Last week's launch of the Phenom II X4 955 was a big win with the enthusiast crowd. This week, however, it looks like AMD has shifted focused to the mainstream market. Not only is the highly anticipated Radeon HD 4770 launching today, but also a new dual core Black Edition processor: the Athlon X2 7850 AD785ZWCGHBOX. Based on the updated K10 Kuma architecture, the 2.8GHz X2 7850 is poised to take over as AMD's flagship dual core processor. At only $69 USD, it's also shaping up to be quite a bargain. Benchmark Reviews has thoroughly tested this new processor, and today we bring you our results.
At 2.8GHz, the Athlon X2 7850 BE inches ahead of the 2.7 GHz Athlon X2 7750 launched in December of last year. Beyond the 100 MHz bump in clock speed, however, these chips are essentially the same. That's not necessary a bad thing, though. Clock-for-clock, the new Kuma based dual cores from AMD are much faster than the outgoing Brisbane core, thanks in part to the improved architecture, level 3 cache, and the addition of new instruction sets.
With a price tag of only $69, the Athlon X2 7850 will compete directly with Intel's Pentium Dual Core line-up. However, its excellent price/performance ratio could pose a threat to the Core 2 Duo family as well. That said, today's review will focus not only on performance, but also on value. Even in good economic times this is a top concern of most consumers, and in today's market it's even more important, particularly when you consider the steep prices of high-end quad core systems.
About Advanced Micro Devices, Inc (AMD)
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home, and play.
Over the course of AMD's three decades in business, silicon and software have become the steel and plastic of the worldwide digital economy. Technology companies have become global pacesetters, making technical advances at a prodigious rate - always driving the industry to deliver more and more, faster and faster.
However, "technology for technology's sake" is not the way we do business at AMD. Our history is marked by a commitment to innovation that's truly useful for customers - putting the real needs of people ahead of technical one-upmanship. AMD founder Jerry Sanders has always maintained that "customers should come first, at every stage of a company's activities."
We believe our company history bears that out.
Post a Comment