AMD breathed new lift into its budget processors with the C3 stepping and especially Phenom II X2 555 BE has been shown to overclock well. In our own live tests we managed to bring the processor up to phenomenal 6.4GHz, which is quite cool for a CPU costing less than $100. There are more ways to get more performance performance, unlocking the two extra cores making it a quad-core Phenom II X4.
We tested this with good results during our overclocking session and Anandtech have now posted a short article on the procedure. As usual it comes down to changing Advanced Clock Calibration and if the unlocking works depends on the individual processor. Except from two extra cores the name changes to Phenom II X4 B55.
– Click to enlarge and more information on the overclocking –
The overclocking potential was lowered a bit with the two extra cores enabled, but the multithreading performance was substantially improved and Jonas managed to run a full round of Cinebench with four cores at 5.7GHz.
Those who want to try unlocking their own AMD processors can try the guide at Anandtech.
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