AMD Athlon II X2 240 2.80 GHz

[Omega]

AMD's Athlon II X2 240 is set out to deliver a best-in-class experience for less than $60. Even though it has only two cores it can deliver in many benchmarks including gaming. Its attractive price point and undervolting capabilities also make it an interesting choice for a budget oriented media PC setup.

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[FilipM]

Man, awesome CPU for budget builds!


Great review, keep it up!

 

[Imsochobo]

I just built a system for i cant say how cheap, its like half the price of a budget HP, man theese cpu's are killers ;D
Unfortunatly for amd, they gotta sell PHII to sell theese, cause they are basicly the same if im right, just faulty DIE's with disabled parts of it. like cache, cores, kudos to amd to being able to get so many cpu's out of one design, just like theyve done on the ATI side of things.
Now amd, make the performance, just like you guys did with ati

Maybe we will see faster evolution on the cpu parts aswell

 

[ShRoOmAlIsTiC]

just bought 2 of these and 2 MSI 785g's for htpc builds. Cant wait for them to get here. Should be more then enough power for an htpc. Only down part is the no 7.1 lpmc on the 785g

 

[eidairaman1]

I would love to see a Black Edition model Athlon II X2

 

[mechtech]

Very nice review Omega.

One thing that would have greatly interested me would have been how it compared to an AM2 5600+ Windsor (90nm, 2.8 ghz and 1 meg cache)

Can it be done??

 

[LittleLizard]

I would love to see a Black Edition model Athlon II X2

i want to see that too. it would be awesome

EDIT:

Very nice review Omega.

One thing that would have greatly interested me would have been how it compared to an AM2 5600+ Windsor (90nm, 2.8 ghz and 1 meg cache)

Can it be done??

dont know but because of the SSE4A, 2GHZ HT and improvements on the arquitecture i say is better the athlon II

 

[TheLaughingMan]

I can Digg it.

 

[Omega]

One thing that would have greatly interested me would have been how it compared to an AM2 5600+ Windsor (90nm, 2.8 ghz and 1 meg cache)

Can it be done??

I'm afraid not... for now at least.
In few weeks I'll be transferring test setup to Windows7, after that I'll test every model i can get my hands on to build a good database... but those Windsor models are long gone and EOL, don't really know what purpose would it have to test them.

I did a similar review for Croatian site in the past, Athlon II X2 250 3.0 GHz compared to Athlon64 X2 6000+ 3.1 GHz (Brisbane), and the new Athlon was faster something like ~25% overall. In gaming it would outperform the old Athlon64 X2 by 20-30 FPS when not GPU limited.

 

[Zubasa]

I just built a system for i cant say how cheap, its like half the price of a budget HP, man theese cpu's are killers ;D
Unfortunatly for amd, they gotta sell PHII to sell theese, cause they are basicly the same if im right, just faulty DIE's with disabled parts of it. like cache, cores, kudos to amd to being able to get so many cpu's out of one design, just like theyve done on the ATI side of things.
Now amd, make the performance, just like you guys did with ati

Maybe we will see faster evolution on the cpu parts aswell

The Athlon IIs are "native" dies by now (except the X3), they are all manufactured without an L3 cache.
AMD is not stupid, they know they can't sell Phenoms II for Athlon II price for ever.

 

[Apocolypse007]

error correction: In the specs section you have the celeron listed as an AMD CPU.

 

[ooiman92]

Typo

I LOLed when I saw this: "AMD Celeron E1600" on the specifications table, page two.

Edit: whoops I guess Apocolypse007 beat me to it xD

 

[Mussels]

ooh ooh i have one of these!
i'm a little disapointed you didnt do UNDERclocking tests for HTPC use - mine goes as low as 1.1v for 2.8Ghz, making it far lower in power consumption.

according to this tool, it goes from 65W to 39W

 

[vagxtr]

and AMD-V technology... it's clear that Intel needs something fresh in the lower market segments. Probably the most important feature is the AMD's virtualization technology, which Intel supports only with higher end Core 2 Duos and Core 2 Quad processor

sorry but where did you get this misinformation. In new 45nm AthonII AMD decided to run pretty devious politics and to DISABLE AMD-V according to all their official spcs. So did you test your chip that in fact it has AMD-VI?

__EDIT__

hmhm they now claim Virtualization support while they clearley noted Virtualization No
http://products.amd.com/en-us/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?detailId=587&id=562&id=586&id=587



so[/QUOTE]

 

[Omega]

error correction: In the specs section you have the celeron listed as an AMD CPU.

Fixed, thanks.

ooh ooh i have one of these!
i'm a little disapointed you didnt do UNDERclocking tests for HTPC use - mine goes as low as 1.1v for 2.8Ghz, making it far lower in power consumption.

ummm... did you check the power consumption page? If you read the first introduction page you would have known that undervolting will me tested.

sorry but where did you get this misinformation. In new 45nm AthonII AMD decided to run pretty devious politics and to DISABLE AMD-V according to all their official spcs. So did you test your chip that in fact it has AMD-VI?

You are contradicting yourself. First you say it's disabled and then you post a link to processors official specs where it says virtualization is supported

 

[Mussels]

ummm... did you check the power consumption page? If you read the first introduction page you would have known that undervolting will me tested.

whaaat, read EVERY page? what do you think i am!

(i somehow missed that page)

 

[Omega]

Undervolting or underclocking will be standard feature of all incoming TPU CPU reviews, and it will always be shown on power consumption page

 

[pantherx12]

Undervolting or underclocking will be standard feature of all incoming TPU CPU reviews, and it will always be shown on power consumption page

Nice that will be really handy!

 

[Mussels]

my only wish is that you find a way to find out the CPU's actual power use, as opposed to just the entire PC - find the lowest clocked CPU you can, slap it in and underclock and volt as low as you can (say, a single core sempron at 600MHz) and then do wattage tests so you can figure out how much the CPU itself is using with some degree of accuracy.


when it comes to media PC, or mATX/mITX systems *true* wattage numbers for the CPU's (and not AMD's really inaccurate TDP figures) would be quite valuable to the community (especially CnQ/undervolted numbers)

 

[vagxtr]

You are contradicting yourself. First you say it's disabled and then you post a link to processors official specs where it says virtualization is supported

Well i know i'm contradicting myself but that doesnt answers on my question. Does that proc has really virtualization support as it should ever since AM2 F2 rev? Cause before they released x3/x4 Athlons AMD clearly stated ON SAME PAGES that these x2 Athlons doesnt support virtualization as i stated before (in my contradictions)

 

[Mussels]

strange, i'm pretty sure the virtualization isn't showing where it should be on mine either

i dont have any other AMD's to compare to (and i havent made sure its on in the BIOS on that system, i assume it should be on by default) but i beleive it should be showing in that "instructions" line, and its not

 

[vagxtr]

http://img.techpowerup.org/091025/Capture215.jpg


strange, i'm pretty sure the virtualization isn't showing where it should be on mine either

i dont have any other AMD's to compare to (and i havent made sure its on in the BIOS on that system, i assume it should be on by default) but i beleive it should be showing in that "instructions" line, and its not

There's official AMD-V tool that was used in the old days to state does system support virtualizations (NF4 boards didn't support it for example) so as all new AM2+/AM3 boards now support it running it would proof is old F2/F3 and G1/G2 and phenomI AMD-V still there or disabled as they stated before.

when they release athlon II x 620/6530BE a month and half go it was very strange to me that newely released athlons x4 support (fully?) AMD-V while old x2 240/245/250BE doesn't (so idid firsty learned about that just mont and half ago). Deceptive AMD?

 

[Mussels]

if you find a link to a program capable of testing, i'll run it and screenshot it

 

[vagxtr]

if you find a link to a program capable of testing, i'll run it and screenshot it

They fu their official site since they Fuse it (earlier this year inm?) but tools is still there support->processor. And it's newer release so it should recognize newer PII virtualization also.

http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/dyn...cd2c08-1432-4756-aafa-4d9dc646342f&ItemID=177

btw. Some old am2 boards have fu BIOS like mine so wen i Disable Virtualization it's actually Ebnabled (and it cames Disabled by default so it should be understandable by itself )

 

[Mussels]