Overclocking the APU
Overclocking the A6-3650 is achieved by increasing the base clock upwards. Doing so also pushes up the speed of the onboard graphics and other buses, so it must be undertaken with caution.
We increased the CPU voltage from 1.4V to 1.475V, northbridge/GFX voltage from 1.0375V to 1.1V and dropped the memory speed from 1,600MHz to 800MHz, to keep it from interfering with results.
There you go, 3.5GHz without too much hassle. This time, the USB 3.0 ports continued to work and we encountered no anomalies while testing.
Putting the overclocked APU's performance into perspective, here's how it benchmarks in CINEBENCH and the IGP-run Just Cause 2.
There's only so much of an increase higher clocks can provide when comparing to better, more expensive architectures.
One would perhaps expect the HD 6530D to score higher, but it may well be the relative lack of shading cores holding it back in this test.
