CPU ranks- Athlon II X4 620, Phenom II X4 955, Core i5 750

[Sythedragon]

Just thought I'd say, it's stupidly rare to get a Phenom II to reach 4GHZ stable. MOST will get 3.6GHZ, that's average.

[rex1825]

...well I tried few Phenom II BE CPU's & all could reach stable 3.8-3.9GHz, only difference between 940, 955 is that 955 needs less VCore for it, my CPU goes on 3.9GHz with 1.46V, friends goes with 1.51V, ...it depends from CPU to CPU, but every Phenom II is ment to go to almost 4.0GHz on air...

...I would rather go for i7 8x0 series, but as you see, I use AMD, ...& I like it xD...

Cheers...

[DKTronics]

but every Phenom II is ment to go to almost 4.0GHz on air...

Stop spreading bullcrap, back up your posts with FACTS, not fanboy rhetoric.
It really pisses me off no end when I read posts where users need genuine advice on hardware, and a select few replies are nothing more than fanboy nonsense.

To the op, I would personally go with I5.

[Gigabyte]

the i5 is way better than the amd black . go to i5

[Sythedragon]

but every Phenom II is ment to go to almost 4.0GHz on air...

Stop spreading bullcrap, back up your posts with FACTS, not fanboy rhetoric.
It really pisses me off no end when I read posts where users need genuine advice on hardware, and a select few replies are nothing more than fanboy nonsense.

To the op, I would personally go with I5.

He's not wrong though..... They WERE meant to be 4GHZ at air, sadly it's anything from 3.5GHZ +

[Sythedragon]

When I say they were meant to, I mean that's what AMD bigged them up to be.

[Koji]

No... they were not designed or meant to be 4ghz+ or they would be SOLD as such. Almost any phenom II can make 4ghz with enough voltage... but the question would be if it's worth it. I can easily get my CPU to 3.8ghz.. but at 1.55 volts I add 15-20% more energy cost to my system it's not worth it. I have no doubts I could reach 4ghz at 1.75 volts or so... but I'd be hard pressed to get that on air, and even more pressed to be burning another 20% extra energy on a 5% difference in speed.

[Air]

but every Phenom II is ment to go to almost 4.0GHz on air...

Stop spreading bullcrap, back up your posts with FACTS, not fanboy rhetoric.

Agreed, however: To be more specific to rex1825; If you're going to brag that a Phenom 2 can run at 4.0ghz on air, please cite a source other than AMD. AMD is long known to strongly exaggerate the OC capabilities of their CPUs. No "average human" can come anywhere near what they say they've achieved using aftermarket cooling.

[Sythedragon]

No, I mean, they were meant to be be overclockable to 4GHZ, and I disagree about "Shoot enough voltage in". I had 1.65V in mine (Still no higher than 55C before BSOD)..
They'll reach from 3.5GHZ to 3.9GHZ, I've not seen many higher than that stable.

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but every Phenom II is ment to go to almost 4.0GHz on air...

Stop spreading bullcrap, back up your posts with FACTS, not fanboy rhetoric.

Agreed, however: To be more specific to rex1825; If you're going to brag that a Phenom 2 can run at 4.0ghz on air, please cite a source other than AMD. AMD is long known to strongly exaggerate the OC capabilities of their CPUs. No "average human" can come anywhere near what they say they've achieved using aftermarket cooling.

What Air has just said then, is what I was on about, AMD'd said they'd be overclockable to 4GHZ. Which, I believe is what Rex was saying, they WERE meant to be 4GHZ capable, just in practice it failed.

[Air]

No... they were not designed or meant to be 4ghz+ or they would be SOLD as such. Almost any phenom II can make 4ghz with enough voltage... but the question would be if it's worth it. I can easily get my CPU to 3.8ghz.. but at 1.55 volts I add 15-20% more energy cost to my system it's not worth it. I have no doubts I could reach 4ghz at 1.75 volts or so... but I'd be hard pressed to get that on air, and even more pressed to be burning another 20% extra energy on a 5% difference in speed.

Well that can be said of almost any CPU modern, Intel or AMD. I can pump my 2.66ghz C2Quad to 3.63ghz by feeling it ~1.5v or so. But obviously I'm not an idiot, so I don't do that. Plus, OC's that high are rarely stable. Oh sure they're "stable" in the sense that you don't get too many serious internal cpu errors, but in modern computing with advanced operating system memory and disk caches and persistent background network traffic, instability is just plain ungood.

Furthermore, overclocking on any Quad core CPU involves luck. To blindly assume any and all quad Phenom2's can OC to 4ghz stable is an uneducated hack. Reason: It only takes one "bad" core to throw a monkey wrench in your overclocking efforts. Since you have four cores instead of two, the chance of one of the cores being just a little under-grade compared to the other three, and subsequently holding back your max stable OC'ability, is quite a bit higher.

(this is, btw, one of the reasons modern overclocking is so successful -- to cut manufacturing costs, the chip makers have lowered the requirements for stability, since having to junk a 4-core chip just because one core is a dud is costly. So they lower the stock clock speeds, which increases the statistical mean success rate. But it also means that for all the good chips out there with 4 good cores (which is the large majority!) you get pretty sweet OC potential.)