In Part 1 we took a look at the components used in this analysis and the reasoning behind it. If you read the conclusion, you must have been excited at the little overclocking teaser that I left there. In this part, we are going to cover the overclocking in detail on this platform and take a look at the performance. The tests have been carefully selected to represent some of the most widely used synthetic benchmarks such as Everest, 3DMark and gaming benchmarks.

In this part, I will be testing the following configurations as far as the gaming tests go

• AMD Athlon II X2 250 @3.0 GHz    +  HD 4650 512MB GDDR3 600/667 MHz   @ 1280×1024
• AMD Athlon II X2 250 @3955 MHz +  HD 4650 512MB GDDR3 770/955 MHz   @ 1280×1024  (Overclocked Configuration)
• AMD Athlon II X2 250 @3.0 GHz    +  HD 4770 512MB GDDR5 750/800 MHz   @ 1280×1024
• AMD Athlon II X2 250 @3.0 GHz    +  HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 750/900 MHz   @ 1280×1024 & 1920×1200
• AMD Athlon II X2 250 @3.0 GHz    +  HD 4890 1GB     GDDR5 925/1050 MHz @ 1280×1024 & 1920×1200 (HD 4890 is Diamond XOC version)

The reasoning behind only testing the HD 4870 and the HD 4890 at a high resolution like 1920×1200 is that the power in these cards is limited by the CPU at a low resolution like 1280×1024. In some of the games, the GPU is not even being used 100%. So if you are going to spend money on such beefy cards, it is wise to invest in a higher resolution monitor. Additionally other cards used in this analysis won’t be able to provide a smooth experience at such a high resolution.

Here are the GPU-Z shots of all the video cards used in the above configurations:

Here at ABT, we believe in delivering the cleanest results to the best of our ability. As a result, I will be adding videos of gaming benchmarks running on the CPU + GPU overclocked configuration to show proof of what this low cost platform can do when overclocked. Another new feature that I am adding is a screenshot from Rivatuner showing the CPU and GPU usage while the benchmark is running. This comes in addition to the standard bar graph and line graphs that I feature in my reviews. All these extra features take a lot of time to make so I hope you appreciate them. Please leave a comment or suggestion even if you don’t like them.

We are using Catalyst 9.7 for testing. The CPU cooler used is Zerotherm Nirvana 120mm.

Let’s move on to taking a look at the BIOS settings on the GIGABYTE’s MA770T-UD3P.