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."

Comments

Re:Has to be better than my other stock picks.

[Penguinoflight]

I'd have to say that Intel would be in for a bunch of monopoly lawsuits if AMD were to ever go belly up. It's really in there best interests to maintain competition.

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.

If you're going to use liquid nitrogen...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... - 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.

Re:If you're going to use liquid nitrogen...

[Shadow of Eternity]

Candle. If it goes out stick your head out a window.

Re:If you're going to use liquid nitrogen...

[orzetto]

I'm pretty sure your body reacts to the lack of oxygen, not the excess of carbon dioxide.

You are in fact pretty wrong. The body uses what we control engineers call "inferential control", i.e. watches a certain variable (carbon dioxide) rather than another (oxygen); I am not sure of the advantages, but may have to do with ease of measurement, response time, or simple evolutionary randomness. See the Wikipedia article on hyperventilation.

In normal conditions this works all right, since when there is little oxygen there is also a lot of carbon dioxide; in conditions for which we did not evolve, like a 100% nitrogen atmosphere, the strategy fails.

This phenomenon has a number of implications: if you hyperventilate before swimming underwater, you do not feel as much the need for oxygen because of the reduced carbon dioxide in your blood, but you still have it just like before: that's how free-divers used to die, not noticing they were lacking oxygen and passing out under water.

Also, I work at a research institute, and at my first course in laboratory safety I was told loud and clear that nitrogen is the main laboratory killer, because everyone assumes it is harmless, while in fact it can easily kill without any warning. Every lab using liquid nitrogen has big yellow signs with "asphyxiation danger" written on them.