Today we'll focus on a pair of AMD's Trinity-based budget processors. Our summer review proved the FM1-based Athlon II X4 processors to be quite good. Now we're going to see if their counterparts can keep up.

Testbeds

Though the lowest-end FM1-based Athlon is X2 340, it's unlikely to be often seen in stores or ready PCs. Manufacturers would prefer A4-5300, because, having the same capabilities, it would let them save on a discrete GPU.

The situation is different with the top Athlon X4 solutions: being cheaper than AMD's A8/A10 GPUs, they offer the same CPU part, which makes them the best FM2 processors for use with discrete graphics. Athlon X4 740 is just like an A8-5500 with the GPU disabled. Athlon X4 750K, in turn, is similar to a A10-5700 with the GPU disabled, but it also has unlocked multipliers and higher TDP.

We threw in Phenom II X4 955, which has recently became cheaper and now falls in our chosen price segment.

AMD FX-4100 is the cheapest AM3+ processor. Its microarchitecture is similar to that of the latest Athlons: while older, it boasts of higher nominal clock rate and more L3 cache. The competition is going to be interesting.

Intel has close to nothing to offer for less than a hundred bucks, except for some dual-thread processors. So we've added Pentium G870, while, for example, Ivy Bridge based G2120 is too expensive for our test needs.

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