It’s amazing what people can do with one of AMD’s new eight-core FX processors, a specially built chassis, and a few tanks of liquid helium. In a pre-release stunt, AMD rounded up a small group of expert overclockers to take the new processor to world record speeds and beyond.
Don’t expect to do the same at home when the FX chips ship in late Q4 2011: overclockers Brian Mchlachlan and Sami Maekinen had the pick of the processor litter, and PCWorld reports that they looked specifically for chips that performed well at higher voltage levels. They took things slowly at first, with the FX eventually bumping up against the 8.0 GHz barrier thanks to a little liquid nitrogen.
It took the application of some liquid helium to really kick things into high gear, as the super-low temperatures allowed the FX to hit 8.429 GHz, besting the old record of 8.308 GHz. How well the system would actually perform under those conditions was left unexplored — this was all about hitting the highest clock speed, so the stress testing and benchmarking that comes with actually using an overclocked CPU was left by the wayside.
AMD was formally presented the Guinness World Record for Highest Frequency of a Computer Processor at their Fusion Zone event in San Francisco today. The timing and location seems to be yet another jab at their eternal rival though, as Intel also chose today to kick off their SF Developer Forum.