Conclusion:
AMD decided to take thier time and design a processer that would have an amazing performance all around while at the same time keeping the price of the chip to a minimum. When matched up with the 785G chipset, the Athlon II X4 definately has some power. It’s able to perform all of your normal tasks with ease. Gaming? Without a discrete graphics card, this isnt going to be possible, but the processor itself defiately can handle what ever you throw at it.
In comparison to the Intel Q8200, the Athlon II X4 620 was able to hold its ground and even out perform the Q8200 in most instances. As the Q8200 may be a great processor, is it really worth that extra $50-$60 for the same performance you can get with the AMD Athlon II X4 620?
Overall price is someting that needs to be considered aswell. So lets see for the Athlon II X4 620 platform, it totaled to $194 at current market prices (price includes Processor and Motherboard ONLY). While the Intel Q8200 platform costs $226 at current market prices. So would you say that the extra performance you get from the Athlon II X4 620 is worth SAVING $30? Most definately. And if you are interested in a bit more power, you can always opt to go for the Athlon II X4 630, which will total out just under the price of the intels platform, sounds like that might even be a better deal.
One last thing about these two platforms that you always need to consider, is that system going to last you? How easily is it upgradable? Well with the AMD Platform you can easily upgrade the processor to a Phenom II and the ram is already DDR3. The Intel platform on the other hand is a LGA775 which wont allow for and i7 or and i5 and being maxed out a DDR2-800MHz really sucks.
TechwareLabs would gladly like to give the new Athlon II X4 Series an Awesome Hardware Award as it was well deserved.
wow. is this review completely insisting in using the only benchmarks where the AMD processors could win…..allied to the platform? use CPU tests more than overall platform tests, because if you dont you are effectively saying that everyone who buy these will use onboards graphics of a cheap platform, when in truth most will probably use the Q8200 on a different board and add discrete graphics i would say….