Phenom II X6, 4GHz and Beyond in 64-bit OSes
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 27, 2010 12:17 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Phenom II X6
In most of my CPU reviews I tend to focus on light overclocking - the low hanging fruit if you will. Over the past few years the focus has shifted from absolute performance to performance per watt. An overclock stops being so interesting if you have to incur a huge power penalty to get there. That's the reason I've put more emphasis on stock voltage overclocks in the past few years.
The fact that I was able to get my Phenom II X6 1090T running at 3.8GHz with minimal effort was very impressive in my opinion. Remember that unlike Gulftown, AMD didn't get the benefit of a process shrink with the Phenom II X6. Six cores and nearly a billion transistors running at 3.8GHz with less than 10% more core voltage is awesome. But you all wanted more:
The most I could get out of the X6, reliably with air cooling, was 4GHz. It required more voltage than 3.8GHz but it's doable. The other important takeaway? It was fully stable in a 64-bit OS. In the past we've had issues with AMD's processors and ~4GHz overclocks in 64-bit Windows, but Thuban appears to have fixed that. I'm able to get into Windows at 4.1GHz but not what I would consider stable.
Note that at 4GHz the Phenom II X6 is faster than a Core i7 975 in our x264 encoding test.
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DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
And here I thought you only thread crapped on Dailytech.yanfei - Sunday, July 25, 2010 - link
======= http://www.fashionshoppong.us=======Hacp - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Thanks Anand, I appreciate your hard work. I was wondering if you would do a more thorough Ocing analysis later next month? Perhaps matching an overclocked i7920 and OC'd1055T with its northbridge OC'd as well? Thanks for your efforts, keep up the good work!Makaveli - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pheno...This review has Amd's cpu and a 930 clocked at 4Ghz at the very end, the numbers shouldn't be that big of a surprise.
Hacp - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Did they overclock the northbridge?DJMiggy - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Thanks for the info man!Soutbeard - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
This sounds like a tard question, but I looked for it in your review of the new Thuban cores: After OC-ing the 1090t, will the Turbo STILL kick in? Will it go from 4ghz to 4.5ghz if you're running a poorly threaded program?<< is new here :D
KaarlisK - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
It cannot do that.The CPU becomes unstable already at 4.1 GHz per the article, so...
Though tt would be interesting to know whether Turbo Core can be enabled/disabled for an overclocked Thuban.
Iridium130m - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
we need the AMD competition to keep Intel honest with their pricing, something I feel that Intel is back to taking advantage of again now that they hold the performance lead pretty firmly. As AMD ramps the GHz, Intel will be forced to either do the same to continue to enjoy their high margins, or they will have to reduce cost to compete. (or both).formulav8 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
Definitely a good thing that the 3.8ghz 64 bit barrier has been broken. So many chips out there that would get to 3.8ghz and hit a wall....Jason