After seeing so many benchmarks and numbers, we proceed to interesting overclocking tests. The AMD Phenom Black Edition series promise extreme overclocking with not much hassle, provided you have the proper motherboard.

Partially that's true. The unlocked CPU multiplier allows you to increase the processor speed without making any special adjustments to other components.

AMD offers a free overclocking/tweaking utility for Windows users called "AMD Overdrive". The latest version allows you to adjust the settings of the motherboard, memory and CPU.

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Since the CPU multiplier can be adjusted, we managed to get 200 x15.5 = 3.10GHz. However, you will need to increase the Vcore voltage in order to get a stable system. In our case we pumped it at ~1.47V, which produces enough heat (~55 degrees Celsius) to be handled from the stock fan. You should probably need to get a bigger cooling solution like the Scythe Mugen (with two 120mm fans).

Enabling the Advanced Clock Calibration also helps you get higher clocks and stability. We had to manually adjust the Vcore since the Gigabyte motherboard didn't offer that option under Windows. No further manual adjustments were needed to get the system stable.

Compared with the Intel processors, the AMD's overclocking margin was somewhat lower (+500MHz) than the Intel Q9300's. An overclocked Intel CPU can reach the 900MHz+, which actually has a positive impact on the performance.