We Overclock Phenom II to 4.9GHz

As you know, Tom's Hardware organized it's Overdrive overclocking finals in Paris over the weekend, bringing in teams from all over the world. The competitors benched and tweaked Intel's new Core i7 platform and achieved some significant scores and frequencies. But along side Core i7, wealso had the opportunity to overclock AMD"s new Phenom II. You read that right--the next AMD processor that's expected to launch in January '09.

4,957 MHz

Although AMD says nearly 6 GHz is achievable on the new Phenom II, we were not able to attain that frequency. However, with the helpof Jmax, we managed to reach 4,957 MHz. Remember however, that the 940 Phenom X4 BE II, is running at 3 GHz natively. We ran the processor on a Gigabyte motherboard based on AMD 790GX with DDR2 utilizing a cooling system with liquid nitrogen. At this point, based on what AMD tells us, the processor may have a higher potential, but it has an issue of locking at temperatures below -70 °C. To verify that the processor was stable at 4.9 GHz, we conducted some tests and it completed a SuperPi 1M run in 17,769 sec.

In practice, this new Phenom II in 45 nm seems very capable in terms of overclocking. Judging on what AMD says and how far we were able to push the processor, we're feeling fairly positive about its potential as a mainstream overclocking CPU. Air cooling should prove some interesting results. Look for some upcoming tests soon.

  • seboj
    Did anyone try just air OC first, or did they go straight at the LN2?
    Reply
  • blippo311
    I heard tha it was just under 4ghz with air.
    Reply
  • htoonthura
    Am i missing sth? almost 18S for crunching 1 M of super pi with a 5ghz cpu? i will pass that.
    Reply
  • Shadow703793
    ^ Yeah, I noticed that too. i7 I think gets like 7s or so.
    Reply
  • squatchman
    Well you two are just a couple of negative nancys!

    This could still be that Q6600 killer that AMD is hoping for!
    Reply
  • Stone Cold
    Did anyone notice the vcore. 1,8 is huge!!!
    But thumbs up for AMD, and those who OCd it
    Reply
  • hellwig
    squatchmanWell you two are just a couple of negative nancys! This could still be that Q6600 killer that AMD is hoping for!Yep. I think the fact that AMD fixed their OC problem is really the point here. Sure, Phenom II is still far behind the Core i7, but its a step in the proper direction. The wrong direction would be like what Intel did with the Pentium 4 back in the day.

    Now if only AMD could figure out how Intel took such an architectural jump over them and rebound. Does anyone have any specs, does this really even compete with the Q6600 as was joked about?
    Reply
  • alvine
    Correct me if im brong but it seems PhenomII @4.9ghz is two second slower in SuperPi...? I got 16sec on 1mb file :p I thought at those speeds PhenomII will be much faster lol

    Reply
  • megamanx00
    I don't think AMD is out to displace the i7 right now. They are aiming at the Core 2 series. If they can manage to place themselves between the Core 2s and i7s then they may be in good shape. We'll have to wait and see.
    Reply
  • smithereen
    SuperPi is not core optimized, and has favored Intel architecture since the Athlon 64 days.
    Reply