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Overclocking - AMD OverDrive Not Yet Mature

12:41 PM - February 5, 2008 by The Editors of Tom's Hardware
Source: Tom's Hardware US – Keywords: amd, phenom, 9600, black, edition
Topics: AMD/ATI, Build Your Own, Business, Overclocking

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Table of Contents:
7 – Overclocking - AMD OverDrive N...
  1. 1 – AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition
  2. 2 – B2 Stepping - TLB Bug Is Still Around
  3. 3 – B2 Stepping - TLB Bug Is Still Around, Continued
  4. 4 – Phenom 9600 Black Edition
  5. 5 – Overclocking - AMD's OverDrive Badly Supported
  6. 6 – Overclocking - Newer Versions From Other Sources?
  7. 7 – Overclocking - AMD OverDrive Not Yet Mature
  8. 8 – Overclocking - AMD OverDrive Not Yet Mature, Continued
  9. 9 – Overlocking By 13.04% - 2.60 GHz
  10. 10 – Overclocking - Hitting The Limit At 2.70 GHz
  11. 11 – Overclocking - Hitting The Limit At 2.70 GHz, Continued
  12. 12 – Only 12.5% More Performance
  13. 13 – Slower Than Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600
  14. 14 – Power Consumption - 21 Watts When Idle
  15. 15 – Power Consumption - 150 Watts When Overclocked
  16. 16 – Test Setup
  17. 17 – Software Configuration
  18. 18 – 3D Games - UT2004, Prey
  19. 19 – 3D Games - Quake 4, Warhammer
  20. 20 – 3D Games -Supreme Commander, Serious Sam 2
  21. 21 – 3D-Rendering - Cinema 4D, 3D-Studio Max
  22. 22 – Applications - AVG, WinRAR
  23. 23 – Applications - Photoshop, PDF
  24. 24 – Applications - Deep Fritz
  25. 25 – Audio Encoding - ITunes, Lame
  26. 26 – Synthetic - Sandra CPU
  27. 27 – Synthetic - Sandra Memory
  28. 28 – Synthetic - Sandra Multimedia
  29. 29 – Synthetic - PC-Mark
  30. 30 – Synthetic - 3DMark06
  31. 31 – Video Encoding - Xvid, Pinnacle Studio
  32. 32 – Video Encoding - Premiere, Mainconcept
  33. 33 – Video Encoding - HDTV, DivX
  34. 34 – Video Encoding - CloneDVD
  35. 35 – Conclusion - AMD's Phenom 9600 Can't Beat Intel's Q6600

Overclocking - AMD OverDrive Not Yet Mature

Theoretically, one would expect that software written by AMD specifically for the Phenom processor should work without any problems. However, during testing we realized that the OverDrive utility is not yet technically mature; it is still plagued by many problems.

In some cases, a version offered directly by the motherboard manufacturer for a certain motherboard caused the system to crash as soon as we attempted to overclock it. In the case of our MSI board, the utility gave us an error message telling us it had failed to find an AMD processor in the system.

Let us describe to you a scenario we encountered that is a perfect example of why AMD OverDrive is not yet suitable for overclocking. First, you have to choose the menu entry "Advanced mode" from within the "Preference" submenu in order to enable the feature that lets you change the multiplier. The tool will respond by displaying a warning that your system may become unstable if you change any settings.


Talkback
ShadowKai 07/06/2008 7:34 AM
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ShadowKai

I think on page 14 the author meant:

"When Cool'n'Quiet is deactivated, idle power consumption rises to 51 watts. The jump in power consumption at 2.70 GHz is a direct result of the core voltage increase from 1.250 V to 1.400 V."

And the bars for Phenom 9600 BE and Phenom 9600 BE (CnC) should be switched around.

Anonymous 10/02/2008 8:34 AM
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I think it's also important to mention the fact that Vista SP1 includes it's OWN TLB fix which overrides the bios setting of many boards. I used an app that works in conjunction with Crystal CPUID to change the MSR directly to deactivate this secondary TLB fix. It caused a dramatic improvement in performance; the quick and simple WinRAR bench went from 232 to ~1300 after the fix. Just think it's worth mentioning!

Note You are going to post a comment as anonymous.



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