X-Bit Labs is working on a series of articles that seek to contrast the performance of CPUs at a variety of different price points.  Currently they have two parts of the series published, the first of which deals with the Budget Market.  They have set the upper boundary at $100, which included 8 AMD CPUs and 7 Intel which shows you just how much choice you have even at the extreme low end. 

The second deals with Mainstream processors, which span the area between $100 and $200 and represents the range most consumers tend to target.  That adds to the choices so in this case 19 processors in total are contrasted and there is serious contrast as the difference in performance between AMD’s Athlon II X4 640 and the Intel Core i5 660 is significantly larger than the model numbers might imply.


“In the first part of our massive processor shoot-out we focused on products priced below $100. This is where AMD Semprion, AMD Athlon II X2, AMD Athlon II X3, AMD Phenom II X2, Intel Celeron and Intel Pentium come face to face in a cut-throat race.”

The second part of our extensive processor comparison is devoted to products that fall into the $100-$200 price interval. We compared the performance of nineteen CPU models from AMD Athlon II X4, AMD Phenom II X2, AMD Phenom II X4, AMD Phenom II X6, Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad, Intel Core i3 and Intel Core i5 processor families.”

Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:

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