CPU-RightMark does not yet know the Athlon 64 FX-60.

Again, is it worth spending the money for the FX-60? Both AMD and Intel must contend with the fact that their premium processors offer little benefit compared to their mid-range offerings. Justifying the $1,000 expense becomes difficult.

An Athlon 64 X2 4800+, for example, is 30% cheaper. While it does not offer open multipliers for overclocking, the design is basically the same, which is why both the FX-60 and the X2 4800+ should be able to hit similar overclocking results (approx. 2.8 GHz with air cooling). The difference with the X2 is that you will have to increase the system speed.

Overclocking

We were able to overclock the Athlon 64 FX-60 to 2.8 GHz on air cooling.

Premium products, such as the Athlon 64 FX or the Intel Pentium Extreme Edition, should be made easy to overclock, given their pricing. Intel's Extreme Edition 955, thanks to the new 65 nm manufacturing process, can be overclocked from 3.43 GHz to a whopping 4.26 GHz, which represents a 25% increase. AMD, on the contrary, will continue to use a 90 nm process until the middle of this year, which is why we did not expect such an overclocking margin for the FX-60.

And indeed, we were able to hit 2.8 GHz 'only' when running on default voltage and using AMD's reference cooler design. This represents a 7% increase, while the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 achieved clock speeds that were 13.5% faster. However, investing some more money in a liquid cooling solution can allow for clock speeds up to 3.0 GHz.

Using AMD's boxed cooler we were able to overclock the Athlon 64 FX-60 from 2.6 to 2.8 GHz.