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Hardware

AMD shows off Phenom II overclocked to 6.3GHz

By Jose Vilches, TechSpot.com
Published: November 21, 2008, 11:21 AM EST
After initial disappointment with the original Phenom processors, AMD showed off its upcoming 45nm ‘Deneb’ desktop chip – now confirmed as Phenom II – for reviewers at an event in Texas this week, and overclocked the second-generation quad-core part to what some observers said was 6.3GHz.

The company reached such clock speeds by using liquid nitrogen at an amazing -196C to cool the processor – apparently the new AMD design works flawlessly from -200C to +100C. Of course not many people have access to such extreme cooling methods but the demo should at least show that the new Phenom II processors are scalable when it comes to clock speeds and quite stable at high frequencies.

The Phenom II parts were also able to hit 4GHz with air cooling and 5GHz with dry ice cooling. By comparison, Intel's top Core i7 processor listed as a 3.2 GHz part has been overclocked to 4.5 GHz on air cooling alone and some claim to have taken it to 5.7GHz using liquid nitrogen. The top Phenom II chip, due out sometime in the first quarter of 2009, will reportedly list as 3.0 GHz off the shelf.

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User Comments (4)

Post a comment
eafshar
on November 21, 2008
4:08 PM
i hope AMD makes a come back in the cpu market soon, the new i7 processors look hard to beat tho.

yukka
on November 22, 2008
10:57 AM
I currently have a 6400+ amd cpu and will happily switch to one of these if amd can do the business.

BMfan
on November 23, 2008
4:18 AM
At least it went up a GHZ and not just 300\400MHZ,amd better come right with these new dual core's i want to replace my 6000+.

Emin3nce
on November 25, 2008
4:42 PM
One, you're reading into the values too much - it's unlikely you are going to have a liquid nitrogen cooling system at home. Whats more, smacking higher GHZ onto a processor isn't the only factor into a great CPU- as intel showed with the core2 - it's also the structural elements such as cache and sharing.

but you're right, QPI and the direct memory controller are going to make the new i7's hard to beat from AMD's perspective... hopefully they step up to the plate some time soon and at least offer some sought of - variance.

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