Athlon X2 270 or Celeron G550

Zardoz

Looking at upgrading an old pc and need to get a budget cpu and motherboard.
I have narrowed it down to either the Athlon X2 270 or Celeron G550.

Initially I was going to go the Intel route but its hard to get a compatible motherboard with a serial port ,or an ide connector or even 2 or more pci slots.
The Amd motherboards seem more suitable for using older components.

Would there be much performance difference between the 2 cpu's ?

Monotype

Here's a comparison of the Athlon II X2 265 and the Pentium G620.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/190?vs=406

The 265 is just 0.1GHz slower than the 270 and the G620 is much the same as the celeron G550 apart from better graphics. I'd say that the G620 has a slight advantage in the results above, but when you add on that additional 0.1GHz, you'd nearly be on par.

Now, if it's about squeezing as much as you can out of one of them, I'd go with the athlon - reason being that it can be overclocked. Starting at 3.4GHz, you have a bit of room - most CPUs in this line tend to start reaching their limits around the 3.8GHz mark, but you have a fairly high multiplier and if you're lucky, you might even make it to 3.9 or 4GHz.

On the other hand, the Intel CPU is better value in the long term with it's lower power consumption - this would definitely be important if you plan to keep it on a lot.

Finally, I would keep in mind the upgrade paths. AM3+ boards have probably got one more generation of CPUs for them, while Intel is at the end of its line now. However, Intel has better CPUs available for it right now, so the future possibilities are slightly less certain AMD - it's quite likely that AMD's next generation will keep up to this generation, so you'll have much the same result.

I would consider what's available for the motherboards - try to get a good quality motherboard that will last you a while. Bear in mind that it's not really the speed of the CPU that you'll have impacting you in an office PC nowadays, it's an old hard drive that'll really drag you back.

Zardoz

Monotype wrote: »

Here's a comparison of the Athlon II X2 265 and the Pentium G620.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/190?vs=406

The 265 is just 0.1GHz slower than the 270 and the G620 is much the same as the celeron G550 apart from better graphics. I'd say that the G620 has a slight advantage in the results above, but when you add on that additional 0.1GHz, you'd nearly be on par.

Now, if it's about squeezing as much as you can out of one of them, I'd go with the athlon - reason being that it can be overclocked. Starting at 3.4GHz, you have a bit of room - most CPUs in this line tend to start reaching their limits around the 3.8GHz mark, but you have a fairly high multiplier and if you're lucky, you might even make it to 3.9 or 4GHz.

On the other hand, the Intel CPU is better value in the long term with it's lower power consumption - this would definitely be important if you plan to keep it on a lot.

Finally, I would keep in mind the upgrade paths. AM3+ boards have probably got one more generation of CPUs for them, while Intel is at the end of its line now. However, Intel has better CPUs available for it right now, so the future possibilities are slightly less certain AMD - it's quite likely that AMD's next generation will keep up to this generation, so you'll have much the same result.

I would consider what's available for the motherboards - try to get a good quality motherboard that will last you a while. Bear in mind that it's not really the speed of the CPU that you'll have impacting you in an office PC nowadays, it's an old hard drive that'll really drag you back.

Thanks Monotype,for a very informative and extensive reply .

I wasnt aware that the 1155 socket was at the end of line so upgrade options are not applicable there,thats disappointing.
I dont expect to upgrade that pc for at least 3 years ,thats usually the cycle I follow,its a second pc .

I have a Pentium G630 in my main pc,I upgraded that a few months back,its a very good cpu .

I will go with the Athlon for this pc ,the motherboard options are better ,the Intel motherboards are fairly basic .
I can overclock the 270 if required .
The hard drives in the machine are actually fairly new,a 1TB Sata HDD and a new 2TB Sata I just bought so should be fast.
I have a 4650 as a graphics card so it should be a decent pc.
Thanks