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AMD Overclocks New Phenom II X4 To 7 GHz
CWmike writes "Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday introduced the latest member of its Phenom II X4 family of high-performance quad-core CPUs, which the No. 2 chip maker said it had run as fast as 7 GHz in extreme overclocking tests. Out of the box, the new X4 955 Black Edition, which is aimed at gamers and hobbyists, runs at 3.2 GHz, giving it similar performance to Intel's fastest desktop chips at lower cost, AMD says. The company was able to more than double the CPU's speed during its tests using extreme cooling technology that is not safe at home, said Brent Barry, an AMD product manager. The Web site Ripping.org notes that hobbyists with early access to the X4 955 chip have been able to clock it at up to 6.7 GHz. AMD said the chip was safe with fan cooling at up to 3.8 GHz."
That's really not true. Intel already maintains a monopoly-sized market share on CPUs, and they've been caught abusing it already (the intel compiler disables a lot of optimizations if code built on it doesn't detect an intel genuine cpu, for example.) It's still certainly in the best interest of the market, especially with child-company ATI being the only competitor to nVidia as well.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I think it's all a ploy. Most of the motherboards now come with overclocking options built right into the BIOS, and even tell you how to configure it in the manual. I've lost quite a bit of hardware to overclocking myself, and I will never do it again. It isn't worth the instability, or the broken parts. You're much better off to just spend the extra $100 for the better processor than to spend $400 on parts when everything else dies.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
... - for cooling or anything else - be sure to install an oxygen level alarm.
A nitrogen leak will dilute the oxygen content of the air to the point that you'll pass out - then die - without noticing what is happening.
Nitrogen is the bulk of normal air so it has no smell. Your breathing is controlled by the CO2 level, not the oxygen content, so you don't notice it when both are being diluted (and the dilution of the CO2 slows your breathing, exacerbating the problem with the oxygen level.)
This made evolutionary sense because the O2 and CO2 level are normally related - CO2 goes up as oxygen is consumed - and the CO2 level starts from a low baseline and affects pH, making it FAR easier to detect. But it doesn't work very well when people start taking the atmosphere apart into its components and remixing them differently.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think you've got it backwards - Intel was the Mhz fanboy, while AMD had its work cut out telling people that they had faster processors with a smaller number on the die. Now AMD is saying "hey look - we do more per clock, and our clock goes up to 7000".
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
In addition, there's nothing all that wrong with AMD's latest processors. Shanghai is clocked very fast, and has improved single-threaded IPC decently over Barcelona, and dramatically over the Athlon 64. It almost keeps pace with Core 2 Quad processors, and that's a hell of an improvement.
Sure, you might call it "too little too late" because of Intel's i7, but think about it this way: i7 is a very expensive platform to buy into, with a premium on processors and motherboards. For some applications this premium is well-justified, but for the average user who occasionally watches videos or plays a game, Shanghai is just as good for half the price.
I admit that AMD is screwed on the server arena - anything I/O-bound just loves the i7's triple-channel memory and SMT threads. But in the consumer space, AMD still has a decent product to sell, so they're gonna do whatever it takes to market to budget computer users/enthusiasts.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
If your CPU gets too hot it will shut down, if the voltage gets to high the mobo will force a reboot, and if the BIOS doesn't POST a few times in a row then it automatically reflashes the BIOS with fail-safe defaults. You have to try very hard indeed to actually break parts.
As far as value for money goes, take the popular Q6600 as an example. Quad core, 2.4 GHz, which can usually get up to 3-3.2 GHz on stock cooling and 3.6-4 GHz on a nice HSF. The 3.2 GHz CPU will cost you a lot more than an extra $100 and there's no 3.6 GHz part at all.