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Published: August 29, 2009 | Source: AMD | Author: Milind Chidrawar

AMD Athlon II X2 250 Processor Review

Synthetic Benchmarks
 
And so we begin our series of tests with a number of popular synthetic benchmarks. These programs will test our systems featuring the processors in question in simulated environments to derive scores that give us an idea of the magnitude of a CPU’s performance.
 
 
SANDRA’s Arithmetic benchmark shows the Athlon II X2 250 being outpaced by 20% and 16% in Dhrystone and Whetstone tests respectively. Once overclocked, it’s 900MHz clockspeed advantage allowed a 4% and 11% lead over a Core 2 Duo E8400 at it’s reference clock speeds.

 
In the CPU Multimedia test, our Athlon II and Core 2 Duo were performing nigh on par with each other. This test does not particularly benefit from large amounts of cache.
 
 
This test is more of a cross platform comparison rather than a processor comparison, seeing that the memory controller on our LGA775 test setup is part of the Intel X48 Northbridge, while the memory controller on our Socket AM3 platform is integrated into the Athlon II itself. No surprises here.
 
 
Again, this is more of a platform test and in this case we’re comparing the MA770T UD3P’s SB710 Southbridge with the Foxconn BlackOps’ ICH10R Southbridge. Neither seem to be outperforming as such with our Samsung Spipoint F1 Hard Disk Drive.
 
 
 
Naturally this is more an all round system benchmark with a considerable dependance on the Graphics Card as well as the Processor. The score has been broken down into sections to get an idea of how the test setups performed. As you can see, neither processors are bottlenecking a midrange graphics card like the GeForce 8800GT and so either are more than respectable choices if gaming performance is crucial. Here, we see the E8400 taking a lead over the X2 250 by 15% in the CPU test.
 
 
Once again returning to the world of CPU intensive benchmarks, CinebenchR10 analyses the speed at which a processor renders a high resolution image and outputs a score accordingly. The test was carried out in singlethreaded and multithreaded mode. Once again, the E8400 slaps the X2 250 around the back of it’s heatspreader with a 10% margin.
 
 
PCMark Vantage shows a lead of 4% over the X2 250. The little AMD is fighting hard! Turn over the page to have a look at the last set of synthetic benchmarks as well as gaming benchmarks.