Okay, I know many of you AMD users are suffering from loads of angst now that Intel's Conroe-based processors are coming on strong. But that's just the nature of things.
I, too, sighed when I saw that my recent $300 purchase of the AMD 3800x2 dual-processor chip was now being discounted as low as $150. But it's a very nice and stable chip, and one I recently realized could be heavily overclocked.
Within days of building my new PC a month ago I overclocked it from the stock 2GHz to 2.4. That's a pretty serious boost, making the 3800x2 the equivalent of the 4600x2 in the AMD family. By contrast, my previous processor, an AMD 2000XP, only was able to be boosted about 6% before suffering instability and/or freezes.
Then, the other day, I upped the frequency again, based on reports I'd seen on the web. Holy Smokes, this thing is running very happily now at 2.6GHz, the equivalent of the new AMD 5000x2!
If you're not a tinkerer at heart and if you have a store-bought system, this kind of thing is probably not for you. But in my case I have a very adaptable Asus A8V motherboard in a home-built system, and I know that in the worst case the system will hang or fail to boot outright, in which case I go back into the BIOS and choose more conservative clock numbers. There's no major downside for me.
Not to say that there aren't drawbacks. If you take a Chevy 350 engine and tweak the heck out of it in order to get 500hp, the engine will deliver, but its service life will definitely be affected. Same here--my 3800x2 chip is running at a slightly higher CPU voltage (1.45 versus stock 1.3v) and the render temps are higher (62c versus about 52c). I understand that an effect called "migration" can cause the chip to fail sooner than otherwise. But I don't care if the chip fails in 10 years rather than 50, since in this environment I'll be surprised if I am using it for even 5 years.
That fact that this particular chip was happy to run at 30% over stock clock speed does not mean that every 3800x2 chip will do the same. Still, I am astonished that a $150 dual-core chip can turn in this kind of performance, especially since we're not resorting to any exotic cooling methods.
Some particulars:
AMD 3800x2 "Manchester" core
Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard
10x multiplier
Base speed 260MHz
Hypertransport multiplier 4x (down from 5x)
Hypertransport frequency 1.04GHz (4 x 260; stock is 5 x 200)
CPU Vcore 1.45v (stock 1.3v)
standard PCI/AGP bus speeds 33/66MHz
CPU temp per M/Bmonitor: 49c idle, 62c Prime95 both cores
stock AMD heatsink/fan
standard ram memory timing, 1GB
I, too, sighed when I saw that my recent $300 purchase of the AMD 3800x2 dual-processor chip was now being discounted as low as $150. But it's a very nice and stable chip, and one I recently realized could be heavily overclocked.
Within days of building my new PC a month ago I overclocked it from the stock 2GHz to 2.4. That's a pretty serious boost, making the 3800x2 the equivalent of the 4600x2 in the AMD family. By contrast, my previous processor, an AMD 2000XP, only was able to be boosted about 6% before suffering instability and/or freezes.
Then, the other day, I upped the frequency again, based on reports I'd seen on the web. Holy Smokes, this thing is running very happily now at 2.6GHz, the equivalent of the new AMD 5000x2!
If you're not a tinkerer at heart and if you have a store-bought system, this kind of thing is probably not for you. But in my case I have a very adaptable Asus A8V motherboard in a home-built system, and I know that in the worst case the system will hang or fail to boot outright, in which case I go back into the BIOS and choose more conservative clock numbers. There's no major downside for me.
Not to say that there aren't drawbacks. If you take a Chevy 350 engine and tweak the heck out of it in order to get 500hp, the engine will deliver, but its service life will definitely be affected. Same here--my 3800x2 chip is running at a slightly higher CPU voltage (1.45 versus stock 1.3v) and the render temps are higher (62c versus about 52c). I understand that an effect called "migration" can cause the chip to fail sooner than otherwise. But I don't care if the chip fails in 10 years rather than 50, since in this environment I'll be surprised if I am using it for even 5 years.
That fact that this particular chip was happy to run at 30% over stock clock speed does not mean that every 3800x2 chip will do the same. Still, I am astonished that a $150 dual-core chip can turn in this kind of performance, especially since we're not resorting to any exotic cooling methods.
Some particulars:
AMD 3800x2 "Manchester" core
Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard
10x multiplier
Base speed 260MHz
Hypertransport multiplier 4x (down from 5x)
Hypertransport frequency 1.04GHz (4 x 260; stock is 5 x 200)
CPU Vcore 1.45v (stock 1.3v)
standard PCI/AGP bus speeds 33/66MHz
CPU temp per M/Bmonitor: 49c idle, 62c Prime95 both cores
stock AMD heatsink/fan
standard ram memory timing, 1GB