Legit Reviews

What is the difference between the Phenom II and the Athlon II ?

It looks like the Athlon is less expensive. I'm looking for a simple AMD Dual core, I dont need to overclock it etc.

the ONLY difference between an Athlon II and Phenom II at the same speed is L3 cache, where Deneb-based Phenom II's have 6MB L3 cache and Athlon II's have no L3 cache.

there are very few scenarios where the L3 cache would be even slightly noticeable. even in synthetic benchmarks you do not see a difference

Thanks, good to know.

skier wrote:the ONLY difference between an Athlon II and Phenom II at the same speed is L3 cache, where Deneb-based Phenom II's have 6MB L3 cache and Athlon II's have no L3 cache.

there are very few scenarios where the L3 cache would be even slightly noticeable. even in synthetic benchmarks you do not see a difference

Just curious, if that's the case, why do they put L3 cache on the CPU at all?

hark wrote:

skier wrote:the ONLY difference between an Athlon II and Phenom II at the same speed is L3 cache, where Deneb-based Phenom II's have 6MB L3 cache and Athlon II's have no L3 cache.

there are very few scenarios where the L3 cache would be even slightly noticeable. even in synthetic benchmarks you do not see a difference

Just curious, if that's the case, why do they put L3 cache on the CPU at all?

it does have its uses, primarily for workstations like for CAD or heavy photo/video editing and compressions