Looking at the graph above one could infer that Microsoft Excel 2007 is not quad-core optimized, as the Athlon II X4 620 was clearly inferior than the Phenom II X2 550 in this test. That said, the dual-core 550 is clocked much higher than the Athlon II X4 620, which gave it a natural advantage here. The Athlon II X4 620 was still easily able to defeat the Core 2 processors.
Using WinRAR we simulate our own tests by compressing a single 4.5GB file, while in a separate test we use the Windows 7 installer, which contains over 800 files and totals 3GB in size. Here the Athlon II X4 620 was slower than the Core 2 Quad Q6600, if only by a small margin.
Finally, we measure the time it takes each processor to apply two filters in Adobe Photoshop CS4. The Athlon II X4 620 was not particularly impressive in this test, as it was one of the slowest processors right next to the Core 2 Quad Q6600. Both were slower than the E7400 and Phenom II parts.
