Efficiency: Optimizing The Clock Rate Of AMD's Phenom II X6
AMD’s six-core CPU is affordable (at least, compared to Intel's Core i7-980X). We're overclocking the Thuban design to see if its efficiency improves from faster clock rates. Comparisons to other quad- and hexa-core processors provide some perspective.
Turbo CORE In Action
Here’s a quick summary of the Turbo CORE activity you see for workloads that require one, three, four, or six threads.
A single-threaded application will have the Phenom II X6 operate at a maximum Turbo Core speed of 3.6 GHz
Software that runs on three threads has the processor increase core speed for the three cores to 3.6 GHz.
Once four cores are required, the system automatically switches back to 3.2 GHz clock speed for all four active cores. In such a scenario, the six-core Thuban has no real advantage over the quad-core Phenom II X4 at the same clock speeds.
If all six cores are in action, you’ll see a constant 3.2 GHz clock speed.
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