AMD Bulldozer Sets Guinness World Record for Overclocking
Maximum PC witnesses the highest overclocker, ever
AMD said it has broken the world record for overclocking using one of its soon to be released "Bulldozer" CPUs.
Team AMD FX set the Guinness record "Highest Frequency of a Computer Processor" on August 31, 2011 by overclocking the upcoming AMD FX to 8.429GHz. The previous record was 8.308GHz. The speed run was made using liquid helium, which is even colder than liquid nitrogen. As part of the run up, a team of overclockers took trays of the CPUs and binned them out using liquid nitrogen at -180 C. The team eventually switched over to liqufied helium which is slightly warmer than absolute zero at about -270 C.
Team AMD FX included renowned overclockers Brian Mchlachlan and Sami Maekinen, as well as Pete Hardman, Aaron Schradin, and AMD's Simon Slotko.
Guinness World Records will be presenting an award to AMD today in San Francisco, where, by no coincidence, Intel is kicking off its annual Intel Developer Forum.
"We applaud AMD for their entry into Guinness World Records for achieving the Highest Frequency of a Computer Processor," said Freddie Hoff of Guinness World Records. "We congratulate everyone involved in this record-breaking achievement."
AMD's FX processor is the upcoming replacement to the company's existing Phenom II lineup and will feature 8 cores. AMD was mum on the details of the 32nm chip, but CPU-Z shots of the chip in action indicate it has 8MB of L3 cache, 2MB of L2 cache, and is clearly an unlocked CPU. AMD did disclose that all FX chips will be unlocked. The company said it did the demonstration to see if there was a "cold bug" which would prevent the chip from hitting high clocks at low temps. AMD did not disclose performance data of the chip and whether it would be capable of surpassing Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge E chip that Intel is expected to unveil at IDF.
The company broke the record with numerous members of the tech media in attendance, including Maximum PC. AMD also released a video on the record at: http://blogs.amd.com/play/2011/09/09/guinness/