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AMD AM2 Overclocking

Finally we have gotten our hands onto some of the slower clocked AMD socket AM2 processors and get to see what kind of headroom these CPUs have when it comes to overclocking.

While testing some of our first socket AM2 AMD processor-based motherboards, we have of course been doing some overclocking. Since we were originally supplied with high-end FX-62 and 5000+ AMD Athlon 64 FX and X2 parts, we did not have much processor headroom when it came to overclocking. Yesterday we were delivered two brand new AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processors.

These are 512KB L2 cache parts that are not of the “low wattage” variety (and we mention this as we certainly want to get our hands on those soon). These parts are rated at 89W Thermal Power while the low power parts are rated at 65W. Still as you will see below, there is plenty of overclocking performance to be had in these somewhat less expensive dual core processors.

As you can see above in our screenshots, we took the 4200+ processor’s stock frequency of 2.2GHz and overclocked it to a very fast 2.7GHz. Now this was not simply worthy of a single boot into the OS, but rather a solid system. Amazingly enough, this overclock was done using a 340MHz processor bus as well. The screenshot shown above is after 14 hours of testing while running two installations of Prime95. vCore was 1.66V and the CPU core temp is at 75C. An older 200W Koolance block and setup was used. Our Corsair DDR2 8500 rated memory is also humming along at an easy 1088MHz.

This was all done on an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard that sports an 8-phase power design and the NVIDIA 590 SLI chipset. We are finishing the review up now.

Discussion

Update

We have been criticized today for this article being very badly done.

We simply published it to be a fun look at OCing on one of the new AM2 CPUs. This same CPU did 2.66GHz OC without any voltage increases at all on a Foxconn nForce 590 SLI motherboard just by simply having the right hardware and setting the BIOS to "MAXOC."

I assure you that the while you see the water block attached with rubber bands, those were simply being used to hold the water block in place. The block had been more than sufficiently seated with a quality heat sink compound. I did check the footprint on tear down to find no anomalies or other reasons to think it was not in sufficient contact with the CPU. I actually picked up the entire motherboard with the video card installed by simply grabbing the sides of the water block.

The cooling system referred to as "old" was a 2 year old Koolance with 200 watt block attached. While it is "old" it is hardly antiquated and still performs great compared to many all-in-one systems on the market.

Thanks for listening. Sorry if we dissappointed you, we just thought it would be something fun to share with our readers.