For typical home, office or HTPC use, the average user would only touch on using the potential of these two CPUs. They are quick, efficient and both multi-task well (naturally the X3 450 a bit better than the X2 265).
Going beyond that, when mated with mainstream equipment, they deliver excellent all around performance. Sure, if you put together a system with three GTX480s, the Athlon II CPU is going to be your weak link in the fps battle, but that isn’t a very realistic scenario. In a moderately priced system with a mainstream GPU, the Athlon II X2 265 or X3 450 are going to keep pace and deliver good all around performance, even in most recent graphics intensive games.
There is nothing about the Athlon II X2 265 or X3 450 that feels like a budget chip, and they certainly don’t perform like a budget chip. They are very capable performers that happen to be able to save you a few dollars along the way. In the case of the Athlon II X2 265 and X3 450, a low price tag doesn’t mean a sacrifice on headroom either, as these chips overclock without breaking a sweat and remain stable.
The Athlon II line has always been a stellar ‘bang for your buck’ performer, and the speed increase of the X2 265 and X3 450 only makes the line that much more formidable. The Athlon II X2 265 and X3 450 may come with a low price tag, but they also come with enough processing power to drive the needs of just about any user. In the category of price/performance the Athlon II X2 265 and X3 450 are at the top of the heap.
Pros:
Cons:
