Introduction

AMD gave its best shot in the performance segment with its Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition model, intruduced a while ago. It worked out quite well for AMD, but then the party pooper Lynnfield (Core i5/Core i7 LGA-1156) showed up, and pushed AMD back to mainstream. You would expect one to fight back, raise the frequencies, up the voltages, and fight a losing battle. Instead, AMD went all out in the mainstream, which is the biggest market, in terms of sales volumes, and the most profitable one.

With small modifications on its Deneb core, AMD managed to significantly reduce the size of the core die to just 168 mm², and offer the first ever quad-core processor under $100. Meet "Propus", quad-core for the masses.

Since this is our first CPU review for a long time I would like to encourage readers to leave their feedback and suggest what we could improve to bring you the best experience possible.

I would also like to thank Links for providing the processor sample for this review.

Packaging and Contents

The Athlon II X4 620 comes in retail packaging that includes a short installation manual, AMD Athlon case-badge, AMD-certified aluminum heatsink, and of course the processor itself. AMD offers a 3 year warranty for all retail processors, including this one.