Tuesday, September 13th 2011
AMD FX Sets Guinness Record for Clock Speed
Weeks ahead of its market launch, AMD pulled off a nice PR feat by setting making its trusty squad of overclockers, Sami Mäkinen, Brian Mclachlan, Pete Hardman, and Aaron Schradin set a new clock speed world record (as in Guinness World Record). With just one of its four modules enabled, the eight-core FX-8150 engineering sample was overclocked to a stunning 8429.38 MHz. The chip was able to tolerate a brutal core voltage of 2.016V. Even for a one-in-a-million cherry-picked chip, those are staggering numbers.
8429.38 MHz was achieved using a base clock of 271.92 MHz, with 31.0X multiplier. The memory used was a Corsair Dominator GT single module, which apparently tolerated 3:10 DRAM ratio and timings of 2-16-2-22. That's right, 2-16-2-22. ASUS Crosshair V Formula seated the platform. Cooling was care of a custom liquid-nitrogen evaporator setup. The team used liquid nitrogen as its cooling medium, and switched to liquid helium halfway, which has a lower boiling point. The team cherry-picked chips from the best lots on-site.
A video of the feat follows.
This feat was more of a hit-and-run, in which the system could run at the desired frequency stable enough to make a CPU-Z validation, no proper stability testing was done. AMD claims that frequencies over 5.00 GHz were possible using sub-$100 cooling solutions (now that can be anything between a high-end heatsink and a cheap closed-loop liquid cooler). AMD did a similar overclocking feat ahead of its Phenom II processor launch.
Source:
Overclockers.com
8429.38 MHz was achieved using a base clock of 271.92 MHz, with 31.0X multiplier. The memory used was a Corsair Dominator GT single module, which apparently tolerated 3:10 DRAM ratio and timings of 2-16-2-22. That's right, 2-16-2-22. ASUS Crosshair V Formula seated the platform. Cooling was care of a custom liquid-nitrogen evaporator setup. The team used liquid nitrogen as its cooling medium, and switched to liquid helium halfway, which has a lower boiling point. The team cherry-picked chips from the best lots on-site.
This feat was more of a hit-and-run, in which the system could run at the desired frequency stable enough to make a CPU-Z validation, no proper stability testing was done. AMD claims that frequencies over 5.00 GHz were possible using sub-$100 cooling solutions (now that can be anything between a high-end heatsink and a cheap closed-loop liquid cooler). AMD did a similar overclocking feat ahead of its Phenom II processor launch.
225 Comments on AMD FX Sets Guinness Record for Clock Speed
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Ok.. we get it. :pOMG That is sig worthy!
Corrected! :p
Some people, albeit a tiny minority are excited about this though.
First of all they need a design which they can improve (they don't have the money to make new designs all the time like Intel does) and a design where you can gain performance by increasing frequency and by doing small improvements (which are cheap!).
Second: a CPU to compete with mid-range CPU's (2500k for an example) because that's where the money is and not high-end $1k chips.
While doing all of that why not break a WR? I don't see a problem with this, are you all jealous of those clocks?
I think it's a nice way to promote the chip and don't see anything wrong with it.
All of those whining about that they only used 2 core...well did you even take a look at the current top 20 list? I guess not, so here you go: hwbot.org/benchmark/cpu_frequency/
Weird isn't it, all those celerons....
When you are after a frequency world record you do not care about the number of core (it is pointless...) all you care is the maximum you can get out of the CPU, that's how freq. WR's are set just deal with it.
Here comes the more important part:
This WR may be pointless to some but then again it shows just how much clock potential the CPU has for future (and this is only the beginning!).
Just like the first Phenom II's that barely made it to 6.4GHz on LN2 but at the end they got all the way up to 7.4GHz (and you could see that frequency increase on stock frequency at the same TDP).
If you think all of this is pointless, well you are on the wrong forum...
I could be wrong on this one but as far as I know JF-AMD said that IPC increases compared to the current Phenom II's, and if you combine that IPC increase with a much higher clock potential, isn't that a win?
So multithreaded applications will benefit from these new chips, single threaded applications will require a higher frequency than the competitive Intel chip to attain the same performance. Single threaded apps currently are going the way of the dodo, and those still in use can be ran effectively by older processor, meaning current gen processors have more than enough to run them fine.
So at the end of the day, what does this mean?
I will take a overclockable 5+Ghz 8 core chip that offers superior performance than a 4 core hyper-threading chip, and does it at a lower price any day. Especially when the whole platform costs less than the equivalent platform from Intel.
I think everyone should be happy with performance that is close to 2500k-2600k at same/lower price. I mean look how much behind SB Phenom II is...they are really doing a massive leap in performance to come close to it (everyone is comparing the FX chips to SB but no one compares them to Phenom II).
However I do find it funny how defensive people get of one brand showing off something that couldn't count for less against another brand. I had no idea this forum was so eat up with fanboys. To much new blood.
This post made me lol
www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2393800&postcount=2
Thats EXACTLY how it should be taken.
Peop,e are completely missing the point it shows the FX could (possibly) iverclock better than the 2600K but intel fanboys just shuddered in thier pants at this news
If it overclocks to 60 GHz, but is slower than the 2600k, does it matter that it can hit 60 GHz?
NOPE.
This event should have been saved for the launch, IMHO, and that's MY personal issue with it. Again, AMD marketing missed out on a golden oppotunity. Done right, they could have sold a CPU to every single person at the event, but htey cannot, beucase the CPU is still unreleased.
Great, a CPU that can set records...that isn't even for sale yet. I'd open up my wallet...but there's no point. And if htere's no point in me opening my wallet, there's no point in this news, IMHO.
Don't get me wrong though, it's good to see high clocks.
Of course, you also need to keep in mind that Guinness also has a record for the longest nipple hair. Yeah, that's where I want to be, next to the dude with the world's longest nipple hair!