AnandTech, Benchmarkreviews, HotHardware, Neoseeker, OCC, PC Perspective and TechSpot have published their reviews of the AMD Phenom II X2 550 and Athlon II X2 250 Processors. The new Athlon II is actually AMD’s smallest dual core processor ever, even smaller than the original Athlon 64 X2.  It's also AMD's first 45nm dual-core processor.  As an AM3 chip it will work in both AM3 and AM2+ motherboards, just like the Phenom II.

All in all, the new round of dual core processors from AMD proved themselves to be worthy contenders. In the scientific benchmarks they kept up with and passed the Intel E7200, and blew away the older generation of AMD dual core processors. With the ability to run DDR3, you have increased system bandwidth over other AMD dual cores running DDR2. Also since these are AM3 processors, you can run them in both DDR2 and DDR3-based motherboards for flexibility and an easy upgrade path. Factor in the costs of each one, and you have a great basis for a system. At launch, the AMD Athlon II X2 250 is supposed to drop at $87, and the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition will run you $102. Compare that to the $150+ that the E7200 runs currently on pricebrabber.com - and $170 for the E8400 - and you see that for the price, the new DDR3-based AMD dual core processors are great contenders. A big thing I want to make sure gets mentioned is during testing, even when overclocked, the Phenom II X2 never rose above 35 degrees Celsius, and the Athlon II X2 stayed below 32 C, even on a stock AMD cooler.

When it came to overclocking, the Phenom II X2 550 BE was easier to push to higher numbers with its unlocked multiplier, reaching a 785MHz overclock - which is almost a 24% increase. The Athlon II X2 250 did not fair too poorly either, considering it is not a Black Edition and has the multiplier locked at a maximum x15. By pushing the voltage up to 1.45v, I was able to raise the bus speed of the Athlon II to 236MHz, for an overclock of 540MHz - or about an 18% overclock. When compared to the previous dual cores, the Athlon X2 7750 and Athlon X2 7850, these new DDR3-based dual cores are much stronger. However, do not think they are runners for the triple or quad core processors, because they do not come even close. If you are looking for great performing processors at an even greater price, you would be a fool not to consider the Phenom II X2 550 BE or the Athlon II X2 250. Their price to performance ratio is unmatched, and will not leave you hanging.
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The $102 Phenom II X2 550 also offers a lot of value for the money. It again is faster than the competition at its price point, and it performs well against the E8400 and E8500 parts which are almost double its price.  hen combined with a motherboard like the Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P it becomes a fun and exciting part to work and play with. It can overclock easily, and the performance it brings is quite competitive with what else is on the market.Brisbane had a good run, but it is finally time for the old girl to retire.  In its place are the shiny, new Athlon II and Phenom II parts, and they certainly will not disappoint with what they have to deliver.  These make excellent gaming processors, and they have enough power to handle applications like transcoding/encoding/ripping, which are becoming everyday activities for hundreds of thousands of users.

The one sad thing for AMD in this release, and with me using the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500, is that they still haven’t caught up with Intel in the performance per MHz metric. This is further exacerbated by the performance boost that the i7 architecture has received over the Core 2 series. In the next several months we will see the mainstream desktop i7 derivatives hit the market, but luckily for AMD the lowest processor in this group will be around $189. By that time hopefully we will see another speed grade of the Phenom II X2 and Athlon II X2, and hopefully with some more overclocking headroom for both.