Athlon 635 C3 OC results

[Rifter]

Im building a computer for the mother in law with this CPU and thought i would share the OC results, as she is out of town and i have the box for a few weeks before we deliver it and i couldn't resist the urge to see what it could do.

Its running on a Gigabyte 880GMA-UD2H with some corsair XMS3 2x2GB 1333 DDR3

Its also got a Stock AMD 4 copper Heatpipe cooler on it from a Phenom II, CPU and HS both got a quick lapping job, AS 5 thermal compound.

The stock cooler was very small and looked useless, i would replace it if you want to OC.

At 1.3v(which is slightly below the 1.35v it wanted on auto) it is stable up to 3.4Ghz and after 7 days(thats right, i ran prime on it for 7 days) of prime95 the max temp reached was 62c.

Voltage to 1.45v(reads 1.42v in CPUz) it was 7 days prime stable at 3.7Ghz and reached 74c.

I stopped there as without a better cooler the temps were getting higher than i would like. Im sure with a good air cooler you could hit 4Ghz and keep it under 70c.

This chip was way easier to work with than my C2 stepping 940BE(which was a royal bitch to get to even 3.6Ghz) so I would highly recommend the C3 chips to anyone who is purchasing a Athlon/Phenom II right now.

Its a shame to set it back to stock clocks for delivery lol.

 

[jvroig]

At 1.3v(which is slightly below the 1.35v it wanted on auto) it is stable up to 3.4Ghz and after 7 days(thats right, i ran prime on it for 7 days) of prime95 the max temp reached was 62c.

Great stock volt OC. Anand mentioned the same thing (3.5 GHz, but not 7 days P95 stable, probably) at stock volt in the article about AMD's New Year Refresh.

Nice to know these 635's are reliable performers.

Its a shame to set it back to stock clocks for delivery lol.

If you leave in a very conservative, stock volt OC (but then raise the vcore aftewards a bit, to give even more leeway), would it be so bad? If it gets 3.4GHz 7 days prime stable at stock volt, then maybe leave it at 3.3GHz and up the vcore to 1.325V and call it a day.

I know the best way to go (since it is for your mother in law) is leave everything at stock, but I'm just throwing out an alternative. Probably feeling the same way you are at throwing away a perfectly good OC

 

[Rifter]

Oh i feel ya on wanting to leave it at 3.3-3.4Ghz lol.

I've been going back and forth in my mind about it for days now, still got another week or 2 to decide. Might go for it, its got a alright cooler, is lapped, and since no discreet GPU the 120mm exhaust fan in the sonata III should be able to keep it cool enough, i also added one intake 120mm fan so case cooling will be good enough. Its going to be a tough call.

 

[daveybrat]

Oh i feel ya on wanting to leave it at 3.3-3.4Ghz lol.

I've been going back and forth in my mind about it for days now, still got another week or 2 to decide. Might go for it, its got a alright cooler, is lapped, and since no discreet GPU the 120mm exhaust fan in the sonata III should be able to keep it cool enough, i also added one intake 120mm fan so case cooling will be good enough. Its going to be a tough call.

Oh come on, i'm pretty sure your 'mother-in-law' would be MORE than satisfied with a stock Quad-Core processor.

 

[jvroig]

Of course, but what if Farmville suddenly gets an upgrade and she'd need about 500mhz better single-threaded performance? You'd wish it had had a conservative OC on it, wouldn't you?

(No offense, OP, just tongue-in-cheek, not saying your mother-in-law wouldn't be working on anything other than Farmville.)

 

[Rifter]

Oh come on, i'm pretty sure your 'mother-in-law' would be MORE than satisfied with a stock Quad-Core processor.

yeah true, especially for less than $700 tax and OS KB/mouse included. But she told me that facebook was really slow and wanted to notice a big differnce from her old comp, a P4 2.8Ghz running 2GB ram lol.

So after doing some research into flash ive come to the conclusion its the worst coded program in the world. I was playing some Flash games that had worse than nintendo graphics and were hitting 60% CPU usage on my 3.6Ghz 940BE lol. Hopefully she will be happy with the Athlon II quad, but with only a 100$ CPU budget i didnt really have a choice as far as CPU, there is nothing on the intel side that would have been faster. And if she decided she needs more CPU later she can always drop in a X6

 

[DrMrLordX]

Looks like the C3 stepping was kind to the Athlon IIs. C2 Athlon IIs could be incredibly poor overclockers, especially the x4 620 which would struggle to go faster than 3.5 ghz even in capable hands.

Granted, it's not like people were throwing all the cooling and other support they could at 620s to get them to run faster, but . . .

 

[ModestGamer]

Of course, but what if Farmville suddenly gets an upgrade and she'd need about 500mhz better single-threaded performance? You'd wish it had had a conservative OC on it, wouldn't you?

(No offense, OP, just tongue-in-cheek, not saying your mother-in-law wouldn't be working on anything other than Farmville.)

If shes anything like my mother or mother in law she could drown a farm of x6 thubans at 4.5 ghz.

 

[faxon]

you do know you can GPU accelerate flash now right? the integrated graphics on that board should support it just fine as well, and should get the job done nicely. still, should be nice having the fast cpu anyway when you run into something you cant run on the gpu

 

[jvroig]

So after doing some research into flash ive come to the conclusion its the worst coded program in the world

It is surprisingly heavy on the processor, more than you'd expect at first. I've got the same experience.