AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition Overclocking

AMD Phenom Black Edition parts are just now hitting the streets and we should see them on retail shelves very soon. We get our hands on one and take it for a quick spin so you guys will know what to expect from the unlocked Phenom.
Introduction
With a little help from our friends overseas, we were able to get our hands on one of the first retail Phenom 9600 Black Edition Processors available. For those of you that are not in the know, the “Black Edition” processors for AMD have unlocked CPU clock multipliers. Our Phenom 9600 runs at a stock clock of 2.3GHz which is 11.5X200MHz. Being "unlocked," we can change that 11.5 to almost any number we want. We heavily petitioned AMD to deliver a Black Edition Phenom CPU to enthusiasts because we think this is the only way to somewhat satiate brand loyal fans, considering the Phenom’s somewhat disappointing performance out of the gate. When you compare the Phenom to Intel’s Core 2 product line, the parts pull up fairly equal in the mid-2GHz clock range. The Phenom is in no way a bad product, it just so happens that Intel’s Core 2 line simply scales better in terms of clocks and performance. In fact, the Phenom is a very good processor, it just simply is not the "best." There will be many Phenoms finding their way into enthusiast cases simply due to the fact that Phenoms can be found inexpensively, they have tremendously stable infrastructure behind them, and are showing to overclock very well. And AMD is letting us do it easily with the Black Edition Phenom.
Phenom Black Edition
The unlocked Black processors from AMD have something going for them that we do not often see, and that is the unlocked feature is being sold at no extra charge. AMD charges the same amount of money for the 2.3GHz BE Phenom PIB (Processor in a Box) as it does the 2.3GHz Phenom PIB with a locked multiplier. Hopefully we will see solid supply of these parts so that we do not see demand inflate the retail prices.
Overclocking
You might be saying to yourself, “Kyle, we don’t need a friggin’ unlocked processor. We have been getting around that for years.” The fact is that you do this time. We have now had four different Phenom processors through our hands and none will reliably overclock the CPU bus more than 10%. On the current retail 9600 BE that I have been testing with, we found a ceiling of 212MHz before failure, and that was with tweaked vCore and northbridge voltages.
AMD’s Overdrive application is second to none in the world of software overclocking tools. It is easily used inside of Windows to overclock your BE processor. You can control northbridge and CPU voltages easily while also toggling your CPU’s multiplier. It also has a built in stress test that will help you find the processors overclocking limits as well.
As you can see above, we were able to get a very stable 700MHz of overclocking headroom (3GHz) out of our Black Edition Phenom 9600 running for over 14 hours at full load on all four cores. Out of the four Phenom samples that we have used, one would do 2.8GHz, one would do 2.9GHz, and two would clock to 3GHz reliably. Running this retail processor on air cooling, we could achieve a stable 2.8GHz as well and even get it to run at 3GHz, just not under a 100% load across all four cores.
The Bottom Line
The retail AMD Phenom Black Edition processors look to have just as much overclocking appeal as our engineering samples if not more. 3GHz from what will hopefully be a $240 quad-core processor is nothing to sneeze at. For you AMD brand loyalists, or if you are just an enthusiast looking to head down the road less traveled, the Phenom Black Edition is the AMD processor you want. And let's be clear, if you want to experiment with overclocking on the Phenom, the Black Edition is the only Phenom that is likely going to meet your needs.