Power Consumption

For all of the performance tests, we disable all power saving technology in order to give us a consistent set of results, and also best-case performance numbers - even though technologies such as Intel's SpeedStep might only take microseconds to kick in, that can make a difference in some tests.

For Core i7 CPUs we disable SpeedStep, C1E support, Intel C-State technology and Turbo Boost (despite this being a default performance enhancement technology, it can make benchmarks unreliable). We would normally disable HPET too, but the Asus P6T Deluxe doesn't offer this. For Socket AM3 CPUs, we disable Cool'n'Quiet, C1E support and HPET.

However, for the power consumption tests we re-enable everything but Intel's Turbo Boost in order to get a real-world power draw.

Idle Power Consumption

For this test, we leave the PC doing nothing but displaying the Windows Vista desktop (with Aero enabled) for a few minutes and record the wattage drawn from the wall via a power meter.


At idle, the Athlon II X2 draws slightly more power than the E5200, but significantly less than other AMD CPUs in this price range.

Full Load Power Consumption

For this test, we run the small FFT test of Prime95 (v25.9) across all available processing threads and record the wattage drawn from the wall via a power meter.


The E5200 is still the most power efficient chip at this price point, although the Athlon II isn't far behind, an impressive achievement given its higher frequency. Once again, the Athlon II is much more power efficient than the older AMD processors.

Platform Cost Comparison

With all the AM3s, AM2+s and LGA775s - which is the cheapest system to build?

Pairing the Athlon II X2 250 with a Socket AM3 motherboard we chose the MSI 770-C45. If you're a Custom PC reader you'll be able to catch the review in Issue 72 - the guys recommend it for its solid overclockability and cheap price at just £63. 4GB of 1,333MHz DDR3 is then just £54 as well, making that a total of around £180, plus or minus a few pennies.

The Socket AM2+ Biostar TX790GX board we use in our testing is a little more at £72, but this is offset by cheaper DDR2 at £39, giving a grand total of £174. Hardly any difference then really.

On the LGA775 front, a Pentium Dual Core E5200 costs just £54, along with a Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3L for £70 and the £39 DDR2 above gives a cheaper alternative at £163. So, a £17 saving for the Intel solution, which is not a huge difference, but still significant.

Final Thoughts

At their out of the box frequencies, the AMD Athlon II X2 250 is faster than the Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200, and often by quite a margin. The faster core clock and oodles more memory bandwidth play a key role in making this an excellent product for very little money.

However, to put this into perspective, all that AMD has managed to do is release a CPU that competes with an Intel CPU that's already been on the market for over a year, and is nearing the end of its shelf life. It just goes to show that Intel has still the upper hand and can drop the 45nm Wolfdale bomb at any time to spoil AMD's party.


In terms of the potential overclock, both CPUs are capable of running close to 4GHz - at which frequency the performance gap closes significantly. If you either get the E5200 or Athlon II X2 250 you're in for a good buy, but it depends on the "unknown factor" of the potential total frequency achievable. We never really thought the 7850 Black Edition CPU was that good - sure it was cheap, but it lacked overclocking headroom. The Athlon II 250 is £10 more expensive, but worth every penny thanks to its fantastic overclocking potential.

All in all, we think the Athlon II X2 250 is a very good and price-competitive CPU that is well worth considering if you're building a PC on a tight budget.

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Score Guide