Phenom II X2 500 Black Edition vs Athlon II x250

For simple office apps the Athlon 2 should be just fine.

i agree.

i have the phenom 550, and always recomend it first to anyone who will be gaming. its simply leagues ahead in that respect. but if you aren't gaming, the athlon will do just as well but for a lower cost.

Do you think it's worth it to try to unlock the cores on the Phenom II?

Also, if I'm not playing any games, do you think it's worth it to upgrade to the AMD Athlon II X4 620 Propus 2.6GHz?

the 920 is a brilliant chip for non-gaming systems. id say upgrade to it, if you have the cash. (again though, if you have ANY gaming planned, id highly reocmend the phenom)

unlocking is a great idea! i did it!

ha, i have my phenom II 550x2 BE running as a B50x4 @3.4ghz. the performance gains are excellent.

but of course, its nerver guaranteed as you need a compatible mobo/bios and a good chip.

sorry, that should have been the *620. 620 is brilliant.

So if I don't have any gaming planned, you think the Athlon II 250 is better than the Phenom II 550?

Athlon II 250 is fine for office use. What's the use of the extra horse power of the 550 when you are not gonna use it!

Office only? Go for the Athlon II 620. Why settle for two cores when you can have four? It's a much better long-term investment, especially as applications become more multi-threaded.

Besides, unlocking cores is a gamble and is not guaranteed to work.

I agree with Herr

Me too, although unlocking worked well for me.

athlon II 240e, 45w 2.8ghz, great for business use dunno if its out yet, but the original is xlent also

If you are going to spend 99.99$$ on a CPU get the x4 620 .... This way you won't have to upgrade sooner than later regardless of what you will use the CPU for. The 620 is the CPU to beat at that pricepoint.....

+1 Herr

It just seems like the x4 620 is slow compared to the Phenom II in terms of clock speed. It's 2.6ghz compared to 3.1 on the Phenom.

Yea but all you need to do is go into the bios and raise the FSB/voltage for some extra speed....

620 @ 3.250Ghz :

This is only a problem in single-threaded apps that thrive on clock speed. For multitasking, four cores win every time. In Tom's review of the 620 they could even game while running a virus scan in the background, with almost no performance hit. Try doing that on a dual-core?

Ah! I will buy one.