Part 1: Intel Pentium Processor Extreme Edition 955

Intel Processor 955 Extreme Edition Overclocking

After running our general testing benchmarks we thought we would “drive it like we stole it” and found some interesting results during testing.

Intel Test Platform
Component	Brand/Model	Live Pricing
Processor	Intel Pentium 955	Click Here
Motherboard	Intel D975XBX	Click Here
Video Card	BFG Tech 7800GTX	Click Here
Hard Drive	Western Digital 250MB	Click Here
Cooling	Corsair COOL	Click Here
Power Supply	OCZ 600W Powerstream	Click Here
Operating System	Windows XP Professional	Click Here

To start things off I left everything alone and overclocking the processor by doing nothing, but increasing the front side bus (FSB) via the 0-30% overclock feature that is found in the Intel D975XBX motherboard BIOS settings. After start at 5% I was able to go all the way to 20% before the system became unstable. Using the stock heat sink, no extra voltage, and changing just one setting in the BIOS our processor got a solid 700MHz overclock. The FSB easily went from 266MHz all the way up to 320MHz with no extra voltage to the MCH, FSB, or processor. I was amazed by these results and wanted to know what it could do with a bit of tinkering on the voltages, multiplier, and with the help of water cooling.

After some trial and error in the BIOS we were able to hit 4.76GHz on the desktop!

With an increase in the processor multiplier and some small voltage increases on the processor and MCH we could easily hit a stable 4,763MHz on our processor. That is a 1.3GHz overclock! How stable is it really?

Stable enough to run Super Pi and a number of other benchmarks, but not stable enough to run Prime 95 overnight.

With the prescott processor family Intel told us back in 2004 that they would “Hit 4Gz in 04”, which never happened. The Intel 570 and 670 processors came close at 3.8GHz, but Intel couldn’t hit the mark. In 2005 the first generation dual core processors were launched and overclocking the Intel 840 could be done, but it didn’t have a high overclock and started out at just 3.2Ghz. Now entering 2006 we have a new processor coming out that is able to overclock to roughly 4.8GHz on the reference Intel board and with a $200 water cooler that anyone can buy and install in under twenty minutes. While Intel has kept their mouth shut on how well they expect these new 9XX series to scale we think they know and it is high. Maybe in 2006 we will see 5GHz if we are lucky and in all honesty 5GHz shouldn’t be hard on these if the retail processors perform any where close to how our test sample did.

With all said and done we hope you liked our initial coverage of the new Intel 955 Processor. Today we covered the features, pricing, temperatures, power consumption and our overclocking results. In the next article featuring the Intel 955 Processor we will put it up against the AMD A64 X2 series and see how it does in your typical Green versus Blue type of article.

Feel free to post your thoughts in our free forums as we would love to hear your feedback!