I've had my Athlon LE-1620 processor for over a month now, and I kept saying I was going to post a review of it with a bunch of benchmarks, etc. But I've been busy with school and work (I got a job after debating whether or not I should work this semester; boo)
The Athlon LE-1620 (I paid $46 for it, retail) is a fine single core processor. It comes with a whopping 1mb of L2 cache, which is quite impressive considering it's a) a single core chip, and b) it's an entry level chip.
I don't do a lot of hard core computing, but this chip really impressed me. It's a 90nm chip, and only uses 45 watts, and even though I'm using some generic heatsink compound (I mean, simple white silicon paste I bought a huge tube of for three dollars at Radio Shack) this thing runs at 32 degrees centigrade in a 22 degree room. In other words; it runs pretty darn cool (I'm sure if I used Artic Silver, and a better heatsink, this thing would run near room temperature).
With Cool 'n Quiet on, this thing seems to run constantly @ 1.0 ghz. Not really a problem, since 95% of the time I am just using FireFox, and Notepad. I easily overclocked this thing from 2.4ghz to 2.97 ghz by adjusting the voltage to 1.3v (I couldn't hit 3.0 ghz, mostly because of my use of an improper heatsink compound [although the temperature remained in the mid to high 30s]. I don't currently have the thing overclocked (2.4 ghz is fine for me, and besides I lose the Cool & Quiet function (although my motherboard doesn't turn the fan down at all, anyways).
At stock, it takes the processor 39 seconds to do SuperPI to 1 million digits. When overclocked, it takes the process down to 30 seconds. I haven't screwed around with GeekBench much, so the only score I have for you is one from Linux (scoring an impressive 2578).
You can now find dual core Athlons for $40. The big thing to consider the LE-1640 is the fact that it has 1mb of L2 cache for one core; the dual core chips do have two cores, but only 512k of L2 cache for each. Since I do not use a lot of applications simultaneously, I prefer having the larger L2 cache for the one core, than having dual cores.
If you are building a system and want the best bang for your buck, I would recommend skipping this single core Athlon, and purchasing a cheap Athlon X2. If you are still interested in purchasing an Athlon LE, make sure you purchase one with the 1mb L2 cache; apparently AMD is now selling single core Athlons under the LE title based on the 65nm design, and only having 512K of L2 cache.
