Labs

The Socket AM2 version of the Athlon 64 X2 is based on the Windsor core. It has the same amount of level 2 cache as the Socket 939 X2 chips, but supports the faster DDR2 memory as opposed to DDR.

For easy comparison, we tested the Socket AM2 Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and 4600+, which have the same 2.2GHz and 2.4GHz clock speeds as the Socket 939 versions. Despite the faster 800MHz DDR2 memory fitted to our test Socket AM2 motherboard, however, the AM2 X2s' performance was very similar to the 939 versions in our benchmarks.

Their scores of 202 and 220 in our video-encoding test were slightly faster, but the Socket AM2 processors were slightly slower in the image-editing test. We managed to overclock the X2 4200+ by 10 per cent, which produced nearly the same scores as the X2 4600+ in all our tests.

The Socket AM2 Athlon 64 4200+ is a fast processor which is easy to overclock, giving it equivalent performance to the more expensive X2 4600+. However, for a new PC you are marginally better off buying Intel's Core 2 Duo E6300, which has a similar price, slightly better performance and can be overclocked, too.