X-bit labs

Friday, July 15, 2005

AMD Athlon FX-57 Reaches 3.54GHz. AMD Athlon FX-57 Overclocked with Phase Change Cooling

On the 27^th of June 2005, Advanced Micro Devices released its AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 microprocessor claimed to be the fastest CPU for gamers. It is based on the 90nm San Diego core clocked at 2.80GHz, equipped with 1MB of cache and dual-channel PC3200 memory controller.

Unlike regular AMD Athlon 64 processors, Athlon 64 FX-57 microprocessor comes with unlocked frequency multiplier, which makes this chip a perfect choice for overclockers.

The majority of early reviews showed that overclocking potential of this chip using air cooling solutions tops at 3.0GHz. TweakTown has managed to overclock AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 microprocessor to an impressive 3.54GHz operating frequency, using the Prometeia Mach II phase change cooling, while the benchmarks were run at 3.45GHz frequency.

“I was able to perform a number of benchmarks at 3.54GHz as well, but the Mach II just didn’t seem to be able to hold the colder temps under full load and the longer benchmarks failed after a while,” writes the web-site.

“Looking back though on the performance increases from 2.8GHz to 3.45GHz it ranges from relatively small to enormous. The smaller increases come where the graphics card plays a bigger roll such as in 3DMark05 - but still there is a noticeable increase. The biggest increases come where CPU power is the main factor. Here one of the most noticeable increases is in Quake III at 800x600 where there is a massive 29% increase in performance. Also the increase in the gaming benchmarks would have been much more - because believe it or not - at these kinds of speeds, even the mighty ATI Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition becomes a bottleneck,” adds the author.

• TweakTown: AMD Athlon FX-57 Overclocking – 3.54GHz with Phase Change.

Modern DVD Burners Compared. 16x DVD-R Roundup Posted

AnandTech has posted a roundup of six modern DVD writers from six different manufacturers, such as BenQ, LG, NEC, Pioneer, Sony and Toshiba. The drives were tested and compared using different types of media on them, including DVD±R, DVD±RW, DVD±R DL as well as CD-R. Since the quality and speed of a DVD drive depends not only on hardware, but other factors as well, the author used the latest drivers and firmware.

“We updated the firmware on all of these drives at the time that we tested them. Note that there may be new versions of the firmware released since then. Henceforth, we cannot guarantee that our benchmarks will have used the latest updates at the time of publication,” warns AnandTech.

“The only drive we saw that could write to the majority of discs and quickly at that was BenQ’s DW1640. It had average performance on most of the benchmarks, but always had a successful read to go with the successful write. The only disc that it could not write to was the MKM A03 8x DVD+RW. Besides that single issue, the DW1640 has features to aid in successful writes, as well as bitsetting features to allow greater compatibility of the media to which it writes. The bitsetting utility can be downloaded from BenQ’s website. Over these 6 DVDR units, we recommend the BenQ DW1640 for its performance and reliability in writing to various types of media. Expect this drive to start showing up on retail store shelves very soon,” concludes the author.

• AnandTech: Summer 2005 16x DVDR Roundup.