AMD Athlon II X4 635 & Phenom II X4 910e Review - PAGE 1

Intel has recently launched a new lineup of products based on the Nehalem architecture: the Clarkdale processors. In our in-house testing, we observed that in most of the tests it was dominated by the true quad-core from AMD, the Phenom II X4 965, selling at the same price point. One thing we did notice though is the very low power consumption of these new 32nm parts, considering the given performance.

On the AMD side of things, the limits of efficiency were also pushed further with the C3 revision of the Deneb die. As we have seen, the flagship Phenom II X4 965 TDP is down to 125W from the original 140W, but the main feature of this processor is meant to be performance, not low power consumption. What can be achieved on lower clocked models? One year ago, the first AM3 processors were launched. In these was the Phenom II X4 810, a Deneb die clocked at 2.6GHz, featuring a TDP of 95W. Today, the 910e has a TDP of only 65W, while still featuring the exact same frequencies. This means the power consumption has been lowered by 1/3! (Almost.) How will the total system power consumption as well as the performance compare to the Clarkdale processors? That's what we will find out.

On another note, AMD now offers even more performance at the $100 price point; the Athlon II X4 635 is now clocked at a healthy 2.9GHz, instead of the 2.6GHz of the 620. Until the Clarkdale launch, the competitor in blue still did not have anything to compete at sub-$200 price points, but now there is the Pentium G6950 at $100, which we have seen doesn't have Hyper-Threading enabled, as well as having no Turbo Boost. One can already see how the fight will finish.

Let's first take a look at a pricing table:

*Table subject to be updated in the following days.

Specifications

Let's now examine the components with which they will be paired, as well as the opponents they will face.