Overclocking
If you read over my first review of the 1333 MHz FSB based E6750 processor a couple of weeks ago, you surely saw our outstanding overclocking results using the chip: we were able to get the 2.67 GHz processor to run at 3.84 GHz without a problem.
But how would the quad-core cousin, the QX6850, handle overclocking?
Base CPU-Z shot – 1333 FSB x 9x multiplier
CPU-Z shot at “idle” with the BIOS based power management options enabled; note we can only go down to a multiplier of 6x here so the lowest power-saving frequency is 2.0 GHz
Our top out FSB and frequency: 1700 MHz FSB x 9x multiplier = 3.825 GHz
Overclocked CineBench rendering scores; stock scores were 524/1629 for reference
Overall, I’d call our overclocking on the QX6850 a moderate success; being able to get an extra 825 MHz out of it amounts to a 27% increase for free. That’s not too bad. The CineBench C4D results mirror that increase in performance by going up 24% or so.
As you might expect, getting a quad-core processor to overclock this successfully is, in general, going to be more rare than with a dual-core processor. Simply getting twice as many transistors to function in tandem at the overclocked rate is just harder to do that with a dual-core or even single core part.
Your mileage will no doubt vary, but I’m sure we’ll see overclocking results even higher than this throughout the coming weeks.
