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Athlon64 X2 5000+ Black Edition |
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Written by Dusan Srbljak
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Tuesday, 30 October 2007 |
There has been a lot of fuss around AMD lately. First of all, a new graphics card (2900 Pro) was released recently, and you can read about this excellent move in a separate article. However, AMD hardly forgot about its primary field of interest – CPUs, and presents us with a very interesting new product. End of line for the Athlon64 X2 processors is drawing near, as the new generation is just around the corner. However, we obtained a sort of a “golden sample” of this generation – the new Athlon64 X2 5000+ Black Edition.
The processor arrives in a black box which seems literally seething with power, and the tarantula depicted is one of AMD's mascots. The specs do not reveal the difference compared to the old model. The nominal frequency is 2.6 GHz, just like the old 5000+, and is based on the Brisbane core. It has a total of 1 MB of L2 cache (512 KB per core). The first notable difference between the two is in the Black Edition suffix. That small advantage is what brings enormous difference in potential. This CPU has an unlocked multiplier, which is a thing previously available only on the Athlon64 FX line of CPUs. The other advantage to previously seen AMD CPUs is the improved production process – this is the “stepping 2” production.
With the ordinary 5000+ CPU, the maximum available multiplier is 13 (13x200 MHz), which results in a total frequency of 2.6 GHz. To overclock this CPU, you have to raise the FSB, which requires a higher-quality motherboard and memory. In case that you own a Black Edition, you don't have to worry about this, as it is enough to set the multiplier to 15, and there you go – the magical 3 GHz are reached, without changing the FSB or memory frequency.
The mobo choice was not random – Biostar TF7025-M2 is a board that does not fit in the top-class overclocking motherboards market segment, but instead stands for a cheap and reliable board with no overclocking pretensions. The same goes for the TwinMOS DDR800 memory. Even on this board, we managed to push the CPU to an impressive 3.3 GHz while maintaining 100% stability. All that needed tweaking is a CPU voltage of 1.4 V and a CPU multiplier of 16.5. The processor was being cooled by an ordinary BOX cooler. Had we used a water-cooling system or a serious cooler like CoolerMaster GeminII, the results would probably be even better.
| Athlon64 X2 5000+ Black Edition | 5000+ BE @ 3.3GHz | Default | | Cinebench 10 | 5,101 | 4,151 | | Nucelarus 2 ALU / FPU / Multi | 5.211 / 6.170 / 9.891 | 4.146 / 4.872 / 7.916 | | Photoshop CS3 | 49.3 s | 62.1 s | | DivX 6.7 | 127.4 fps | 109.5 fps | | WinRAR 3.7 | 1101 KB/s | 1.065 KB/s | | WPrime | 23.79 s | 29.754 s | | Sandra | | | | CPU | 24.064 / 18.196 | 18.064 / 16.196 | | Multimedia | 64.528 / 73.225 | 47.737 / 53.330 | | Memory | 8.101 / 8.125 | 6.767 / 6.680 | | Latency | 87 ns | 88 ns | | 3DMark06 SM2 / SM3 / CPU | 3.713 / 4.274 / 2.401 | 3.514 / 4.127 / 1.883 | | COH (MedimuQ) | 87.8 fps | 73.7 fps | | Quake4 (UltraQ) | 89.2 fps | 78.2 fps | | FarCry (VeryHighQ) | 120.7 fps | 108.9 fps | | Testbed: | Biostar TF7025-M2, HIS 2900 Pro, Win XPSP2 | 2x1GB TwinMOS Twister DDR800 (4-5-5-15) |
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We even managed to enter Windows XP with a clock of 3.45 GHz at 1.5 V, but the processor was simply overheating and failed to pass the Orthos program. All of the tests were performed with the clock of 3.3 GHz, which was unthinkable up to now as far as AMD is concerned.
All in all, if this is to be a hint, we can expect nothing but stellar performance from the upcoming Phenom CPUs, as the 65 nm production process has obviously advanced one step further in performance. Until then, you can do a simple upgrade that will cost you a little over the 100€ mark. A bargain.
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