V. Overclocking and Closing Thoughts

The performance from this processor is just out of this world. Truly, when Chipzilla announced how good their processors are, they are not making baseless claims. The AMDroids and other detractors can't just believe it at first, but now, they are tight-lipped and focusing on other rants, such as how good the A* server processors are. They are even proclaiming that A* just lowers the price making A* X2 more affordable. Bah, they really lack the brain power, since during Athlon* era, they are proclaiming how Chipzilla are just selling the "name" and that the "small" increase in performance isn't enough to justify the price difference. But surely, AMDroids* just shows their true colors and jumps on the Opty and X2 bandwagon even if the price is screaming "I'm milking you brainless AMDroid fans". So long suckers, you just suck big time.

Note that I will not be posting score of overclocked system. This will ne the trend starting from this review. Overclocked results tend to skew many noobs outlook on how the processor performs resulting to unreasonable expectations. This is just so sad, since this processor doesn't even need to be overclocked to perform but many unreasonable end users are trying to make things look bad. For example, saying how this exact stepping of processor has been cherry picked. It does not need to be cherry picked, even the mainstream version is enough to beat an overclocked top of the A* processor. Clock for clock, the new breed of processor stomps the competition. Performance per watts, the competition will roll over and choke to death.

Having said that, overclocking the CPU is a joy. Like I said earlier, the processor can have its multiplier adjusted upwards. A simple tweak of the multiplier and I never have to go about checking any other settings on my motherboard. With FSB settings, voltage of NB and RAM as well as playing with ratio and RAM timing is often necessary. But with multiplier overclocking, it is very easy to rule out a lot of variables, almost completely eliminating many if not all of the variables in overclocking wall. For example, FSB wall is not an issue, RAM frequency is not a problem, RAM timing isn't even a concern, ratio is a thing of the past, RAM voltage is never a problem, NB voltage is nothing, and it's all about CPU, cooling, and vCore. The highest stable overclock I achieve with this is changing the multiplier to 14, giving me a healthy 3.7GHz. If you have overclocked a Banias/Dothan/Yonah, then you will know that this overclock value is beyond the word amazing. Banias/Dothan are lucky to pass 2.6GHz on air cooling on stock voltage. This processor breezed pass thru 3.0GHz, and lowering the multiplier to 7 will need a motherboard capable of 500+ FSB and this is certainly a dream for now, since such high FSB may need modification and better cooling. In closing, this processor rocks!