Overclocking the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+

Time for another overclocking entry. This time, I got my hands on an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ chip. This processor is based on the 65nm Brisbane G2 core. In a previous blog post, I already mentioned that AMD's 65nm core was, to put it mildly, weak for overclocking. Can the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ challenge that notion? There are some reasons to think it might. For example, this CPU has a higher multiplier, so its theoretical overclocking potential should be at least as good as the Athlon 64 X2 4200+.

Test setup:

• CPU - Athlon 64 X2 5000+

• CPU cooler - Cooler Master Susurro (RR-KCT-T9E1)

• Motherboard - MSI K9N Ultra

• Graphics card - GeForce 8500GT

• RAM - 2x1GB PQI PC6400 (5-5-5-15)

• Hard drive - Samsung SP160GB

• PSU - 400W FSP

Let's look at the CPU-Z screenshot:

⤢ ВІДКРИТИ

As I mentioned, we have the 65nm Brisbane G2 die. The Athlon 64 X2 5000+ features 512KB of L2 cache per core, a nominal processor voltage of 1.320V, and a stock frequency of 2600MHz.

Overclocking

Let's get to overclocking. At the nominal voltage, I couldn't even push 100MHz above the stock frequency. So, I decided to increase the voltage to 1.400 volts. However, this made almost no difference, and the stable frequency only reached 3000MHz. Only by applying 1.464 volts did I manage to achieve stable operation at 3120MHz:

⤢ ВІДКРИТИ

To achieve this result, I had to lower the HyperTransport bus multiplier to 4 and the memory frequency to 667MHz.

Frankly, this isn't impressive. I needed to push further, but in what direction? Attempts to hit 3300MHz quickly failed. After that, the processor stopped responding to voltage increases above 1.500V. The final overclocking result was a frequency of 3250MHz:

⤢ ВІДКРИТИ

The core voltage was raised to 1.480V, the HT multiplier was lowered to 3, and the memory frequency was set to 533MHz.

It's not to say the resulting frequency is low, or that I'm completely unhappy with it. Honestly, not all AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors can even hit 3200MHz. However, I expected slightly better results from this particular chip.