Overclocking Results:

stock max. oc processor speed: 2.8 ghz 3.5 ghz multiplier / bus speed: 14x 200mhz 14x 250mhz 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

AMD's 2.8GHz dual-core 45nm Athlon II X2 240e energy efficient processor is based on the 'Regor' architecture, and we're expecting its peak overclocking to be in the same ballpark as the AMD Athlon II X2 250 processor (which went from 3.0GHz up to 3.75GHz on air cooling).

First thing's first. In order not to hold the processor back the Corsair DDR3-1066 CM3X2G1600C9DHX memory was set to run in DDR3-800 MHz mode. The CPU clock multiplier was kept at its default of 14x and from there the bus speed on the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT motherboard was increased from 200MHz on up.

Overclocking in 15 MHz increments, the Athlon II X2 240e CPU was rapidly overclocked from 200MHz to 215MHz... 230... 240... 250 and then 260MHz. Unfortunately the chip wasn't able to maintain this speed and crashed moments after POST. The bus speed had to be reduced to 250MHz before the processor would play nice, so in the end AMD's Athlon II X2 240e processor overclocked from 2.8GHz to a decent 3.5GHz on standard air cooling.

PCSTATS got a similar 700MHz overclock from the Athlon II X2 250 processor, but it's a little disappointing that the Athlon II X2 240e fell short of 3.7GHz.

Of course, we should also point out that this 45W processor really is not intended for overclocking in the first place. Doing so defeats the purpose of buying an energy efficient processor, doesn't it?

Prelude to Benchmarks

For this review PCSTATS is running the benchmark suite in both Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Windows 7 operating systems. Hopefully this will help you make an informed decision in the coming months as Windows 7 adoption firms up. For the most part, benchmark results are not significantly different between the two operating systems, although certain tests do see advantages under Win 7.

Over the following page we'll be running AMD's 2.8GHz Athlon II X2 240e processor though PCSTATS standard set of gaming, productivity, and multi-threaded processor benchmarks. There are a wide variety of gaming and synthetic benchmarks here to illustrate what kind of performance boost users can expect from the latest dual-core socket AM3 AMD processor. 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 Configurations

test system reference system #1 reference system #2 reference system #3 processor: amd Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition AMD Athlon II X4 620 AMD Athlon II X3 435 AMD Athlon II X2 250 AMD Athlon II X2 240e Intel Core i5 750 Intel Core i7 920 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU Process Technology: 45nm 45nm 45nm 45nm Socket: Socket AM3 Socket LGA1156 Socket LGA1366 Socket LGA775 Clock Speed: 17x 200MHz = 3.4 GHz (965 BE) 16x 200MHz = 3.2 GHz(955 BE) 14 x 200 MHz = 2.8 GHz (720 BE) 15.5x 200MHz = 3.1 GHz (550BE) 13x 200MHz = 2.6 GHz (AIIX4 620) 14.5x 200MHz = 2.9 GHz (AIIX3 435) 15x 200MHz = 3.0 GHz (AIIX2 250) 14x 200 MHz = 2.8 GHz (AIIX2 240e) 20x 133MHz = 2.66 GHz 20 x 133 MHz = 2.67 GHz 9.5 x 333 MHz = 3.16GHz (E8500) 9 x 333 MHz = 3.0 GHz< BR > (E8500) Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P (AMD 790FX) Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 (Intel P55) MSI X58 Platinum (X58 Express) MSI X48 Platinum (X48 Express) Videocard: ASUS ENGTS250 DK (Geforce GTS250) ASUS ENGTS250 DK (Geforce GTS250) ASUS ENGTS250 DK (Geforce GTS 250) MSI NX8800GTS-T2D320E (Geforce 8800GTS) Memory: 2x2GB Corsair XMS3-1600C9 DDR3 2x1GB Patriot PDC32G1600LLK DDR3 2x2GB Corsair XMS3-1600C8 DDR3 3x2GB Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D DDR3 2x1GB Patriot PDC32G1600LLK DDR3 Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 Optical Drive: ASUS BC-1205PT-BD Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 750W Heatsink: Athlon64 K8 Reference Heatsink Intel Reference 1156 Heatsink Intel Reference 1366 Heatsink Intel Reference 775 Heatsink Software Setup: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate AMD Catalyst 9.8 nVIDIA Forceware 190.62 Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Intel 9.1.1.1019 nVIDIA Forceware 190.62 Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Intel INF 9.1.0.1012 nVIDIA Forceware 182.08 Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Intel INF 9.0.0.1008 nVIDIA Forceware 169.25 Benchmarks: System Benchmarks: SYSmark 2007 PCMark Vantage SiSoft Sandra 2009 Calculation B/M: Super Pi 1.5 wPrime 2.0 ScienceMark 2.3 WinRAR 3.8 Bibble 5 Rendering B/M: Cinebench R10 POV-Ray 3.7 SPECviewPerf 10 Gaming B/M: 3DMark06 3DMark Vantage Cyrsis FEAR