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Overclockers Top 6GHz With A 3.6GHz-Rated P4

Posted by timothy on from the ambitious dept.

sH4RD writes "The 6GHz barrier has been broken by two guys, a little LN2 (liquid nitrogen for those not as chemistry inclined), and an Intel Pentium 4 (Prescott) 3.60GHz. Check out some icing and some proof of speed. Better yet take a look at how fast it calculates pi. Also be sure to check out the original announcement."

5 of 421 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Erm... by _Pablo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Clock for clock, the final P3 (the Pentium III S) would smoke the original P4 (Willamete) no questions asked. So it's quite possible dual P3/500s could have beaten a 1.5Ghz P4 on many benchmarks.

    --
    $2B OR NOT $2B = $FF
  2. Re:Erm... by EinarH · · Score: 5, Informative
    There is no *way* that a dual P3/500 system will match an 1 GHz P4, not to speak of your claims of beating an 1.5 GHz P4.
    Sure it is.
    The first Pentium 4 CPU was slow compared with a P3 1 GHz. One would belive that a 1.5GHz CPU would beat the last generations 1 GHz CPU, but in many tasks the P3 was faster.
    -The P3 pipeline had 12 stages the P4 had 20.
    -The P3 Katmai had 512k L2 cache, the P4 had only 256k. I remember some MySQL benchmarks showing a single P3 500 MHz Katmai beating a P4 1400 MHz in some tasks.

    So even with all the IDE stuff enabled a Dual P3 could be faster than a P4 in Gentooing.

    --

    Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.

  3. Re:Erm... by berkut7 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The reason why they run with so little memory is the same why they are using a cheap video card: there is a chance they might kill it. The other more important reason is that they can reach higher FSB clocks with less memory sticks. I fthey had two or more memory sticks they would be able to reach same FSB speeds, an in turn, same CPU clock speeds.

  4. +7.3, informationativinal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Looks like one of these doodads to me:

    http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/oc z-booster.html

  5. Re:liquid nitrogen sucks by Big+Bob+the+Finder · · Score: 5, Informative
    Liquid propane boils at -42.1 degrees C. It goes from the solid to the liquid at -187.7 degrees C, which is not important for this, but read on below. It also has an explosive range from 2.8% to 9.5% in air- a little lower than natural gas.

    Liquid nitrogen boils at -195.8 degrees C, which is cold enough to freeze propane into a solid (there's a fun experiment for you). Further, liquid nitrogen is not flammable, and presents no hazards other than asphyxiation and freeze damage. Nitrogen already makes up 80% of the air we breathe, so unless one works in an enclosed space with plenty of NL2 boiling off, it's tough to die from asphyxiation.

    In other words, LN2 is colder, and won't blow up on you. I've used it for years, and have yet to get hurt by it. A little respect goes a long way.