AMD FX Sets Guinness Record for Clock Speed

[btarunr]

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.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[btarunr]

 

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

Meh, good to see it doesn't have a cold bug, but not much here to be excited about.

 

[EarthDog]

LOL at the salt mine...

Anyhoo, memory timings were (obviously?) not showing up correct.

 

[sunil]

World record? who cares show us some benchmarks and true performance.

 

[johnnyfiive]

Pretty awesome feat no doubt.
I still want to see real world numbers.

 

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

World record? who cares show us some benchmarks and true performance.

Gotta agree, more over they were engi samples not consumer chips, if it's so close to launch why not use consumer chips ?

 

[_JP_]

That's great! Really, it is.
But there's still a problem with it.



It isn't available in stores!



Fix that and I will be happy.

 

[Shihab]

Just a little bit after the pre-order prices came out. Hmmm, a publicity stunt, a good one, and an impressive achievement. But I'm still sceptic about their performance.

 

[Crap Daddy]

That's great! Really, it is.
But there's still a problem with it.



It isn't available on stores!



Fix that and I will be happy.

That's why it's not available in stores. They used all the chips to find the one that can do 8+ GHz!

 

[Sihastru]

They forgot to put in the other "six" "cores". Some of the wooden screws must've gotten loose... Since it's the eight-core FX-8150 engineering sample, 1 CPU, 2 cores, 2 threads.... Not valid.

 

[newtekie1]

It's like Intel when they couldn't get good performance, so they just started breaking clock speed records with the P4...

 

[WarraWarra]

LOL

FX to hit 8.429 GHz, besting the old record of 8.308 GHz. How well the system would actually perform under those conditions was left unexplored

So it can run 121mhz faster than last record okay.

If they LNC'd the memory + north bridge / south bridge they could have done more ?
Why the did not try remains a mystery.
Maybe they planned to fail and only reach 121mhz higher ?

I wonder if this FX also suffers from Intel cold / flu when Intel i7 reaches 18C or lower and starts to work worse than above 18C or something like that.

 

[inferKNOX]

Fix that and I will be happy.

Or will you? (considering we're still waiting for RL performance figures)

 

[_JP_]

They forgot to put in the other "six" "cores". Some of the wooden screws must've gotten loose... Since it's the eight-core FX-8150 engineering sample, 1 CPU, 2 cores, 2 threads.... Not valid.

AMD bashing with a side of nVidia? That's a new combo (in my book). Interesting to see, now take your fanboi business elsewhere.

Or will you? (considering we're still waiting for RL performance figures)

Given that, if it were available in stores, hence anybody could buy it, I could expect benchmarks shortly after.
I would be happy, yes. Not because this might be my future processor choice, but because I could stop waiting and buy something and not feel bad about it 3 days later.

 

[Breathless]

You guys are completely missing the point (facepalm)

 

[Yellow&Nerdy?]

"AMD" and "Overclocking record" in the same sentence? Haven't heard that in quite a while. Now they just need to START SELLING THEM.

 

[Breathless]

"AMD" and "Overclocking record" in the same sentence? Haven't heard that in quite a while

This is the point. Not sure why everyone is making a big stink about selling them, that is never the case with the products of overclocking records. Its JUST FOR FUN.

 

[Sihastru]

It's not bashing, it's observing a few inconsistencies. Is it not true that most of the chip is disabled? Is it not true that it says there on the validation page "2 cores, 2 threads"?

Wooden screws can be used in many instances, nVidia does not hold the IP on those. A "fanboi" would be someone blinded by their infatuation, 2 out of 8 is just 25%, and that's a big difference.

Wasn't AMD that complained recently about "dark silicon"? ( <== now that's bashing)

 

[EarthDog]

Thats how they do it Sihastru (CPUz clockspeed records)...you disable cores to achieve the highest clockspeed. Its obviously not for 24/7 clocks considering that as well as the cooling method. Put it in a bit of perspective men.

I wonder if this FX also suffers from Intel cold / flu when Intel i7 reaches 18C or lower and starts to work worse than above 18C or something like that.

Obviously not considering they used Lhe to cool the processor.

 

[bpgt64]

Really could care less....Whats stupid is we've seen benchmarks from the LGA 2011 lineup before we've seen Bulldozer's performance level. All signs indicate that this is intentionally done because of lack luster performance.

TLDR; Doesn't matter if it does 5Ghz on air, if it gets beat by a stock i7 2600k it's pointless.

 

[Sihastru]

Hey man, good for them, but the story has gone viral, and these details have already been lost. And that's where the Devil lives, in the details...

 

[Thefumigator]

Good for AMD

 

[ensabrenoir]

Oh man!!!!! Bulldozer just stomped all over intel celerons!!!! I'm going to stand in line .....somewhere!

 

[Completely Bonkers]

Er, how is revving your 50cc motorbike/vespa to breaking point anything of interest. Seriously, if they had all 8 cores blowing and stable with world record benchmark numbers, then that would be worth noting. This isnt. Q. Can it run minesweeper? A. No.

Message to these boys: Listen. If you want to be a geeky nerd, fine. But do something to impress us. Don't have a camera focused on yourself like you are doing something that will put us in awe. When it didn't. Fail. Even bigger fail to AMD that thinks this is worthy. Corporate Fail. (And that's even worse!)