AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Processor Review

Overclocking

Using the Zalman CNPS9700 NT heat sink we tried overclocking the ‘Windsor’ Athlon 64 X2 system with the hopes to get it above 3.2GHz on stock voltages with nothing more than decent air cooling. We left the multiplier alone and pushed the HyperTransport up as high as we could go with the ‘auto’ voltage setting in the BIOS.

With the stock voltage of ~1.4V running through the AMD Athlon 64 6000+ the processor was able to reach 220.5MHz on the HT, which is impressive for changing just one setting in the BIOS.

Raising the voltage to 1.50V from ‘auto’ we were able to reach 225MHz and as you can see the Real-Time Raytracing score went up slightly from the previous overclock. With a slight voltage increase we went from 3.31GHz to 3.37GHz!

I really wanted to reach 3.4GHz and I was able to hit the mark after increasing the voltage to 1.525V. While it was not 100% stable we were still able to verify it on CPU-Z and run benchmarks. When it came to benchmarking the heat generated from the overclock was too much for the Zalman CNPS9700 NT heat sink to handle. Load temperatures were in the mid 70’s and the processor would throttle during full load. As a result the Real-Time Raytracing score was below seven frames per second and nothing to brag about. With the right cooling this processor has a little more in it and we would expect to see consumers reaching 3.4-3.5GHz with water cooling.

Overall overclocking was a great success! We managed to take a Windsor core and overclock it from 3GHz to 3.4Ghz with minimal issues. This represents a 400MHz overclock and that is impressive seeing how last year overclocking a Windsor to just 3GHz was impressive.