Very nice review - clear, concise and accurate.
I really like this CPU range, including the power draw and things like decent overclocking headroom and unlocking extra core's (as long as you have a 710 Southbridge or better). A lot of people are comparing it to Core i5, which isn't a bad thing at all considering how well it performs and how much it costs. It's clearly able to keep up with and in some cases, exceed the performance of Core 2.
These Athlon II x 4 parts cater for the majority of users, who don't need i5 or i7..and they do it brilliantly in my opinion. If you take a $100 CPU the AMD chips win hands down, and if you look at the platform solution, AMD walks away with a flawless victory: compatibility, longevity, ease of installation, performance (HD media right off the chipset) and cost..just can't touch it.
Parts like this bring the fun back into computing, and for the masses instead of the few people who have the money and the desire to go out and blow their money on something they don't even need most of the time. All this from a CPU that is, effectively, a generation behind Intel's flagship products. David sleighs Golliath, so to speak, by working smarter, not faster. Whether you love these parts or hate them..you as a consumer wins.
Thank you.