Final Thoughts and Conclusions
The AMD Athlon II X4 620 and Athlon II X4 630 processors offer nothing new or inspiring on the performance front, but they have a price point that will make you smile. For just $99 the AMD Athlon II X4 620 packs a mean punch and is the ideal processor to pair with an AMD 785G based motherboard. The AMD Athlon II X4 630 is a more interesting part to us as it has a higher multiplier and costs just $122. It was also able to reach over 3.8GHz, which is a fairly massive overclock for just air cooling. Getting more than 1Ghz overclocks out of $99 and $122 processor is always fun because they really turn into 'budget beaters' and are able to outperform processors that usually cost significantly more than they do.
The Athlon II X4 series of processors do make a great drop-in replacement for those of you running older and slower processors, but also make the perfect choice for a budget Windows 7 system build as quad-core processors are becoming standard these days. The AMD 785G platform is also very solid and with motherboards like the AsRock M3A785GMH/128M starting at just $84.99 at Newegg. You can get both a motherboard and a processor like the Athlon II X4 620 for under $185! Not bad, considering the system would support dual-monitors, Blu-Ray playback, GPGPU applications like stream and most importantly it would be ready for Windows 7.
| CPU Name | Cores | Clock | L2/L3 Cache | HT Bus | Socket | TDP | Price |
| AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE | 4 | 3.4GHz | 2+6MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 140W | $245 |
| AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE | 4 | 3.2GHz | 2+6MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 125W | $189 |
| AMD Phenom II X4 945 | 4 | 3.0GHz | 2+6MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 125W | $169 |
| AMD Phenom II X4 940 | 4 | 3.0GHz | 2+6MB | 3600MHz | AM2+ | 125W | $174 |
| AMD Phenom II X4 920 | 4 | 2.8GHz | 2+6MB | 3600MHz | AM2+ | 125W | $160 |
| AMD Phenom II X4 905e | 4 | 2.5GHz | 2+6MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 65W | $184 |
| AMD Phenom II X4 810 | 4 | 2.6GHz | 2+4MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 95W | $144 |
| AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE | 3 | 2.8GHz | 1.5+6MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 95W | $119 |
| AMD Phenom II X3 710 | 3 | 2.6GHz | 1.5+6MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 95W | $99 |
| AMD Phenom II X3 705e | 3 | 2.5GHz | 1.5+6MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 65W | $116 |
| AMD Phenom II X2 550 | 2 | 3.1GHz | 1+6MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 80W | $102 |
| AMD Athlon II X4 630 | 4 | 2.8GHz | 2MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 95W | $122 |
| AMD Athlon II X4 620 | 4 | 2.6GHz | 2MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 95W | $99 |
| AMD Athlon II X2 250 | 2 | 3.0GHz | 2MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 65W | $76 |
| AMD Athlon II X2 245 | 2 | 2.9GHz | 2MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 65W | $66 |
| AMD Athlon II X2 240 | 2 | 2.8GHz | 2MB | 4000MHz | AM3 | 65W | $60 |
AMD has plenty of processors on the market as you can tell from the chart above, but when it comes to quad-core offerings the AMD Athlon II X4 620 is $44 less expensive than the previous entry level quad-core, which would have been the Phenom II X4 810. Considering that it has solid performance numbers, reaches an overclock of nearly 1GHz and costs just $99, there really isn't too much bad to say about it. Sure, the Athlon II X4 family of processors is missing the L3 cache and that is seen in gaming performance, but if you want the L3 cache you can always pay a little more and get something like the AMD Phenom II X4 945.
Legit Bottom Line: The AMD Athlon II X4 series of processors offers an excellent value for consumers that are looking to build entry level and mainstream system builds.
Questions or Comments? View this thread in our forums!
