AMD Phenom II X2 550 and Athlon II X2 250 Processors Review

Lately, the processor market has been the biggest we have ever seen. The competing manufacturers have new CPUs releasing all of the time, aimed at everyone from the hardcore speed enthusiast to the budget minded user. Since not everyone has the cash to drop on the high-end processors, let alone the hardware to support them, there's still a huge market for strong dual core processors. To compete in this market, AMD has used the AMD Athlon

X2 line for some time; however, they now bring new secret weapons to the table, aimed and taking charge. There are two new dual core processors that are moving in for the kill, both designed with new technology for today's PC enthusiast.

First, based off of the ever popular Phenom II series, we now get a chance to see the new dual core, dubbed the AMD Phenom II X2. The AMD Phenom II X2 series is a fast dual core solution for those who want speed and dependability without having to break the bank to get it. The specific model we are going to be looking at is the Phenom II X2 550 BE. This model is clocked at 3.1GHz (200x15.5), and can handle a maximum core voltage of 1.425v for pure speed. The second processor is the AMD Athlon II X2 250, which is a 45nm processor with a few secrets of its own. On the Athlon II, there is no L3 cache as in the Phenom II dual core; however, the L2 cache on the Athlon II X2 250 is doubled for a total of 1MB L2 per core, a grand total L2 cache of 2MB. This CPU is clocked at 3.0GHz (200x15), and can handle a maximum 1.425v as well, with a TDP ceiling of 65 watts.

The kicker about these processors, you ask? What makes them so different than other AMD dual cores? Well, how many of the current AMD dual core processors can run DDR3? Yes, I said DDR3 - finally, for the AMD dual core sector. The Phenom II X2 550 and the Athlon II X2 250 both support AM2+ and AM3 boards for DDR2 and DDR3 memory. No longer are you stuck using the slower DDR2 standard for your computers that have dual core processors. Do I have you salivating yet? I know I am, so how about we take a closer look at the CPUs and see how well they run with this new memory spec.

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