- Joined
- Dec 27, 2008
I've been following with interest the several threads lately about the Phenom II 960T CPU. Well, this week I got some hands on experience with one as I was building a system for my daughter based on this CPU. This was her Christmas present from dear old dad.
I used my existing ASRock 870 Extreme 3 motherboard and some other existing ancillary components like the Antec 300 case and my trusty old TRUE (original version, lapped). The CPU and 8 gb of Gskill Ripjaws ram were purchased new from Egg.
My daughter is going back to Seattle today so I didn't have as much time to tweak as I would have liked but here are my results:
1. The two locked cores unlocked easily and were stable at first but core 5 proved unstable with further stress testing. So I disabled the bad core. CPU-z still reported it as a Thuban X6.
2. CPU at 4 ghz Prime 95 blend stable at 3.5 vcore in bios with HWMonitor reporting 1.48 vcore under full load. ASRock boards seem to supply a hefty amount of load line calibration voltage on LLC "Auto". CPUNB put at 2600 and memory at 1333 on 1.25v. I would have liked more time to work with the CPUNB and HT Link frequencies as well as trying the ram at 1600.
3. My impressions are this is a very cool-running CPU with a lot of overclocking room. Core unlocking rate success seems to be high. I belive the CPUNB is stouter than was the case with the Denebs. The 960T's E0 stepping serves it well.
4. CPU max Prime 95 temps were 62. Core temps would be about 51 C, applying the differential between CPU temps and core temps I noticed before unlocking the cores. I suspect, however that the core temps sensor calibration on these CPUs is about 5 C too low based on my experience with this unit as well as my observations of what others are reporting.
At $112 shipped this was a great bargain!
I used my existing ASRock 870 Extreme 3 motherboard and some other existing ancillary components like the Antec 300 case and my trusty old TRUE (original version, lapped). The CPU and 8 gb of Gskill Ripjaws ram were purchased new from Egg.
My daughter is going back to Seattle today so I didn't have as much time to tweak as I would have liked but here are my results:
1. The two locked cores unlocked easily and were stable at first but core 5 proved unstable with further stress testing. So I disabled the bad core. CPU-z still reported it as a Thuban X6.
2. CPU at 4 ghz Prime 95 blend stable at 3.5 vcore in bios with HWMonitor reporting 1.48 vcore under full load. ASRock boards seem to supply a hefty amount of load line calibration voltage on LLC "Auto". CPUNB put at 2600 and memory at 1333 on 1.25v. I would have liked more time to work with the CPUNB and HT Link frequencies as well as trying the ram at 1600.
3. My impressions are this is a very cool-running CPU with a lot of overclocking room. Core unlocking rate success seems to be high. I belive the CPUNB is stouter than was the case with the Denebs. The 960T's E0 stepping serves it well.
4. CPU max Prime 95 temps were 62. Core temps would be about 51 C, applying the differential between CPU temps and core temps I noticed before unlocking the cores. I suspect, however that the core temps sensor calibration on these CPUs is about 5 C too low based on my experience with this unit as well as my observations of what others are reporting.
At $112 shipped this was a great bargain!
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