Archiving

Clear-cut victory of AMD, both processors perform on a par with the more expensive processor from Intel, while E5200 is noticeably slower.

Encoding

As this group of tests includes a medley of applications, it's very interesting to analyze detailed results. Athlon X2 7750 enjoys a performance gain versus the 6000 model primarily in video encoding. For example, it breaks away far from its competitors in Canopus ProCoder, it gets the test done a minute prior to Core 2 Duo E7200. However, it's not as fast in the other tests, and on the average it's a tad slower than Pentium E5200.

Games

The architecture of AMD K10 is very good for games. We already figured it out with Phenom II. But even stripped to two cores, the die of the first Phenom operating at a high frequency performs very good in this strategically important group of applications.

Non-professional photo processing

What concerns batch processing two gigabytes of photos by various utilities, the new processor is outperformed both by its predecessor and its rivals, which also had to be expected.

Total non-professional score

The non-professional rating of processors is practically identical to that of the professional layout.

Conclusions

As we could expect from a budget product for less than $100, Athlon X2 7750 turned out to be a practical solution. This processor is not much faster in general. But in a number of tests, including popular games and archivers, this processor looks much better than Pentium E5200. On the average, this processor is faster than its predecessor -- Athlon X2 6000+. It has a similar price tag, and it may become even cheaper in time, having pushed the older product out of the market, because it's easier and cheaper to manufacture even now.

But when you choose an inexpensive processor, it's wrong to limit yourself only to performance comparisons and prices, paying no attention to the platform as a whole. At least because a motherboard may be much more expensive than any processor taking part in this review, or it may be cheaper. It all depends on functionality you need. We must admit that AMD has advanced to the segment of motherboards with integrated graphics (a good choice for an inexpensive computer) much further than its competitor. For example, $50 may get you a good motherboard with the AMD 740G chipset, DVI, and a graphics core sufficient for Vista. The AMD 780G chipset is even more interesting for a home computer, which is used to play not very complex games and movies. Motherboards on this chipset are more expensive, but the choice of these models is very large. For example, Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H with lots of interfaces (we used it in our testbed) costs about $80. You can obtain similar performance of the integrated graphics on the Intel platform only with motherboards based on NVIDIA GeForce 9300 and perhaps Intel G45 (with great reserve). And prices even for the simplest mATX products here start from $100, such models being very rare. Besides, motherboards for Socket AM2+ are more promising from the point of view of further upgrades, because the line of Phenom II processors (compatible with this socket) will be actively supplemented with new models for the next year and a half, while LGA775 processors are not going to evolve.

Even though Athlon X2 7750 formally has a higher TDP, this processor is subjectively no hotter than the 89-W modifications of Athlon X2 6000+ (at least those CPUs, based on Windsor, that we have tested). The bundled cooler is efficient enough to quietly cool the processor under moderate load. But when the load grows, this cooler has to speed up to maximum, and its noise stands out from the background. So if you want a quiet computer, you will have to replace it. What concerns noise tuning and overclocking, all users have their own recipes here. For example, our Gigabyte motherboard with the processor operating at nominal frequencies and overclocked to 2.9GHz (with the nominal core voltage) kept the speed of Zalman CNPS9700 AM2 to the average (noiseless) level, and its temperature did not exceed 55°C. Hardcore overclocking tests were run on the Foxconn A79A-S motherboard with disabled smart fan control. Using multipliers (this processor has an unlocked multiplier, if you remember), we managed to raise the core frequency to 3.3GHz and CPU NB to 2.2GHz with ACC=+2% and voltage raised to 1.42V. It's a good result. For example, we could overclock Phenom 9850 only to 3.4GHz on this motherboard. However, this processor is not very interesting to hardcore overclockers, because overclocking potential of Pentium E5200 is higher. But keep in mind that you will have to spend much money on a proper motherboard to succeed in overclocking experiments. Is it expedient for a budget processor? With its small cache and just two cores, it won't catch up with top processors anyway. Perhaps it makes more sense to buy a more powerful processor, if you are really interested in much higher performance, which is unavailable to budget dual-core models? What concerns moderate overclocking, it comes without extra expenses.

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