Overclocking ASUS style
Overclocking
If you decide to start an overclocking session with the Phenom processor; typically you are much better off with the BE editions (CPU multiplier unlocked). In today's test we will overclock the Phenom II X4 956BE (Black Edition = easy to overclock).
The key to the 770/785/790/890FX/GX feature set is AMD's Windows compatible Overdrive interface that allows very easy overclocking of the Phenom II (and last gen Phenom X4 Black Edition) processors. It's one of the best tweak utilities out there and thanks to AMD's recently introduced Advanced Clock Calibration technology the results on a their latest platforms will certainly be good.
For this review we used a new 3.0 which has some cool new options.
If you like to work in AMD Overdrive you can simply max out the CPU voltage towards ~1.50V and increase the multiplier. Play around with it, don't be afraid of a crash. At BIOS level ASUS also has a OC Tuner Utility function, enable it and the board will automatically overclock a little. We hit 3684 MHz once we enable it and boot up again. That's nice, nearly 300 MHz with the push of a button in the BIOS.
We however overclocked manually through the BIOS -- the results where good. Now, we did use the all new Phenom II X4 965BE 125W processor, but we took it towards 4 GHz quite easily -- and that's done with a simple OCZ Vendetta 2 35 USD air-cooler.
Here's an overclock at 4 GHz 100% stable. We boosted Voltage towards 1.55 in the BIOS and simply applied a multiplier of 20. There's more performance left to tweak out alright.
