AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane 1.9Ghz

[Rudster816]

Ok most of you know by now have heard of this guy. The new Brisbane core was introduced in Febuary of 2007 from AMD being there new 65nm lineup. These were not meant to compete with the high end Core 2 Duo's but the mid-low end market. They did just that.

When deciding to buy this CPU there was on thing that meant the most the me, price. This is the cheapest AMD dual core out to date. One reason i chose this over the low end Pentium D's was because that according to what i had read it could overclock very well. Overclocking is a very good way to save money. Since most people who overclock use aftermarket coolers(like me) i bought the OEM version of the product, CPU only. I bought a Arctic Cooler Pro and Arctic Silver 5. All tempetures reflect that. The CPU alone only cost me 65$(now 59$) and i also got a free Rainbow Six:Vegas OEM CD from Newegg.

After I put it in and booted it up it worked fine no problems. Not unusal for a CPU. After letting the AS5 set in i started to raise the FSB in my BIOS. I have the nVidia nForce 4 Ultra chipset. The first obstacle i hit was at 253mhz FSB(2.4Ghz) a simple lowering of the HT level fixed that. The higher i went the more V core it took. Which you need a lot of to get this little guy up there. My finale overclock looks like this:

2.7Ghz
284Mhz FSB
9.5x Muliplier<<<LOCKED
852Mhz HyperTransport
1.42 V Core
2.250 V Memory
1.74 V Chipset

Stressed for over 6 hours of 2 instances of Prime 95. Still running now.

This proves this CPU can really overclock well even on a 65$ motherboard and 45$ Ram.

Overall this is the best value CPU ever. For 59$ and a cooler you can get a CPU(with overclocking) that can compete with stock entry level Core 2 Duo's. Amazing to say the least. The only thing thing that this CPU lacks compared to the Core 2 Duos is L2 Cache. It houses 2x512KB L2 cache compared the the 4MB of current Core 2 Duo's. But it does house 2x64KB L1 Cache(32KB data, 32KB code).

The temputer is also very low compared to other dual core CPU's. While idle i run at 20c(overclocked) and 38c under load(2 instances of Prime 95)

65nm, 65 watts, 65$.

I got one hell of a CPU.

[Rudster816]

[troy]

hmmm. I'm seriously considering building an AMD dual core system, I don't have the extra cash for a C2D system, and the AMD X2 processor is more than enough for what I use my system for. This is a great review, although I'll probably go for the AMD Athlon X2 3800 or higher. These processors will definitely out do my Pentium 4 which is a good processor for my needs but I need something with a bit more power for multitasking.

[Rudster816]

ive reached 5200+ speeds overclocking on a 30$ cooler and a cheap motherboard no reason you coulndt do the same