With each AMD processor that enters our test facility I always get a bit of a smile on my face. There's always something positive going on with their products lately, typically it's all about pricing. Heck, it's how AMD originally started and it's where the true force of the company is to be found, value products with a bit of a bite...

The Athlon II X4 620 processor as tested today makes a lot of sense really. This will be the first quad-core processor under that important 100 USD threshold, and again it is AMD trumping Intel by doing so.

So at 25 USD a core you can't complain really. I was surprised how much performance this processor series offers, I mean really... cutting away all L3 cache inside the processor is like castrating your dog and tell it to well... can I use the word fornicate here?

As the results show, the performance however definitely remains good enough for pretty much any application. Standard desktop workload, Photoshop, even video editing thanks to the four cores is really do-able.

You may compare it if you will, with Q6600 performance from Intel, and at 100 USD that's not a bad position to be in. Is it all good then? Ehm no, there will be applications being hindered by the lack of the L3 cache and we also noticed our games starting to be hindered by the CPU, which definitely was not something I expected. In the grand scheme of things though the processor offers more than enough horsepower for your games, the framerate will however be a little less with the faster single GPU based graphics cards.

For gamers I still like to recommend Phenom II, and if you need to stay within a lower budget we very much recommend the Phenom II X3 720BE processor as it overclocks really easily, bringing more performance to the table for not a lot of money.

Multimedia wise, for things like transcoding or video acceleration, well that's where the processor is golden really. I mean, don't expect it to be a transcoding wonder, no, to the contrary it's decent at best... but the fact that you can utilize four cores for it definitely helps out heaps over a dual-core processor in comparison to its price.

Also, HTPCs; take for example your average HTPC where you accelerate and enhance your High-Definition content with an application like Core AVC or the latest FFDShow, it will utilize all cores for that processes and as such you'll have butter smooth playback while your processor can easily deal with it.

Yes, we are slowly moving into an era where we move away from dual-core to quad-core and not everybody can or feels the need to spend 200 USD on a processor. It's exactly for such people where the Athlon II X4 series processor will match really well as it saves money, plain and simple. Let's compile us a system shall we?

• 99 USD - Athlon II X4 620
• 89 USD - AMD 785 Motherboard with native graphics DVI/HDMI
• 40 USD - Memory DDR2 1066 MHz
• 50 USD - 500 GB HDD
• 50 USD - 500W PSU
• 60 USD - Chassis

So as your can see for 388 USD we've just built a very mainstream computer, which if I wanted to... could have been even cheaper (or more expensive).

The bottom line is that the AMD product range oozes with value relative to performance and this Athlon II X4 series is living and breathing proof of that. Sure this will not be the fastest quad-core processor series on the block, it will however be more than sufficient and offers true value for money. Twenty-five USD per core... just think about it, it makes a whole lot of sense to us. Yeah, props to Propus.

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