AMD Athlon II X4 620: Quad Core For The Masses At $100

Benchmark Results: Applications

3ds Max rendering runs best on fast quad-core processors, but the Propus still does OK here.

Checking for viruses using AVG Anti-Virus is a simple story: quad-cores win, dual-cores lose.

PDF document creation using Microsoft PowerPoint is memory-sensitive, and it also benefits from fast clock speeds. The Core 2 architecture delivers more performance per clock.

Adobe’s Photoshop is probably the most popular image editing software, hence we’ve been using it as a benchmarking tool. Version CS4 was heavily optimized for multi-core processors, but it seems to run much better on Intel hardware. You need AMD’s top model to get really fast performance in Photoshop. AMD’s dual-core Phenom II falls behind here. The new Athlon II X4 620 makes a fair showing and matches Intel’s Core 2 Duo top model.

WinRAR is very memory-sensitive and thread-optimized, and it can take advantage of multiple processing cores. The missing L3 cache clearly seems to be an issue for file compression with WinRAR. All other processors are faster due to their better cache architecture or higher clock speeds.

WinZip isn’t optimized for multi-core, which is why CPUs with the highest clock speed and the best performance per clock win. The new AMD loses one minute to its direct Intel competitor, the Core 2 Quad Q8200.

Check these great Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 results. The Athlon II X4 even matches the performance of Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q9550, which runs at a faster clock speed. Obviously, not all benchmarks benefit from large cache architectures.

The chess game Fritz 11 wants as many cores as possible, and it also scales well with clock speed. As a result, the new AMD processor shows nice performance, but it can’t beat Intel’s Core 2 Quad family.