Midrange CPU Roundup: It's Time to Buy

Changing the Game: Overclocking

Although AMD is unusually competitive in the mainstream segment, it's a whole new ballgame once you take overclocking into account. The type of overclocking we're talking about here is very mild, using nothing more than stock coolers and not pushing voltages too high. The goal is getting more bang for your buck without sacrificing stability or increasing the price; we're trying to see how much you can really get from these ultra-affordable CPUs. Our table of overclocks is listed below:

Overclocking Results (Stock HSF)
CPU	Stock Clock	Overclock	Percentage
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+	2.6GHz	2.86GHz	10%
AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350	2.1GHz	2.41GHz	14.70%
Intel Core 2 Duo E4500	2.2GHz	3.12GHz	41.80%
Intel Pentium E2160	1.8GHz	3.02GHz	67.70%
Intel Pentium E2140	1.6GHz	2.69GHz	68.10%

You can see that the AMD chips overclock a bit but nowhere near as well as the Intel CPUs. Intel has a slightly deeper pipeline which allows it to reach higher clock speeds somewhat easier; the rest of the headroom may simply be due to advantages in Intel's 65nm process over AMD's. Remember that Intel has been manufacturing 65nm CPUs for much longer than AMD, thus having had more time to fine tune the process to maximize clock speed and minimize thermals.

We ran a single benchmark to showcase the improvement you'd get from these simple overclocks (at least in CPU limited situations). The benchmark we chose was our WME9 test, which is fairly close between AMD and Intel to begin with, giving both a fair starting point prior to overclocking:


Here's the problem: the fastest AMD CPU we tested gets around 45 fps in our WME test, while the cheapest Intel CPU when overclocked gets 51 fps. There's no simpler way of putting it: if you take overclocking into account, there's just no way to even consider the AMD CPUs. With the Pentium E2140 and 2160 boasting 65%+ overclocks, their performance reaches levels greater than the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (and some of the faster Athlon X2 CPUs as well).