Overclockers Top 6GHz With A 3.6GHz-Rated P4 421
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."
Cold! (Score:3, Interesting)
-erick
6 GHz is not that impressive. (Score:4, Interesting)
Memory-bound applications will not show significant improvement. At 6 GHz, most applications become memory bound since memory becomes extremely slow in responding to the 6 GHz processor.
Has anyone liquid cooled the G5 and the Opteron driven them to 6 GHz? I bet that the G5 could crush the Pentium in performance since the G5 has a powerful floating point unit.
Re:Erm... (Score:5, Interesting)
I ran something like this a while back; a dual p3-500 just about matched a single p4-1.5.
With some "real" benchmarks, we'd at least be able to weigh this 6GHz beast against a dual 3GHz beast...
Speed of light (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Don't forget the dual clocked ALU (Score:5, Interesting)
What's that plugged in the DIMM slot? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is that?
Re:Cold! (Score:3, Interesting)
I've just put in for a job working with superconducting magnets, using LHe.
That's around 4K (-269C or -453F). Now that is damned damned damned damned cold....
If only liquid helium were as inexpensive as LN2.... We'd see some a quantumn leap in overclocking I'd bet... (pun intended!)
Re:Cold! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Erm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Since when is usefulness all there is to life?
Can you see the usefulness in climbing Everest, running around in a circle several times at the Olympics, or anything else?
Re:calculate pi... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:6 GHz is not that impressive. (Score:3, Interesting)
Your geek license has just been revoked.
The overall design idea behind the P4 was to stretch out the pipeline to an insane level in order to ramp up clockspeeds to an insane level.
No one's liquid cooled a G5 or an Opteron and overclocked it to 6 GHz. Why? Because their design matched with current chip fabbing technology can't handle it.
The good news for AMD and PowerPC fanboys is that they won't need to get it to 6 GHz. If someone overclocks an Athlon 64 to, oh, 4 GHz or so (which would be impressive enough), the Athlon, which is designed to accomplish more clock for clock than the P4, should shred the 6 GHz P4 in performance.
Re:calculate pi... (Score:4, Interesting)
So, you still have much computational work to do...
I wonder why... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not too familiar with the terminology used in the cooling world, but 15 watts of cooling power at 77 kelvin (-196 deg C / -321 deg F) sounds like quite a bit of cooling power to me. I've often wondered why Stirling technology isn't used in air conditioners.
Re:Erm... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cold! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, that was one of the most amazing things I learned from my chemistry teacher in college. He was doing the standard Liquid Nitrogen funstuffs, like dipping the flower, or the raquet ball, and a couple of other things. Then he was talking about the Liquid Nitrogen, and he pointed out that it's about as expensive as milk, per volume.
So, what I want to know is why don't they sell it at 7-11??!? Imagine the fun, not to mention uses. Other than computers, you can use it to freeze fruits so quickly that their water crystals don't have time to form and poke through the cell walls and make the fruit mushy... I'm sure there are a hundred other uses.
~Will
Re:Cold! (Score:2, Interesting)
I've heard of some grocery stores selling dry ice. The only place I've known of to get N2 was a welding supply house. (besides mail-order.)