AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Review

Page 2 - AMD OverDrive 3, Black Edition Memory Profiles

AMD are the only company supporting their own overclock software at some level. NVIDIA had an attempt with ESA and System Tools, which did not attract proper attention, and while there was some talk about an Intel solution, it never came to be. We had discussed AMD OverDrive and its plentiful options settings before, and indeed by plentiful we mean almost BIOS equivalent ones.

AMD OverDrive works with AM2/AM2+/AM3 AMD motherboards from the 780 and 790 series. The current version (ver. 3) of the software is the next step along its way since the initial release of the concept in 2007. Some of the more significant additions are Black Edition Memory Profiles and Smart Profiles, which we'll discuss in details later on.

Black Edition Memory Profiles

When talking about Black Edition Memory Profiles (BEMP) some of you might remember Intel XMP and NVIDIA EPP/EPP2. As whole BEMP is a software solution (using AMD OverDrive 3), working only with Black Edition AMD processors. Each manufacturer supplying quality modules compatible with the AM3 platform can attept to certify them and thus benefit from the use of BEMP with them. In short BEMP memory is an overclock modules capable of operating at a frequency higher than the normal for the particular processor. BEMP works through Internet - AMD OverDrive 3 connects and checks if your memory is BEMP certified and should that is so - runs the module at its maximum frequency.

So, for example - AMD Phenom II 955 BE is intended to work with DDR3 1333MHz memory and in the initial booting of the machine consisting of ASUS M4A79T Deluxe motherboard and Corsair 2x2GB XMS3 memory modules, they ran at 1333MHz, but since they were one of the first modules certified by this technology, once we activated Black Edition Memory Profiles they ran at 1600MHz 9-9-9-24 - exactly according to Corsair specifications. Even more, not only the memory frequency got a boost, the frequency of the memory controller was also automatically raised from 2GHz to 2.4GHz, which by itself alone is a hefty performance bonus!

The best thing is that as whole BEMP is rather simple system and the only thing the software really downloads from the net is a XML file containing the specifications and how much to overclock instructions. The more advanced users amongst you can can easily open one such XML file and set whatever values they please.

Smart Profiles

The other significant new thing about the renewed AMD OverDrive software are the "smart" profiles. More or less Smart Profiles is a system for dynamic overclock according to the application using the processor. For example you might play a game that uses no more than two of the processor threads (i.e. uses only two cores). You find that the processor is stable with a overclock of the first two cores at 3.5GHz, and the rest left unchanged at 3.2GHz or even lowered to 3GHz, while it is unstable should all cores are running at 3.5GHz. In this case you just select the executable file of the application (or game) through AMD OverDrive and set particular values, specific for it.

This is a good idea in fact, but some more options could be desired. It is likely that in the future this AMD OverDrive section will become more interesting and will apply to more of the daily used applications.