O
ur last foray with an Overdrive PC
left us believing that these guys
are technically profi cient, exceed-
ingly hardcore, and just plain nuts. The
Core2.GX2 only reaffi rms that opinion. The
2.4GHz Core 2 Duo E6600 is easily the low-
est-clocked CPU of all the systems in this
roundup, but Overdrive manages to goose
the 2.4GHz by 1GHz—using air cooling, no
less. We’re talking a stock heatsink.
Some vendors can’t manage that kind
of clock boost with water or phase-change
cooling. But that’s what we’ve come to expect
from this company that clearly loves to tinker
with hardware.
Still, we’re skeptical that tinkering alone
is the reason behind the dramatic overclock.Our guess is that Overdrive is in the habit of
binning CPUs, looking for chips that can be
pushed to extremes. For every 3.46GHz Core
2 Duo the company turns out, it probably had
to buy four others that don’t make the cut.This strategy
isn’t cheap and the
trade-offs show up
in the confi g. While
some of the other
vendors here give
you two Radeon
X1950 XTX cards,
an X-Fi soundcard,
150GB Raptors,
and even RAID,
there’s nothing like
that here. In fact,
open the cavern-
ous Cooler Master
CMStacker 830 and
you can almost hear an echo bounce off the
lonely 250GB Seagate SATA drive, Sony DVD
burner, and single GeForce 7950 GX2. Hell,
we haven’t seen this many free PCI slots
since 1998! Although, to be fair, we must
point out that the 7950 GX2 pulls double
duty via its two GPUs—Overdrive pushes the
card from the stock 500MHz/1,200MHz DDR
speeds to 600MHz /1,550MHz.
We certainly can’t ding the Core2.
GX2 on performance. In applications,
the 3.46GHz Core 2 Duo lays down the
law—none of the other six players even
come close to this rig’s numbers. Only in
Photoshop CS2 does the Core2.GX2 take
a backseat, losing to the Gateway and
Polywell rigs. Why? Our lengthy Photoshop
CS2 action script hits the hard drive as well
as the CPU, so it’s not surprising that the
Core2.GX2’s single 250GB Seagate drive
loses to the two systems that sport dual
10,000rpm Raptor 150 drives.
In gaming, the Core2.GX2 does well,
but Overdrive’s gamble wasn’t a totally
winning strategy. The company bet that
the OC’d GX2 would trample any GeForce
7950 GT SLI confi guration in our midrangeroundup, and it does. But the company
didn’t anticipate ATI’s Radeon X1950 XTX
CrossFire cards, which manage to wrangle
the top scores in Company of Heroes,
Quake 4, and 3DMark06’s Deep Freeze
test. The Core2.GX2 comes back in FEAR
1.07, however. But because this roundup
isn’t about applications and being No. 2,
Overdrive’s machine was looking like sec-
ond fi ddle to Cyber Power’s rig until the
latter’s wonky behavior gave us the willies.
In the end, we have to hand it to the
Core2.GX2. As nutty-overclocked as it is,
the machine withstood a 24-hour burn-in
test without a hitch and its benchmarking
performance was free of hiccups.
We’re not sure how happy the
Overdrive folks will be about backing in
to a victory, but, hey, a win is a win. And
consumers come out ahead because the
company assures us it will be able to ship,
and warranty, systems with the same con-
fi guration and clock speeds.THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN 777 7777 777
MAXIMUMPC DECEMBER 2006
9
CORE2.GX
$2,500, http://www.overdrivepc.comOverdrive Core2.GX
Overdriven and overclocked Core 2 puts this PC at the top
The burly CMStacker 830 case can
make any PC seem macho.HOW OVERDRIVE SPENT $2,
Amazingly, Overdrive hit 3.46GHz with its Core 2 Duo chip without
resorting to water-cooling.CPU/MOBO 22%
STORAGE 3.4%GRAPHICS 20% OTHER 54.6%