# AMD Athlon II X4 620 2.6 GHz



## Omega (Sep 15, 2009)

Not having a performance leading product doesn't mean the end of a company. AMD is the hardcore proof of that. Turning its attention to the much larger mainstream market resulted in some great products that offer amazing performance at low price points. This time, AMD has outdone itself, and the recently introduced Athlon II X4 620 could very well be a dream come true for mainstream users, the first ever quad core processor for just under $100.

*Show full review*


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## newtekie1 (Oct 5, 2009)

Wow, very nice review, I'm so tempted to buy one of these, but I'm waiting for a 3.0GHz stock version.

Been a long time since I've seen a CPU review here.


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## Zubasa (Oct 5, 2009)

Nice review, but it will be interesting to see ho they clock on 770 shipset, these are buget Quads after all.
Another question is, do this one unlock?


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## WarEagleAU (Oct 5, 2009)

What could it unlock to? I know Omega said it is possible that maybe you could unlock the l3 caches but from what Ive seen, it hasn't really been hindered at all. Im really impressed with the showing and even more impressed to have a CPU reviewed, as newtekie1 said, it has been a long time. I too feel tempted to pick one of these up just for shits and giggles.

One thing I was wondering, how could the Intel Core Quads show so poorly against the AMD stable in a bunch of tests you did, Omega? Not saying it got whooped but in a lot of the tests, it didn't come out on top, unless I was looking at it wrong.


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## OneCool (Oct 5, 2009)

WOW 3.6ghz for 100 bucks


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## DaMulta (Oct 5, 2009)

No printable view is DRIVING ME NUTS!


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## DaMulta (Oct 5, 2009)

It's listed as 610 in the review BTW.

I have this chip, and I have really been enjoying it stock! It really feels like my old 955BE, and for the price of the chip it's OMG honestly. I have seen combos really really cheap for it. I bought it with a CF ASUS EVO board for 200 dollars!


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## TheLaughingMan (Oct 5, 2009)

DaMulta is right.  In all the benchmark charts, it is listed as 610.


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## audiotranceable (Oct 5, 2009)

isn't this processor old?


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## TheLaughingMan (Oct 5, 2009)

matthewbroad said:


> isn't this processor old?



No, brand new.  Been on the market maybe 2 weeks.  I love AMD for this kind of stuff.  Reminds me of the IGP 780G when it was released.  Everyone complains AMD is not the fastest and can't compete with Intel....so AMD changes the game.

Although I do hope they go after the performance title soon.


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## audiotranceable (Oct 5, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> No, brand new.  Been on the market maybe 2 weeks.  I love AMD for this kind of stuff.  Reminds me of the IGP 780G when it was released.  Everyone complains AMD is not the fastest and can't compete with Intel....so AMD changes the game.
> 
> Although I do hope they go after the performance title soon.



ah I ordered a X3 710 because in reviews it shows that the x3 is faster in gaming. I hope it unlocks to 4 cores


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## wiak (Oct 5, 2009)

hey nice review what about using dBpoweramp for flac/mp3/ogg encoding 
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/
and TechARP HD x264 Benchmark for x264 HD encode?
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=520


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## TheLaughingMan (Oct 5, 2009)

matthewbroad said:


> ah I ordered a X3 710 because in reviews it shows that the x3 is faster in gaming. I hope it unlocks to 4 cores



Yeah, the L3 cache helps in gaming.  The 620 and 630 have no L3 cache.


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## DaMulta (Oct 6, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> Yeah, the L3 cache helps in gaming.  The 620 and 630 have no L3 cache.



I might try and do some gaming on it soon. IDK I bet it rocks and rolls, and really isn't that bad at it. I will always say the video card is more important to gaming than the CPU. It will be better for the fact it has 4 cores instead of two or three. I bet some games are hurt by it, while other games run better with no L3.


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## Assassin48 (Oct 6, 2009)

Have any of you tried unlocking the L3 through ACC ?


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## newtekie1 (Oct 6, 2009)

WarEagleAU said:


> One thing I was wondering, how could the Intel Core Quads show so poorly against the AMD stable in a bunch of tests you did, Omega? Not saying it got whooped but in a lot of the tests, it didn't come out on top, unless I was looking at it wrong.



It is because it was the Q8200, low cache and low clock speeds make the Q8200 a pretty poor processor.  I think the Q8000 series would have been better at the lower 1066FSB, but with higher clock speeds starting at the 2.66GHz and going up.


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## Omega (Oct 6, 2009)

Zubasa said:


> Another question is, do this one unlock?



Test sample was propus core, unlocking L3 cache not possible. There is a trick how to increase L3 unlock chances when buying new Athlon II X4. Try to look for batch code that ends with xxCYC. 







WarEagleAU said:


> One thing I was wondering, how could the Intel Core Quads show so poorly against the AMD stable in a bunch of tests you did, Omega?



As newtekie1 said, Q8200 is the slowest version of Intel's Quads and it's clocked very low... just 2.33 GHz



DaMulta said:


> It's listed as 610 in the review BTW.



All of the graphs have been fixed and re-uploaded. It should change to 620 soon if not already. Sorry about that, bad typo+c/p error.



wiak said:


> hey nice review what about using dBpoweramp for flac/mp3/ogg encoding
> http://www.dbpoweramp.com/
> and TechARP HD x264 Benchmark for x264 HD encode?



I'm looking for some good multithreading audio encoders, so I'll definitely try dBpoweram, thanks for the tip. As for x264, I am quite happy with current choice and I do believe it accurately shows real life CPU performance when doing such tasks. 

thanks for comments guys


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## DaMulta (Oct 6, 2009)

Mine didn't unlock, but o well. I have really thought about buying another one. Great cheap desktop machines IMO.


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## TheLaughingMan (Oct 6, 2009)

DaMulta said:


> I might try and do some gaming on it soon. IDK I bet it rocks and rolls, and really isn't that bad at it. I will always say the video card is more important to gaming than the CPU. It will be better for the fact it has 4 cores instead of two or three. I bet some games are hurt by it, while other games run better with no L3.



True, it is not as important and will show variation based on the game be CPU dependent.  I am not say don't buy it you are gaming, but if every frame counts you may want to get a X3 720.

And as of right now, even the properly multi-threaded games don't really get any good improvement from 3 to 4 cores.  The biggest jump was going from 1 to 2, then a decent one from 2 to 3, but 3 to 4 was less than 10% improvement.  Lack of an L3 cache hurts gaming across the board, not a lot but hurts.


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## I see SPY! (Oct 6, 2009)

A quad core for 100 bucks. It's wonderful


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## mastrdrver (Oct 6, 2009)

Just FYI Omega, its 3hrs later and they are still showing 610 instead of 620. Not sure how long it should take.

Nice review though.


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## Omega (Oct 6, 2009)

Whell... I did all I could on my part. New and fixed graphs are uped on server. I'm still a rookie here so don't really know how things go. Could be that the review needs a "refresh" from admins.

Someone will fix it asap. Once again, apologies.


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## mastrdrver (Oct 6, 2009)

Hey, no problem. It took me a few pages to pick it up anyway. 

Kind of surprised a $100 stripped quad can do so well. Especially when it comes to some of the non gaming benches.

I wish I could find more PCMark Vantage runs for cpu reviews. I think it really helps put "everyday use" performance into perspective especially when comparing processors.


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## Steevo (Oct 6, 2009)

I forsee new hardware purchase for work machines.......


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## W1zzard (Oct 6, 2009)

i refreshed our image caching, should show the correct graphs now


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## Bl4ck (Oct 6, 2009)

in short : cheap ass quad core cpu , it does exactly that what it supposed to do in it's price range.  only thing that is bad it's the power draw ,too much for me.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 6, 2009)

Very very impressive, I was looking at the non-gaming charts where this thing was snapping at the 965 BE's heals and really starting to wonder, then the gaming tests finally showed up. Still this thing looks amazing for the price, I love the 240 I picked up, and wouldn't mind one of these either.


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## Zubasa (Oct 6, 2009)

Bl4ck said:


> in short : cheap ass quad core cpu , it does exactly that what it supposed to do in it's price range.  only thing that is bad it's the power draw ,too much for me.


Just under volt the chips if you want low power draw, I can tell you it most likely require less than 1.28V.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 6, 2009)

Bl4ck said:


> in short : cheap ass quad core cpu , it does exactly that what it supposed to do in it's price range.  only thing that is bad it's the power draw ,too much for me.



AMD chips always draw more power, but their chipsets draw less, in the end the results are pretty much the same.


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## Omega (Oct 6, 2009)

Power consumption in review refers to TOTAL SYSTEM power draw. Same DDR3 memory is used, same HDD, cooler, etc. So P45+Q8200 draws less power than Athlon II X4 620 + 790FX


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 6, 2009)

The difference is the P45 chipset is not an enthusiast chipset and the wattage difference is negligible, but the 620 does also run significantly cooler. It's hard to compare a p45 and a 790FX, as 790FX has been the top end AMD standard for 2 generations and still has boards that can be up to $200. I'm not completely sure about p45 at the start, but I can't imagine they ever cracked $100 by a lot.

790GX or 785G would be a better comparison, especially with the built in video since thats what a lot of people will be doing with this chip, be a perfect low power HDPC when you cut out a videocard.


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## ASRockIQ (Oct 6, 2009)

just bought this CPU with Rush Shipment via Newegg @11:23AM!  Let's see what my system can do now


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## WarEagleAU (Oct 6, 2009)

Thanks Newtekie1 and Omega for answering. I was dumfounded to say the least.


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## lism (Oct 7, 2009)

1Kurgan1 said:


> AMD chips always draw more power, but their chipsets draw less, in the end the results are pretty much the same.





Not really. In practical the power usage is lower then the TDP is. I.e mostly the CPU won't be using 95W at full load. Not even peakening at 95W. Even tho for 4 cores thats low anyway.

Really good price performance ratio. I was thinking to buy another X2 but this X4 really is getting affordable 
Edit: Tomshardware doing another review between the same CPU with and without L3 cache. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/athlon-l3-cache,2416.html


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## Omega (Oct 7, 2009)

lism said:


> Edit: Tomshardware doing another review between the same CPU with and without L3 cache. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/athlon-l3-cache,2416.html



You have that in TPU review already. Please note that i have downclocked Phenom II X4 965 from stock 3.4 GHz to Athlon II X4 620 frequency, 2.6 GHz to simulate performance drop caused by lack of L3 cache.


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## mastrdrver (Oct 7, 2009)

Man, I must have really been asleep yesterday when I saw this article. I missed not only the downclocked 965, but also the PCMark scores. 

Hardware Secrets went about comparing this processor in a very different way that I hadn't seen. Instead of comparing against an Intel C2Q or similar price, they compared it to a Intel system of comparable costs. Seeing as the board and cpu are the only real difference, it ended up as a slaughter of a lonely Pentium E6300 except for 2 benches. Not to mention the joke that was gaming with the Intel on board gpu that resulted.

Needless to say, when it comes to either system cost or comparable cpu cost, the Athlon II X4 620 is a worthy foe. It will be interesting to see how a similar priced i5 cpu/system would fair once the dual core/thread i5s show up. It just might get real ugly then for AMD.


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## MN12BIRD (Oct 7, 2009)

Basically it's a Phenom II x4 without any L3 cache.  In fact I believe some of them will be exactly that from the factory.  But my buddy bought one and for games you usually can't tell its crippled.  Well that's what he says anyway!  He said most games don't use much cache since they aren't "predictive" and that for most "everyday" programs it seems to be pretty darn quick for a "$100 quad core!  I'm sure there are some specific programs that will show its weakness but I'm not sure exactly what they would be.  Production work like sound and video editing perhaps??


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 7, 2009)

Omega said:


> You have that in TPU review already. Please note that i have downclocked Phenom II X4 965 from stock 3.4 GHz to Athlon II X4 620 frequency, 2.6 GHz to simulate performance drop caused by lack of L3 cache.



Ah I didn't catch that off the bat, still impressive 620, makes me happier now though, I was wondering how their results were so close.


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## Omega (Oct 7, 2009)

Try to read more text guys, everything was explained before the graphs started 
Quote from review, page 2:


> To find out how much of performance hit removing L3 cache will have, you find a fully potent Phenom II X4 965 in our benchmarks, but clocked down to 2.60 GHz, same as Athlon II X4 620. This will result in an apples-to-apples comparison to easily assess the impact of the missing L3 cache.



Also, in overclocking results, Athlon II X4 620 @ 3.63 is compared to stock frequency Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.4 GHz


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## I see SPY! (Oct 7, 2009)

Omega said:


> Try to read more text guys, everything was explained before the graphs started
> Quote from review, page 2:
> 
> 
> Also, in overclocking results, Athlon II X4 620 @ 3.63 is compared to stock frequency Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.4 GHz



So it seems the cache doesn't impact that much the results...


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## Omega (Oct 7, 2009)

Most of the performance drop is noticed in games, yes. But also note that Athlon II X4 doesn't scale that well with overclocking, as the Phenom II X4 965 has no issues keeping up with the 3.63 GHz Athlon II X4, even if it's clocked 230 MHz lower.


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## heky (Oct 8, 2009)

Omega, why not overclock the two Intel processors to the same frequency as the AMD ones? It would be really interesting to see the clock per clock difference.


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## W1zzard (Oct 8, 2009)

thats not really the point of a review is it ? performance out of the box for the every day user is important, not some technology investigation looking at clock-to-clock performance


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## Omega (Oct 8, 2009)

↑
what he said 

When reviewing a product, in this case a CPU, primary focus is performance that product has on factory settings, which 99% of users will use.
Overclocking is just additional content that explores the product potential and to satisfy more experienced users (overclockers).

When Intel processors are tested, they will undergo the same treatment.
Testing clock per clock performance and stuff like that can be saved for occasional non standard review. Will give it some thought in future if things work out


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## sLowEnd (Oct 8, 2009)

Wait, so the IHS isn't soldered on Regors?  (referring to pic on p.2 of the review)


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## Zubasa (Oct 9, 2009)

sLowEnd said:


> Wait, so the IHS isn't soldered on Regors?  (referring to pic on p.2 of the review)


He rip it off.


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## pantherx12 (Oct 9, 2009)

Seems like AMD could save a hell of a lot of money by phsycally reduces the L3 cache on later models of Phenom CPUs.


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## Omega (Oct 9, 2009)

pantherx12 said:


> Seems like AMD could save a hell of a lot of money by phsycally reduces the L3 cache on later models of Phenom CPUs.



You are forgetting Opteron processors that share the same architecture as Phenoms including L3 cache. And in server applications, L3 cache does maka a whole lot of difference.

In terms of production costs, it more effective for AMD to build just one or two different cores rather than design each specific core for one segment. They don't have the production capacities like Intel to afford such luxury.

Besides, think of the L3 like long term investment. Future six core (twelve core?) CPU's are also going to have the same 6MB L3 cache, and with adding more cores that need more instructions to process, extra buffer really could come handy in some apps.


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## handsomerichguy (Oct 21, 2009)

best price/performance processor ever, I think.


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## handsomerichguy (Oct 21, 2009)

I worry AMD will suffer financial crisis for selling this chip very cheap


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## YoussefValentino (Nov 9, 2010)

*Unlocking Athlon II X4 620*

*Hey This My CPU Look At Code Name ((Rana)) !!! How I Can Unlock L3 Cache ??
Please Help Me *




Uploaded with ImageShack.us


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## _JP_ (Nov 9, 2010)

The _Rana_ core is derived from the _Propus_ core and both only have L1 and L2 cache.


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## JrRacinFan (Nov 9, 2010)

YoussefValentino said:


> *Hey This My CPU Look At Code Name ((Rana)) !!! How I Can Unlock L3 Cache ??
> Please Help Me *
> [url]http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/5307/24680768.png[/URL]
> 
> Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Check your stepping/batch code on the IHS. If it shows "CACYC" it may be possible to unlock L3 cache.

Also you are running an old version of CPUz, you can get a newer build @ www.cpuid.com


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## mastrdrver (Nov 10, 2010)

What JR said.

This is the one I have that unlocks the L3. 
You need the code in the middle of the top three lines (the "CACYC AC" part). This tells you it has a Deneb die. Check this link when you get yours to see if it has a Deneb die or not.


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## _JP_ (Nov 10, 2010)

Oh right, forgot some _Rana_ cores have a _Deneb_ die. 
Yeah, those can unlock the L3, because _Deneb_ has an L3 cache.
Though, I think it's still rare to find one...


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## Hayder_Master (Nov 10, 2010)

WTF seems im only one digg this thread


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## YoussefValentino (Nov 10, 2010)

*Unlocking Athlon II X4 620*

*Here is my Athlon II X4 With The Last Version Of CPUZ 




Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I Hope You Help me *


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## mastrdrver (Nov 11, 2010)

_JP_ said:


> Oh right, forgot some _Rana_ cores have a _Deneb_ die.
> Yeah, those can unlock the L3, because _Deneb_ has an L3 cache.
> Though, I think it's still rare to find one...



It is rare and not common but they are even showing up in C3 steppings but I've been unable to find a X3 or X4 even though I've seen them out there from people who own them.



YoussefValentino said:


> *Here is my Athlon II X4 With The Last Version Of CPUZ
> [url]http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/1246/cpuz156.jpg[/URL]
> 
> Uploaded with ImageShack.us
> ...



You need the codes off of the processor itself to tell if there is anything there to begin with.


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## YoussefValentino (Dec 18, 2010)

*about athlon II X4 620 2.6/2m Cache*

*Okey .. Now My Athlon II X4 620 Don't Have L3 Cache  

But I Want to Buy a VGA , Mp PC :
ECS Black Series A780GM-A 
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Pr...tailName=Feature&MenuID=20&LanID=8#SocketAm2+
Athlon II X4 620 2.6/2m
RAM kingMax 2x2G 800 bus DDR2
H.D.D Western Digital 500G.B WD5000AAKS
PSU CoolerMaster eXtreme Power Plus 390W
                                              What VGA Model  I Can put ?
                                 Because I'm Afraid Of Bottleneck   With Resolution 1600x900

​*


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## JrRacinFan (Dec 18, 2010)

I have had nothing but good things with my gtx460 @ 1600x900. Some may say it's overkill but I think it's a good pairing. Either that an HD5850 or HD6850. HD5770 would also be pretty good as well. Oh and dont be afraid of bottleneck at this res.


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