AMD 5000+ Black Edition AM2 X2 Processor Review

Testing:

Testing of the 5000+ BE will be performed by running our suite of system tests as well as gaming benchmarks and real world play to gauge the performance of the CPU. The omission of Intel comparison benchmarks is obvious since right now Intel is the speed king. We will rather test to see if there are any benefits to running the lower clocked 2.6 GHz 5000+ with 512KB per core L2 Cache vs. the 3.0 GHz 6000+ with 1MB per core L2 Cache.

Testing Setup:

• AMD Athlon64 Processor 6000+
• AMD 5000+ Black Edition AM2 X2 Processor
• ECS A770M-A (BIOS dated 12/17/07, Chipset drivers provided on CD)
• Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB PC2-9200 DDR2-1150MHz
• OCZ Vendetta CPU Cooler
• PowerColor HD2600 PRO (Catalyst 7.11)
• Antec NeoPower 650W
• 1x250GB Maxtor SATA
• 2x400GB Seagate SATA
• Thermaltake Shark Full Tower Case
• Plextor PX-716SA 16X DVD RW SATA
• HL 4164B 16X DVD RW IDE
• Windows XP Professional SP2
• PowerColor Theatre 550 PCIe 1x

Overclocking:

Overclocking the 5000+ Black Edition couldn't be easier. Head into the BIOS and start the upward climb of the multiplier. Of course, for total system enhancement, you will want to adjust the memory and HTT as well, but for this review we will just be dealing with the CPU and increasing the multiplier to test the performance of the CPU. Highest benchmark stable clock was 16x200MHz at 1.4V for a CPU speed of 3200MHz. The other benefit is that with the 16x multiplier, the RAM divider is 8 and allows the memory to be run at 400. The 5000+ was able to boot into Windows at 16.5x200MHz at 1.5V but was not benchmark stable. I believe the motherboard was the bottleneck as there were no voltage adjustments other than CPU and Memory. With a little push on the HTT voltage, it should have been stable.

Benchmarks:

• Scientific & Data:

1. Apophysis
2. WinRAR
3. SpecviewPerf 10
4. PCMark05 Professional
5. Sandra XII
6. ScienceMark 2.02 Final
7. Cinebench 10
8. HD Tune 2.54

• Video:

1. F.E.A.R
2. Bioshock
3. Call of Duty 4
4. Quake 4
5. Need for Speed: Most Wanted
6. 3DMark 06
7. Crysis