14 DAY TRIAL // When it comes to overclocking, high-end processors tend to get all the attention, but the truth of the matter is that, once an architecture matures, the low-end chips tend to become the best clockers of the bunch, as one AMD Sempron 145 made it clear recently when an overclocker managed to double its operating frequency and reach 6089MHz.
The Sempron 145 CPU is based on the AMD's Sargas core that was introduced in the second quarter of 2009 to provide a cheap alternative to those users interested in setting up an AM3 system.
Built using the same 45nm manufacturing process as that used for its older brothers, the Sargas core packs 128KB of L1 cache and 1MB of L2 cache, an on-die DDR2/DDR3 memory controller, and has a TDP estimated at 45W.
As for the Sempron 145, the standard clock rate of the CPU is set at 2.8GHz and the HyperTransport link works at 2000MHz.
However, the stock operating frequencies are only the tip of the iceberg as one overclocker managed to push this chip to 6089.9MHz, which translates into an 217% overclock.
To go this high, liquid nitrogen had to be used in order to keep the temperature of the processor down, the improved cooling allowing for the core to be overvolted to 1.88V.
This in turn, enabled the overclocker to set the CPU's bus speed to a more than impressive 435MHz while the HT link was downclocked at 1740MHz in order to keep the system from crushing when running wPrime 32m.
The overclock was achieved by using a Gigabyte MA790X-UD3P motherboard that is based on the 790X chipset released by AMD in 2008.
Until this result reached the Web, the fastest Sempron 145 processors stable enough to run the wPrime 32m benchmarked was clocked at 5446MHz. (via Donanim Haber)
