AMD Breaks Overclocking Record, Leaves the Competition in the Dust

Case fans are indeed footer. If you're at all serious almost smashing the mankind record for the highest recorded clock speed connected a processor, you're releas to need cutting edge hardware, loads of ingeniousness, and the experience of mankind class overclockers. Having heavy tanks of liquid helium lying about can't possibly hurt, either. With a bit of persistence they managed to wrangle a hit a big 8.429GHz, topping the previous record of 8.308GHz.

AMD's upcoming FX processor–codenamed Bulldozer–is poised to be their most stately computer hardware up to now. Of flow from I send away't tell you wherefore, on business relationship of these vexing non-disclosure agreements. But piece I was in Austin a a couple of weeks ago being ready-made privy to all way of top-orphic data points, AMD's overclocking-sideshow gave us a taste of what the new CPUs are capable of.

Tanks of liquid helium. Makes great (if a little immoderate) PC coolant!

We've covered the Immigration and Naturalization Service-and-outs of overclocking here at PCWorld in the past. In a nutshell, it's a reconciliation act: apply emf to improve time speed (and thus operation), while beating back the ensuing heat.

If you're indication this on a PC, there's a good chance the heating plant being generated by your C.P.U. is being beingness relieved by a network of cooling fans in your desktop or laptop. If you're a member of the savvier go down, you may have opted for a liquid cooled system.

The impassioned (heh) wonder: how far will these rising CPUs fling? You can't merely duck the CPUs in freeze liquids, or risk destroying them. And conventional methods will only take you so far. Extreme overclockers get creative.

This little experimentation is advisable unsuccessful of the realm of we mere mortals. As with any manufacturing process, there's a bit of variation between individual CPUs. Pro-overclockers Brian Mchlachlan and Sami Maekinen spent the week prior sampling a large batch of Dozer processors, looking chips that performed amicably at increased voltages.

And with fusible helium running at about $5 per liter, the tanks that AMD had on hand for their testing look to cost (and I'm guesstimating here) Ridiculous dollars, in front cargo ships and treatment charges.

The overclockers designed a custom housing to maximize the amount of liquid coming into contact with a shell that's all but grafted onto the Mainframe. They started soured slow, with liquid nitrogen. Once temperature sensors showed that the temperature had gone atomic number 3 low as it could, and with the chip still chugging along with happines, information technology came time to switch over to the good stuff.

Increase a emf multiplier factor incrementally, attempt to validate the resulting recorded time speed up in CPU-Z, repeat until the machine stalls and crashes. The tautness in the room was palpable, in spite of the utter miss of exteroception feedback. If your eyes have for the most part glazed over, it's fine: this is more consanguineous to drag racing than traditional spectator sports: constancy is the measure of a undefeated overclock, but you South Korean won't be able-bodied to run any traditional benchmarks happening a CPU put through these paces.

The real measure of worth present is at the take down end. These chips are toughened–at the least, they appear to be. Being able to to hit high clock speeds under duress bodes well for overclocking enthusiasts using traditional liquid Oregon fan temperature reduction techniques. We'll know more in the forthcoming weeks once AMD peels back some of the layers, but interesting–dareisay, cool–things are afoot.