AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Processor

Name: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Processor - Page 3
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, April 23, 2009, 12:00 AM EDT

By now, we suspect that most of you have heard about the significant overclocking headroom left in AMD's latest Phenom II processors. In a previous article, we were able to achieve clock speed increases of about 800MHz over stock with the Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition; other Phenom IIs we tested didn't fare quite so well, but 600MHz to 700MHz increases were not uncommon using nothing but the stock air cooler.

Overclocking The Phenom II X4 955

Pedal To The Metal

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Overclocked to 3.72GHz

With our previous success in mind, we set out to overclock the new Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition using the stock PIB cooler we showed you on the previous page and an Asus 790FX based motherboard. With a bump in CPU core voltage to 1.5v, we were able to take the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition to just over 3.7GHz with complete stability--only a 500MHz increase. 3.8GHz - 4GHz would load Windows, but no amount of voltage allowed us to maintain stability. Remember, Black Edition processors are unlocked, so we were able to achieve this overclock by merely altering the CPU multiplier and voltage in the system BIOS or via AMD's OverDrive utility. As you can see in the screencap above, while overclocked, the 955 BE hummed along at a toasty 70'C+. That's a bit to warm for our liking, but keep in mind we were using the stock cooler. While idling, the chip barely broke the 35'C barrier.

AMD OverDrive 3.0

We'd also like to show you a new version of the OverDrive utility AMD is prepping for release. OverDrive 3.0 as it is known offers all of the features of previous versions of the tool, in addition to fan speed controls, Black Edition Memory Profiles, and new smart application profiles. Fan speed control is self-explanatory. Black Edition Memory Profiles, however, require some explanation. Like EPP or XMP, BEMP polls the SPD in certain high-frequency DDR3 memory modules and applies the intended frequency and latency settings from within AOD 3.0. The feature requires BIOS support, and at this time, only a few memory kits are compatible with the feature. Those kits include:

Corsair: CM3X2G1600C9DHX
Kingston: KHX11000D3LLK2/2G and KHX12800D3K2/2G
Mushkin: 991629
OCZ: OCZ3AMD18002G

Which brings us to the smart application profiles. The smart profiles tool gives users the ability to alter system parameters on a per-application basis to either increase performance, like in games or content creation applications, or to lower power utilization, say while playing back digital media files.

Tags: AMD, CPU, processor, Phenom

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com