In order to get a good idea of how effective this processor is, we took a look at the systems performance overall. To get the most effective benchmark results, we monitored the systems status with no overclocking and with overclocked settings. The specifications of the system in non overclocked mode as well in overclocked mode can be seen below.

As the above settings show, the Conroe is highly overclockable with the right cooling. As impressive as the above table shows, we still have to take one more factor into consideration. This factor is the heat generated by this increase in performance, which can be a computers downfall. In our setup we have nothing to worry about as it is watercooled and the temperatures generated in our setup were:

In order to get the system to run fully loaded we used a program called Prime 95. This program has the ability to use 100% of your processor and test how it performs under such tight conditions. Because the Conroe is a Dual core processor we ran 2 instances of Prime 95 to fully utilise the entire processor. At the same time we run 3dmark05 on full settings to completelly load the GPUs and simulate those long and intense hours of gameplay. This not only lets us know if there are instabilities with our settings but also gives us an indication of temperature tolerances. In this instance we found the system runs stable and as the results above show rather cool too considering the settings used.