Not too long ago, even the slightest refresh on AMD CPUs would get forums flooded with discussions from just about everyone. Thats why it feels a little weird to have AMD release stuff without much fanfare nowadays. In the last couple of months, we saw the introduction of Quad FX platform, AMD's switch to 65nm process for their CPUs and the introduction of X2-5200+, X2-5400+ and X2-5600+ CPUs.

Today, we're looking at the X2-5200+ CPU and technically, there isnt anything new about it. Its based on the older 90nm Windsor Core and is identical to the X2-5000 in terms of raw speed- 2.6GHz. The only difference is that AMD has increased the L2 cache from 512k per core to 1Mb per core. Packaged inside an AM2 socket, we ran our standard set of benchmarks so see how his $295/- CPU compares to the likes of other CPUs from Intel and AMD in similar price range.

Since there is'nt anything new to talk about, lets get straight to the number by introducing the testbed. All CPUs were benchmarked using an nVidia 7950GX2 graphics card and 2 x 1GB Corsair DDR2-1066MHz memory modules. We used the ASUS M2N32-SLI motherboard for the AMD CPUs while the Intel 975 motherboard was used for testing the Intel CPU.