Overclocking Results:

stock max. oc processor speed: 2 ghz 2.5 ghz if you're new to Overclocking and not sure what to do, check out these two excellent Guides for some pointers: Overclocking the CPU and Memory Overclocking the Videocard

The 2.0GHz AMD Sempron 3600+ processor core is built on the same 90 nanometer manufacturing process as AMD's high end Athlon64, X2 and FX processors.... so you know what that mean! Overclockability should be good for this little 2.0GHz budget processor. For the following overclocking tests PCSTATS settled on the Asus M2N32SLI-DLX motherboard and some Corsair Twin2X2048-8500C5 memory to give the Sempron 3600+ the best chance to reach super high clock speeds.

Before the overclocking tests got underway, the Corsair Twin2X PC2-8500 memory was first set to run at DDR2-533 MHz mode, this way it will not hold the CPU back. Keeping the 10x CPU clock multiplier, the Asus' motherboard clock speed was increased slowly from 200 MHz on up.

The 2.0GHz AMD Sempron 3600+ handled the overclocking process very well from the start and it only started to break a sweat when clocked at 2.4 GHz. At that speed stability wasn't the best and the CPU core voltage had to be increased to 1.37V to stabilize it.

Continuing on, we found the AMD Sempron 3600+ starting to BSOD while loading WindowsXP at 244 MHz motherboard clock speed. Yet again the CPU voltage was increased, this time to 1.4V.

In the end the 2.0GHz Sempron 3600+ processor sputtered out at an overclocked speed of 2.5 GHz, anything higher and the processor would crash the system while running benchmarks. You have to admit that 2.5 GHz from a $100 processor is pretty nice!

Prelude to Benchmarks - Test System Configuration

Over the following page we'll be running the socket AM2 2.0GHz AMD Sempron 3600+ processor though PCSTATS standard set of gaming, productivity, and 64-bit processor benchmarks. There are a wide variety of gaming and synthetic benchmarks here to illustrate what kind of performance boost users can expect from these latest, dual core 64-bit capable K8 processors.

Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results on the next several pages.

PCSTATS Test System Configuations

test system #1 amd reference systems #1 amd reference systems #2 intel reference system processor: sempron 3600+ amd Athlon64 FX-62 AMD Athlon64 X2 5000+ AMD Athlon64 FX-60 AMD Athlon64 4000+ Intel Pentium D 840 Intel Pentium D 940 Socket: Socket AM2 Socket AM2 Socket 939 Socket 775 Clock Speed: 10 x 200 MHz = 2.0 GHz 10 x 250 MHz = 2.5 GHz 14 x 200 MHz = 2.8 GHz 13 x 200 MHz = 2.6 GHz 13 x 200 MHz = 2.6 GHz 12 x 200 MHz = 2.4 GHz 16 x 200 MHz = 3.2 GHz 16 x 200 MHz = 3.2 GHz Chipset: nForce 590 SLI nForce4 SLI Intel 975X Motherboards: Asus M2N32SLI-DLX Asus A8N-SLI Premium (NF4 SLI) Foxconn 975X7AA-8EKRS2H Videocard: 2x MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D256E in SLI Memory: 2x 1024MB Corsair XMS2-8500 DDR-2 2x 512MB OCZ Gold GX PC3500 DDR 2x 1024MB Corsair XMS2-8500 DDR-2 Memory Latency: 4-4-4-12 2-2-2-5 5-5-5-15 Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x PowerSupply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: Athlon64 FX-62 Reference Heatsink Athlon64 4000+ Reference Heatsink Thermaltake Jungle 512 Software Setup: Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 Microsoft WindowsXP x64 Edition nVIDIA Forceware NF4 9.34 nVIDIA Forceware 91.27 Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 Microsoft WindowsXP x64 Edition nVIDIA Forceware NF4 6.70 nVIDIA Forceware 91.27 Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 Microsoft WindowsXP x64 Edition Intel INF 7.2.2 nVIDIA Forceware 91.27 Benchmarks: 32-Bit Benchmarks: SYSmark 2004 Business Winstone 2004 Content Creation 2004 SiSoft Sandra 2005 Maya Render Test Super Pi 1.1 PCMark05 3DMark05 3DMark06 Doom 3 Quake 4 FarCry FEAR 64-Bit Benchmarks: PCMark04 PCMark05 Cinebench 2003 ScienceMark 2.0 Mini-GZIP DiVX Encoding CPU Load 3D Tests: Prime95 + 3DMark05 Prime95 + Doom 3 Prime95 + FEAR