Since mid-2009, we've been hearing about AMD's plans to unveil several
Athlon parts with TDPs ranging from 18W to 25W. The 1.6GHz Athlon II
250u is one such CPU. It operates at 0.85 to 1.15V and it's TDP is just
25W, which is less than many mobile CPUs. Best of all, the 250u is not
based around the ancient K8 core, it's a 45nm Regor part.
Although AMD has listed the processors some time ago, it took quite
some time for them to appear in actual products. Asus has just
announced a 20-inch AIO powered by the 1.6GHz Athlon II 250u. It is
based around AMD's RX780 chipset and it packs Radeon HD 5470 graphics.
It an interesting machine, but the €599 price tag is a bit steep. You
can find it
here.
HP also has an AIO based on the 250u and it has been around for quite a
while, but we weren't paying attention. You can check it out
here. Walmart, of all people, is selling an eMachines desktop based on the same CPU,
here.
However, we'd like to see the 250u in a nettop, as it seems like a
rather nice choice and it should offer much more performance than
dual-core Atoms or Athlon Neo processors used in Dell's Zino HD.