http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/1 [...] index.html

Exciting news about the AMD's new unlocked X2 5000+ Black Edition. Complete with test results and comparisons

So why is this article so thorough and every other article is so shallow lately? Seriously, this is your guys' jobs to do this kind of journalism and you don't do it for a majority of your articles lately. I'm starting to depend on forum members in places for a thorough review of some things.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forum [...] a&t=144199

There's some thorough reviewing right there. It's become a rare occurance nowadays to find something deep enough to put some time aside to read. I just flip through these articles because there's nothing in them.

If anyone gave me some test equipment there'd be quite a laundry list of tests and comparisons done... Shame on you tomshardware!

good game upgrade

Hopefully this is an indication that THG is starting to go back to it's old ways of giving complete, professional articles / reviews.

awesome job, keep up the good work

Good read. Although I did skim through it, it sounds like AMD has a nice chip here. One I would consider building or upgrading with had I not recently build an Intel rig.

I think this article deserves a different title. I'd suggest calling it "The official 'We're not Intel Fanboys' article"

My reasoning: Every other overclocking article since the Core 2's release favors the boys in blue, yet here is a review showing that AMD does have some decent overclocking potential on a 65nm chip. But (IMHO) it makes one ABSOLUTELY UNFORGIVEABLE ERROR, specifically I HATE this paragraph from the first page:

Toms: Please tell me which group you think is bigger:
A) The current owners of AM2 boards, who are considering buying the 5000+ Black Edition and "intend to overclock it - and we mean really overclock it." When a few short months ago AMD's main selling point was lower cost vs Intel's performance, so how many of those buyers do you think are in the "really overclock it" crowd?
B) Everyone else who is interested in overclocking CPUs and wants to see how the new 65nm Black Edition compare to the 65nm Core 2's (or better yet the 45 nm). This includes the people that have no intention to buy anything, but just want to keep track of what's available.

If you think group A is significantly bigger then you wrote the article from the correct viewpoint. But from where I'm sitting I think the article was writen to make Tom's seem a lot friendlier towards AMD. As within a couple of months both companies will release their new CPU's, from the early numbers/reviews I've seen it looks like both will get a similar increase in clock-for-clock performance and overclocking headroom due to the die shrink. If this is the case - all the upcomming reviews will still have Intel in the lead (in both stock and overclocked performace categories). But because I've seen so many accusations on these forums that Tom's in in Intel's pocket, while this review calls this AMD CPU an "ideal choice", I think it was probably written to be cited as an example that Tom's is being fair in their reviews and not only touting Intel's products.

Yes, the pricing of this CPU is below Intel's e6xxx line, but what about the e4400/4500? They are similarly priced and have great overclocking headroom. Did all mention of the 4xxx line get forgotten because it would have moved the results in Intel's favor? What about any previous e6550 overclocking benchmarks - the stock numbers were included and I know you have overclocked benchmarks for both the e4xxx and the e6xxx lines, so why not include them?

As I've said in some other critisims on these forums, no computer hardware exists in a vacuum. So Tom's, the depth of this article is a good start in trying to recapture some of your former glory, but stop putting disclamers and doing uneven comparisons (if your going to use overclocked AMD CPU's, compare them to OC'd Core 2's). When you stack the deck like this, it only makes me question the results and why you did it like this in the first place.

Good article.

How they make the Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 test since it's not supported in vista, in fact, it doesn't run at all.

Good article. Good enough to convince me to consider this over an e2140, and I never thought I'd be getting another AMD chip(well at least not until Phenom actually came out.)

Though before I make the purchase, which will give me better performance overclocked, the 5000+ or the e2140?

Interesting article. I always thought that Tom's should have a regular cpu chart (which they do have) and an over clock chart of the the cpu's. (They could have the charts side by side) Now that would take a lot of time but am sure a lot of people would appreciate it and find it useful. You have to jump around and search and open up a couple pages if you want to try to compare oc benchmarks of cpu's because they are all in different locations and on different pages.

Give the people what they want. Thank you, AMD.

It is never a good idea to deliberately restrict enthusiasts from taking advantage of their ingenuity. It's taken years to get CPU manufacturers to sell chips with unlocked multipliers again.

Would Intel & AMD really have lost business not having locked multipliers to prevent overclocking? I doubt it; they probably lost sales because of it.

Another case in point: Apple with their iPhone firmware debacle. Don't play fun police on your loyal (enthusiastic) customers!

Come on now guys.. This was a good article which gives props to AMD where it is due. It's true that Tom's has been stroking Intel a lot lately, but right now they deserve it. Up until the Core2 I was an AMD only guy mainly because their processors performed better the Intel. Now I'm running the Core2. Its faster and consumes less power, period. I am a still a big fan of AMD and the Black Box was a very creative idea which I'm sure will keep a lot of AMD customers from ditching their AMDs for Intel until they can squeeze out a more competetive processor.

good article, but amd's offering is seemingly obsolete. essentially, you have to overclock the cpu to its max to even come close to the core 2 duo. sure its half the price of the q6600, but future quad core cpu's will eventually blow this black cpu out of its misery when more software can use its threading properly. even the triple core is a good marketing stunt, but the benchies will eventually determine marketing vs. # of cores. if amd doesn't start competing more aggressively, it will lose more than just half a billion this quarter.

It was a good article, but I wish they would have taken an extra time to overclock the 6550 processor. On my E6300 processor, all I had to do was set the FSB to 333MHz (instead of 266), and I got an instant 25% performance boost (2.33GHz instead of 1.86). As an added bonus, my memory (PC2-5300) runs at 1:1 with the FSB. No futzing with voltages, no issues at all for the last 18 months. I don't understand the fuss about this.

This article shows the E6550 getting a 25% overclock while under-volting the processor by 20% (http://www.thetechrepository.com/showthread.php?t=181). Even at stock voltage, they got a 50% overclock.

Clint

This article was paid for by AMD. It's totally biased and takes an absolute pro AMD stance. The only thing AMD processors are good for is for the trash can. In no way such a piece of garbage can beat one of Intels low cost offerings like a PD 925, let alone a core 2 duo. Tom's really went down. It's sad.

Just joking. Given the rampant and mostly idiotic fanatics of both companies roaming the forums, i find it quite interesting that this thread hasn't turned into slugfest with forum members flinging crap at each other while swinging from tree to tree - not to mention the meaningless amount of senseless posts containing nothing but rumors, hearsay, speculation and "flamebait". While I consider myself a tolerant person, it is becoming quite tiresome. Let's see how long it takes to clutter up this thread.

I liked the article, yet i hope Toms didn't write it because they thought people consider the site biased. In addition I hope the articles regarding the upcoming processors (Phenom and Penryn) will be as thorough and well written as this one.
Over the last months there were some articles that were a little off the mark. This is supposed to be a hardware site and, as other already mentioned, i'm not interested in lawn mowers or muscle cars. Lately that focus seems to shift back to where it should be and if that article is any indicator of what is to come i'm quite happy.

Other than that i wish for a big can of "fanboy" repellant - i mean christmas IS coming, right?

If you dont have to mess with the FSB etc. to overclock this puppy, will its expected lifetime be the same as if you didn't oveclock it? From what I've read, overclocked components die quicker...... is this still the case here?

I wonder what would have happened if they went ahead and also tweaked the FSB settings... Why not overclock it like you mean it???

The reason is heat and increase voltage but with this cpu they oc to 3.10 on stock voltage so it's all good.

@caamsa allthough the idea of a OC CPU chart is tempting it has one big flaw, that even chips with the same specs can overclock diffrently.

Just look at the overclocking results from diffrent hardware sites, it's seldom they reach the same speed, and there will allways be some doubt in the ability of the overclocker to get the best out of a processor so making a fair judgement would be hard.


About the article I agree with most that it's nice to see a more thorough review on Toms, I've been missing those!