AMD Sets Guinness World Record for CPU Frequency

[Rob Williams]

Overclocking-wise, AMD unfortunately hasn't been the first choice by many for some time, though the company has continually been producing the best parts it can, evidenced by the fact that there's never been a Black Edition far from reach. Could things turn around with the help of the company's upcoming Bulldozer line-up? If a new world record is a hint, then yes.

Read the rest of our post and then discuss it here!

 

[Kougar]

Very, very impressive.

But still... I can't help but remember what chips were the best extreme overclockers before this... Netburst chips. Until now Netburst based Celerons had held the all-time overclock record, and all the top 5 spots.... the longer the pipeline, the better the clockspeed potential. And longer pipelines isn't always better, as Netburst well proved...

 

[Rob Williams]

Very, very impressive.

Well what impresses me most is that fact that this was done with an eight-core processor. AFAIK, the Celeron record before it was a single core.

 

[Kougar]

That's exactly it. I wouldn't even pay attention to this except that it WAS an eight core...

Just think about it. Intel has always held an advantage in processor fabrication, yet despite the better overclockability of Core 2 Duo chips only cut down Netburst Celerons ever came anywhere close to this. Pipeline length was a huge part of it, but the architecture itself, ie the core, was also much simplified compared to a Core i7...

Here, maybe this underscores my point. The top 100 highest CPU frequency scores are ALL Netburst Pentiums/Celerons. Not a single AMD chip, not a single "Core" or "Nehalem" architecture.

Except for this one AMD processor at the very top. To do such a feat with an eight-core processor either means AMD made sure to use tons of extra gallium in the fabrication, or the core design had long enough pipelines and the architecture was simplified enough to handle the absurd frequencies. Neither possibly I view as a good thing for AMD. There are reasons why a Core i7 will never be physically capable of attaining such speeds.

 

[GFreeman]

What is that very reason.. Absurd power use..? Much higher risk of killing the CPU compared to these Netburst Celeron chips? Risks like that? My goodness though.. that's some insane frequencies on that AMD chip!

 

[Optix]

What is that very reason.

e-peen.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/e-penis

 

[Kougar]

Actually, I would like to add that I had read they used LN2... but only just found out halfway into the overclocking they pulled out casks of liquid helium to actually achieve this result. I find it much easier to believe knowing they used liquid helium, there isn't a colder substance known to mankind left to actually use. All I can say, is that I guess Bulldozer doesn't have cold bug problems