We had a chance to play with Phenom's 9600 unlocked Black Edition and it failed to impress us, at least when it comes to overclocking. Back in November, yours truly managed to overclock engineering sample 9900 from 2.4GHz to 2.8 GHZ stable and 2.915GHz not so stable; but this time, Phenom 9600 overclocks from 2.3GHz to 2.6GHZ.
Our core is revision DR-BR2, and at default 2.3GHz it scores 9500 in 3Dmark06, while at 2.6GHz it scores just over 10000. We failed to boot at 2.8GHz or higher speeds and even 2.7GHz was off the limits.
We have to admit that Phenom 9600 Black edition runs just fine at 2.6GHZ and you get similar performance to Q6600, if not faster, but one of the strong points of 2.4GHz clocked Q6600 is that it can easily go over 3GHz and with that speed it slaughters Black Edition's performance.
The Black edition is a step forward, but AMD needs better overclocking scores to be back in the game. This is promised for early Q2 if they manage to stay on the track.
Here are the screenshots.
Friday, 18 January 2008 11:35
Phenom 9600 Black Edition only overclocks to 2.6GHz
Written by Fuad Abazovic
First impression: From 2.3GHz
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