Two factors make overclocking headroom for the new AMD CPU limited. For one, the processor is the highest clocked Athlon 64 X2 processor in commerce, meaning that AMD has already pushed the processor to its limit. In addition, the fact that the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ is manufactured using a 90nm makes it even tougher to have high overclocking hopes for the processor. Please also keep in mind that overclocking capabilities usually vary chip to chip. Although we might be able to reach high overclocks with some of our chips, there is no guarantee that another would perform exactly the same.

The maximum frequency our engineering sample reached in the overclocking tests was 3.255 GHz. We reached this frequency by increasing the bus frequency to 217 MHz and keeping the multiplier at its default 15x. To maintain system stability at this level, the operation required a very slight overvolt. As our tests confirm, the overclocking headroom on Athlon 64 6000+ processors is rather limited, primarily because of the 90nm manufacturing process.