| AMD Phenom II X4 Test Settings | ||
|---|---|---|
| Default Settings | Overclock Settings |
| CPU | AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 GHz | 3.86 GHz, (19x 203 MHz), 1.45V |
| RAM | DDR3-1333 CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.50V | DDR3-1624 CAS 6-6-5-18, 1.65V |
| Motherboard | MSI 790FX-GD70 Socket AM3, 790FX/SB750, BIOS 1.3 (04/27/2009) | |
| Graphics | Zotac GeForce GTX260² | |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital VelociRaptor WD30000HLFS | |
| Sound | Integrated HD Audio | |
| Networking | Integrated Gigabit LAN | |
Software | ||
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 | |
| Graphics | GeForce 182.08 Desktop | |
The X4 955’s 21% overclock probably isn't going to bowl anyone over, but its 3.86 GHz final speed is still well above average for an air-cooled Phenom II system, thanks to the good performance of Rosewill’s Fort 120 cooler.


Sandra shows a 19% improvement in Arithmetic and 20% improvement in Multimedia extensions performance.

Though memory data rate and timings were altered significantly, its performance improved by only 1%. The X4 955 has better base bandwidth than the X2, but apparently less room for improvement.

Power consumption increased by 31%, mostly because of the higher voltage required to reach this high clock speed.

An average CPU performance increase of 20% and an average power increase of 31% caused the overclocked Phenom II X4 to lose around 8% of its original efficiency. Once again, it would likely have been possible to actually increase efficiency by overclocking at or near stock voltage, but the maximum speed increase would have been much smaller. For more on increasing the efficiency of your Phenom II overclock, check out this piece.
- Why Overclock?
- Understanding The Lingo
- Getting Started, The Hardware
- Keeping It Cool
- More Shared Hardware
- Overclocking AMD's Phenom II X2 550
- Phenom II X2 550 O/C Performance And Efficiency
- Overclocking AMD's Phenom II X4 955
- Phenom II X4 955 O/C Performance And Efficiency
- Overclocking Intel's Pentium E5200
- Pentium E5200 O/C Performance And Efficiency
- Overclocking Intel's Core 2 Quad Q8200
- Core 2 Quad Q8200 O/C Performance And Efficiency
- Recommendations
It's all a game of averages. Tom's Hardware hasn't accidently killed a processor by overclocking it in a while, though I'm sure a couple editors have intentionally done so to find the voltage limit. The problem is, once again, you can only look at averages.
3 months continuous use at 1.45 volts caused an E8500 to lose its OC stability. It had to be clocked down to become stable again, and lost much of its voltage tolerance. It wasn't destroyed however.
1.40 volts should be significantly safer than 1.45 volts, but until a few people report on how long their cores lasted at 1.40 volts its impossible to tell "how much safer", that is, how much longer it will last. All that's known is that it should last "significantly" longer, but whether that's 4 months (33% longer) or 30 months (10x longer) is the unanswerable question.
I would have liked to see combined charts as a conclusion but that's a minor criticism.
I'm just wondering what the 'next-gen' E5200 (i.e. the intel people's OC'er) will turn out to be? Some flavor of i5 I assume, but who knows.
"Intel’s value-priced Core 2 Quad Q8200 uses two of the same processor dice as the Pentium E5200....."
I don't know why you choose the Q8200 it's a notoriously bad overclocking chip, if you wanted a budget Intel Quad core that had room for overclocking you should have bought the Q6700/Q6600.
MSI P45 Diamond is not LGA1366, but LGA775. LGA1366 is for Core i7 processors only, LGA1156 is for Core i5 and i7 (only dual channel DDR3-1333/1066). LGA775 is the old socket, for Celeron D, Celeron 4xx, Pentium Dual Core, Pentium 4, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad.
Otherwise, pretty good article. Though perhaps a better choice for the Intel quad would have been a 9550...I thought they were under $250 by now. Same time, I guess the Q8200 does seem to be a more difficult overclocker...Intel may have intended this to be the case so as not to gut sales of their Q9000 series. And readers may as well know before jumping on a Q8200 thinking it'll overclock like an E5200.
PS: Synthetic benchmarks should be outlawed until they fairly and accurately give an indication of real-world performance
Even so, you must have a dud, since Q8200 should overclock much more then what was achieved for the purpose of the article.
E5200 is indeed the "new Celeron". A very good cheap chip, if you get it to at least 3.33GHz (1066 FSB + 1066 DDR2). I totally agree with this choice.
But why did you go with DDR3? It's double the price of DDR2. In real life, if I have to choose between screaming-fast DDR3, or double the amount of that in DDR2... my personal preference is more RAM, even if slower RAM.
So Q9550 + DDR2 could make the list, at least price-wise. With a little OC, it would be the king of this... let's call it roundup. Some may argue that the 955BE is, but I have my favorites.
You got lucky.
1.45v is the ABSOLUTE MAX voltage for 45nm.
1.5v is the ABSOLUTE MAX for 65nm
Absolute Max is defined as "the point where actual damage to the CPU can occur."
For more info: http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/374005-45nm-vcore-discussion.html