AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition & others

[J_4mes]

I have been doing alot of researching on a few processors that are in my budget range and I am going to go with the one listed in the title (AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition for you lazy people!) but overclocking seems a rather redundant feature on these processors from what I have seen as they pretty much produce the same results regardless of overclock.

Now when I talk about results I mean frame rate. I am a gamer and from what I have seen the overclock of this range of processor is a futile effort, it boosts a score in vantage and all those benchmark programs but in the world of current gaming where everything is far from optimized let alone used there is no real change.

So my point of posting was to get some feedback on what I have just said, if this is a generally accepted view or if this community has experienced differently or read from sources saying it does improve gaming frame rates.

 

[fencer55]

I have a Phenom II X4 940 BE 3.0ghz and I overclock it to 3.5ghz and it runs stable. I saw a nice increase in frame rates on the MMORPG Fallen Earth. I play a lot of Steam games that are maxed at 60fps, like Left 4 Dead II and Borderlands, and they never drop below 60fps when overclocked, but they do occasionally drop down to the mid 50's when not overclocked. There is no reason not to overclock a Black Edition processor unless you don't have an aftermarket cooler for it. If nothing else, you'll get bragging rights if you do oc it, lol!

 

[J_4mes]

I am getting the Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition, with the intention to run it at stock with the stock heat sink for a few weeks before overclocking and updating the heat-sink if necessary.

I find it difficult to quantify the usefulness of the multi-core processors as it changes from game to game and program to program, so if anyone else has any more to add id be very interested to read it