Overclocking tests
Overclocking
Overclocking was undertaken by simply raising the FSB speed and leaving all other variables, included Vcore, alone. A 10% speed increase was as easy as inputting a 220MHz FSB and rebooting. Heat, ever the enemy of the enthusiast, was the most likely contributory factor for instability much beyond 3.8GHz and default voltage. Bear in mind that a reference heatsink was used. We're sure that larger aftermarket coolers will allow stability at near-4GHz speeds. Not bad for a totally air-cooled setup, is it?.
Overclocked benchmarks were added to the results of Pifast and UT2003.
3.74GHz of Prescott juice is needed to bring the Pifast result comfortably below that of a 3.4GHz Northwood. We wonder just what kind of clock speed would be required to unseat a stock Athlon 64 FX-53 setup. Somewhere in the region of 4.3GHz.
A nice boost in HEXUS' UT2003 system test. Still some way short of the Extreme Edition's output, but that is a far more expensive CPU. The question is whether Intel can solve the heat problems currently associated with the Prescott line. A change of packaging may help, but a TDP in excess of 100w isn't conducive to overclocking using basic air cooling. Even ASUS' low-reading hardware monitor was returning temperatures of 70c+ at 3.74GHz. Summer is soon to arrive in the U.K, so we expect load temperatures to increase accordingly.
