AMD Thunderbird & Duron Overclocking Revealed

If we were to say that we were successful overclocking our two Durons and our three Thunderbirds we would be lying -- we were more than just successful.  Our 700MHz Durons both hit 950MHz without a hitch, and they could both hit 900MHz without even increasing the core voltage past the 1.5v default.  Combining this with Tom’s success with his four Durons at 950MHz and Hiroji’s success with his Duron 600 at 900MHz, we can predict that most Durons should be able to hit 900 – 950MHz without much effort at all.

We tried overclocking our Durons to 1GHz and it simply wouldn’t work, even after boosting the core voltage to 1.850v; 950MHz was seemingly the highest we could go, which still isn’t bad for a sub $150 CPU. 

Our 1GHz Athlon (Copper) hit 1.1GHz at its default core voltage setting as well, 1150MHz was too high for it to cope with but a 10% overclock isn’t bad at all. 

We also tried out an OEM Athlon 700 which was also able to hit 950MHz without increasing its core voltage any over the standard 1.70v it was set to run at.  Once again, trying to shoot for 1GHz proved to be futile as the CPU wasn’t stable at that speed. 

Combined with our experiences with the Duron as well as the Austin made (Aluminum) Thunderbird parts, it seems like there is a reason that all 1GHz Thunderbirds are using Copper interconnects and are thus being made in AMD’s Dresden plant.