Trust me purchasing a 175, or a 180 for that matter will not allow you to obtain 3ghz. Its all to do with the stepping and week manufacture of the core, as in specific batches perform better, and this is unknown until you purchase.
Basically some chips have a high yield and some have low yields and this is purley unknown you try it out. For instance I had purchased a 175 in the hope of getting an early week build, a ?0530 TPMW? to be exact which is known for its high yield high overclock, and to my dismay it was in fact a ?0536 XPMW?. This specific core was awful compared to my 165 (0534 SPMW) which is
two speed grades lower, it would not even clock as high as my 165 did nor match the voltage requirement at certain speeds. I could reach 2.8 tops with crazy voltage and this was somewhat stable on the 165. I tried the same with the 175 and found that it wouldn?t even POST. When trying to boot at 2.7Ghz max volts (1.62) it would crash loading windows, however at 2.6 it was benchable at 1.55v.
So don?t be fooled that a higher speed grade chip will yield better overclocks because it wont. My recommendation is to (if you can find one) purchase a 165 and get a good air cooling solution, and be happy with ~2.5 (which should be attainable).
On the other hand an FX60 will probably yield the best overclock and this is in fact the highest grade dual core processor when ever its released. This is somewhat contradictory to what I have just stated, but for the privilege of the best yield silicon you do pay the hefty price tag that comes with it. Is it worth it, IMO not really, but for some extreme overclockers and people that have plenty of money to burn it is worth it (not a great deal of people fall into this category, well not on AT anyway). Also the bang for buck factor with regards to OCing this chip is pretty much none existent, what I mean is that instead of paying a small amount of cash for what performs as well if not better than the top tier chip, you pay a very large sum of cash and you are usually the type of person that ?must have the fastest processor possible?.
Moral of the story and my recommendation, just get a 165 and save yourself some cash for a better GFX card
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