"In June of this year, AMD launched it's budget/mainstream line of processors named Athlon II. Today we checkout the top-end X2 250 model." -by Mul.

http://www.overclock3d.net/gfx/artic...141826988s.jpg

AMD Athlon II X2 250 Processor Review

Much cheaper than the 8400 but still just pipped to the post in benches. Makes me wonder if its FSB related though. Nice clock for a cheap chip though

Good review comparison.

I think this Athlon is very good value for the weight it's punching at.

Nice review. Great value for money.

Its a CPU like this that I think I'll put in that new Linux box for the parents.

You are indeed onto something there. While higher HTT Base Clocks or even the HTT Link Speed has little bearing on performance unless ran well under 1.0GHz, high Northbridge Frequencies, such as an increase from 2.0GHz to 2.60GHz makes a notable difference. Perhaps some official testing with regards to Northbridge Frequency would be an interesting read?

For the price of a pentium 5200, I would be tempted to use one of these, especially if I was building a budget machine for a (non-overclocking) relative. It looks like a pretty good punch for its price, even if it is beaten by the 8400.

Got a mail-shot from Aria today for E5200 about £40 including vat.

Hmmm...I might still be tempted by the athlon if I were to put it in someone's pc and forget about it, I can't see trying to explain to a relative how to alter the bios of an unfamiliar machine over the phone being much fun.

Still a good price there for the 5200

It's very much not like the old days with pc kit.

Previously u would argue with urself if to get a new generation or previous generation.

A 4g (very cheap), 775 mobo (top end blood £80 somewhere), E5200 (very cheap). Possibly £165 for the lot, cheaper 775 mobos are out there too.

.. and spend all ur cash on the gpu.

That rig will flatten any game.

Can it oc ? Of-friggin-course it can.

I received this as well. Stonking price for a monster overclocker though a shame that after postage isn't priced too far from the likes of other sites that offer free postage.

£220 for the top single gpu.

£40 for a hdd

£20 for an optical

£50 for a case.

£75 for a psu.

£30 cooler.

£600 for a rig that'll play anything as-good as ur m8s' i7.

U could skimp £100 here and there on bits, being picky.

Hehe modern tech is a joke.

what was your NB voltage set at when you pushed the NB to 2600? I have the asus m4a77td with the same chipset but unable to get it stable at 3.9GHZ using the same settings.

Hi

The Northbridge frequency of 2600MHz was attained at default voltages. Do bear in mind that your mileage may vary with any overclock and sometimes, the limits of the integrated memory controller can be as low as 2200-2400MHz.

Hope that helps.

I've been screwing with my board for 2 days straight trying different settings, I was just fine at 3750 using 250x15 with a 1.45 vcore 2000mhz HT and 2500MHZ CPU/NB and I was able to keep my ram at 1666 with 1.8v instead of lowering it to 1333 and the rest of the voltages were set to auto then ran it through 12 hours of prime blend and 12 hours of occt which both passed then the other day while playing a game it froze so I rechecked with prime95 and it got about 5 min into the test and failed. I have no probs running the large or small fft tests its just anything that uses lots of ram. I even backed the timings off as far as 9-9-9-26 and ran memtest overnight with no errors. you think raising the HT to 2200 might help? I would prefer to keep my ram just slightly overclocked if possible. I have to get stable at 250x15 before I can shoot for 260x15 but I'm just lost as to why it all of a sudden it went from good enough to crap lol

Thanks for the review. I've been squirreling away money when I can to replace this aging rig I have now, and was not that pleased with the info I got in my first few searches. Well, a quick change to the search string and OC3D was there. LOL! I picked up the Athlon 2 250 for about $50 and an Asus M4N68t-M for about the same. Next is ram, then the vid card. And yes I"m still drooling over SSDs. But, I do want to thank you for letting me know what I'll be running and its capabilities. Excellently written and researched, IMHO.

I have one of those, excellent for OC. I got mine quite high and stable.