AMD Athlon-II X2-260 Regor Processor Review

In early May 2010, AMD released a new series of processors that fills in some of the gaps in their Athlon-II and Phenom-II Dual, Triple, and Quad-Core Lines. Most of the newly released processors are really just 100MHz clock speed bumps on the old versions. In this article Benchmark Reviews focuses on the newly released AMD Athlon-II X2-260 Regor AM3 ADX260OCK23GM processor. Based on the Regor core, the Athlon-II X2-260 has a 3.2GHz clock speed, up 100MHz from the Athlon-II X2-255 at 3.1Ghz which was released in January 2010. The Athlon-II X2-260 is at the very low end of the newly released processors and represents a value based market at only $76. Benchmark Reviews is going to directly compare the Athlon-II X2-260 to its predecessor to see just what advantages can be found in the new chip running 100MHz faster.

AMD is quickly moving into the leader position in the low to mid-range computing world. Their firm grasp on the sub $200 market is expanding rapidly. The lower end of their processor line, the Athlon-II line, has expanded from just X2 (dual core) CPUs last year to the X3 (triple core) and X4 (quad core) processors like the Athlon-II X4-620 which brings quad core processing to under $100. AMD is also breaching the high end of gaming PCs with their Phenom-II line. The black edition series of processors, including the Phenom-II X4-965BE which won an editor's choice award here at Benchmark Reviews, can be overclocked to extreme highs, making them great gaming CPUs. They can't beat the raw power of the i7 series, but with the 965BE coming in at only $179, the bang for the buck is appealing to computer enthusiasts everywhere.

The Athlon-II series is built to be a less expensive alternative, while still offering a lot of great features. The chips are designed without any L3 cache at all, allowing for those lower prices. Many computer enthusiasts, myself included, often wait a long time after the purchase of a computer before considering an upgrade. I know many of you reading this are the same way. According to the Steam Hardware Survey for April 2010, almost 17% of gamers (remember, the hardware survey is based on Steam users) are still using single core processors in their systems. Quad core use is up, but still only amounts to 27.5% of users. The bulk of the users use dual core processors with speeds between 2.0 and 2.6GHz. Considering the lowest end of new Athlon-II dual core processors are now at 3.2GHz, this leaves a lot of room for upgrade. Triple-core usage in processors only represents about 1% of users.

In this article, Benchmark Reviews will be focusing on testing the performance upgrade between the Athlon-II X2-260 ADX260OCK23GQ processor against its predecessor, the Athlon-II X2-255. There is relatively little difference between the two processors, besides a 100MHz increase in the clock speed. The new Athlon-II X2-260 launched at nearly the same price that the X2-255 was prior to the release. The processors pushed down the prices of the older processors, making them even more affordable. The price difference between the Athlon-II X2-260 and the X2-255 will now be about $10. We will try to discover in this article if the extra $10 is well-spent on the Athlon-II X2-260, or if it is really more advantageous to go for the less expensive version. Besides just pure performance, we will also be looking at overclocking ability to determine the value of the newly released ADX260OCK23GQ.

About Advanced Micro Devices, Inc (AMD)

"Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home, and play.

Over the course of AMD's three decades in business, silicon and software have become the steel and plastic of the worldwide digital economy. Technology companies have become global pacesetters, making technical advances at a prodigious rate - always driving the industry to deliver more and more, faster and faster.

However, "technology for technology's sake" is not the way we do business at AMD. Our history is marked by a commitment to innovation that's truly useful for customers - putting the real needs of people ahead of technical one-upmanship. AMD founder Jerry Sanders has always maintained that "customers should come first, at every stage of a company's activities. We believe our company history bears that out."

Previous Page - Next Page >>