Thread: AMD Athlon II X3 420e

The Athlon II X3 420e is a low-power processor from AMD, with three cores and a clock of 2.6 GHz, the CPU should provide enough raw performance for everyday tasks, but its special feature is the lowTDP, Maximum of 45 watts to approve the CPU itself.

However, the critical cooling requirements, which must be used for, thus, passive systems dissipate 45 watts much easier than is possible at 65 or 95 watts would do, but also for active systems such CPUs are interesting, because the cooling can operate very quietly. Even though this CPU is not designed for high performance, we have subjected our usual benchmark rate, how has this power-saving processor beats it, learn it on the following pages.

The Athlon II X3 420e for energy efficiency, which is associated with the TDP of 45 watts as mentioned, the CPU three cores with a clock of 2.6 Ghz, unlike the Phenom II processors are the Phenom II CPUs, no L3 cache, which stands out negatively, especially in games.



The overclocking this CPU does not happen from the point of maximum power, because these are Phenom II processors are not really suitable, since this is an energy-efficient CPU, we have not this time, the weight placed on the maximum CPU clock, but we were looking for a high cycle at a low supply voltage, it was found that increasing the voltage to 0.15 volts allows to 1.32 volts, a clock speed of 3.5 gigahertz.

Since it is not promptly potential to measure the power consumption of individual tools directly, we have considered the power consumption of the entire system, the efficiency of the power supply also plays a role.

Measured the power consumption at idle and below load of two, four and six cores, if any, an exclusion is the three-core CPUs from AMD, we are between the quad-cores. For processors with Hyper-Threading the applicable consociated logical cores are busy with, which intends that instead of two actual cores, four logical cores are busy.

The Athlon II X3 420e processor is an interesting, if a low power consumption or a limited cooling capacity is available, the alternative is Intel Core i3-530, which is usually a bit faster and has a similar power for the same price however, this only guarantees Intel a TDP of 73 watts - nearly twice as much.