AMD Phenom II X2 555 and Athlon II X4 635 Performance

Name: AMD Phenom II X2 555 and Athlon II X4 635 Performance - Page 7
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, January 25, 2010, 12:01 AM EDT

Performance Summary: The new Athlon II X4 635 and Phenom II X2 555 performed well, especially considering their affordable price points. In general, both of the processors were outpaced by Intel's latest dual-core Core i5 661, but please keep in mind AMD's new offerings are significantly less expensive. In single-threaded tasks, the higher frequency of the Phenom II X2 555 gives it an edge over the Athlon II X4 635, but the Athlon II X4 635 additional two execution cores help it out significantly in multi-threaded workloads, where it comes out on top.

Today's launch by AMD doesn't break any major new ground, but the products do represent better values than the previous offerings they're replacing at the top of their respective product line-ups, which is a good thing for consumers.

AMD Athlon II and Phenom II Processors

The $119 Athlon II X4 635 becomes the fastest quad-core in the Athlon II line-up, and it does so at a price that's actually few dollars lower than the Athlon II X4 630, which was $122 at launch. We should also note that the release of the X4 635 pushes the X4 630 down to the $99 price point, making it one heck of a value.

As we've mentioned, the Phenom II X2 555 has the distinction of being the fastest dual-core processor to ever come out of AMD. And it too is quite affordable, thanks to a sub-$100 price point. The Phenom II X2 555 also turned out to be power friendly, putting up some of the lower power consumption numbers we have seen to date. In light of today's fast quad-core processors, the Phenom II X2 555 isn't going to break any benchmark records, but at under a 100 bucks it's certainly a powerful chip worth considering if you're looking to build a speedy system on shoestring budget.

Decent Performance
Low Power
Affordable Prices

Couldn't Catch Intel's CPUs in most tests

Tags: AMD, CPU, processor, Phenom, Athlon, AM3, performance

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com