AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU Review - PAGE 12

Overclocking

Overclocking the Athlon II X2 250 was a breeze, even if I used a brand new motherboard I had never tried before: the Gigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P. Since this chip is not a black Edition, I proceeded a bit differently. First, I found the approximate base clock the system would support, while decreasing the various multipliers to keep components at their stock clock. 260MHz was too high, so I settled for 250MHz. Then, using the AMD Overdrive utility, I then increased back the multipliers one notch at a time while testing for stability a few minutes between each increase. I was surprised I could max out the northbridge and HyperTransport multipliers without even altering voltages. Then, I proceeded to increase the core multiplier. I got up to x14.5, for a clock of 3625MHz, at stock voltage. A few minutes of testing did not affect the computer's state, however I did not test further because I knew it would go higher. To reach the stock multiplier of x15, I had to increase the core voltage a bit. Next, I tried to  get the memory to run at the next multiplier, but unfortunately I could not, no matter if I increased the CPU-NB and RAM voltage and set looser timings. Finally, I verified if I could not increase the base clock any further than 250MHz.

Here are the settings I had to adjust:

• Base Clock of 252, giving:
  • CPU frequency of 3.78GHz
  • Northbridge frequency of 2520MHz
  • HyperTransport frequency of 2520MHz
• CPU voltage of 1.475V
• RAM multiplier of x4 giving 1008MHz

Power Consumption

Unfortunately we cannot really compare the power consumption of the old Athlon with the X2 250 because a different motherboard as well as different RAM sticks were used, but still we can see that the newer system scored 22W lower at load:

As for the Intel-based system, it just was not in the race this time; it consumed 70W higher at load than the Athlon II system. More and more people try to limit their power consumption for a reason of costs but also for the environment. So here, the Athlon II scores a big point.

Conclusion

For a price tag of $87, I must say the performance is amazing. In two out of five real-world gaming benchmarks, the Athlon II was able to beat the $165 E8400. It also pulled ahead in many other benchmarks, for example PCMark Vantage and WinRAR. I am sure it would have owned any other processor in its price range, being the E6300 or E5400. Odds will be that it can also wipe the floor with the E7400 which is clocked at the same frequency as the E6300.

However, it is somewhat disappointing that the Athlon II cannot manage higher memory frequencies; it is limited to DDR2-800 or DDR3-1066, compared to Phenom IIs which can run DDR3-1600 without any problems. Memory bandwidth is greatly reduced; SiSoft Sandra revealed 2/3 of a GB/s were removed compared to the Phenom II which ran the memory at 1333MHz.

Furthermore, it has a quite low power consumption. Intel offerings just do not care about the fatness of your electricity bill and the environment. This makes of it an ideal processor for a home server or any other rig that stays active most of the day.