AMD Overclocks New Phenom II X4 To 7 GHz 288
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."
Re:that is not safe at home (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Has to be better than my other stock picks. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Great, until... (Score:4, Informative)
If you're going to use liquid nitrogen... (Score:5, Informative)
... - 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... (Score:5, Informative)
Candle. If it goes out stick your head out a window.
Re:A bit embarrasing... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A bit embarrasing... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:If you're going to use liquid nitrogen... (Score:3, Informative)
Or just do what the coal miners did and get a canary. If it dies, RUN!
Re:The I7 at 8220.1 MHZ (Score:2, Informative)
Click the link, it's a P4. His i7 topped out at 5.6GHz.
If anything could go that high, it'd be the P4. That ridiculously long pipeline is what they were designed for.
Re:Has to be better than my other stock picks. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Great, until... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:that is not safe at home (Score:1, Informative)
You probably can't get 7GHz but this place http://www.hardcorecomputer.com/ has some sweet cooling solutions for home.
Fair disclosure I really want one because they look great but there's no way I can afford it.
Re:CO2 *and* O2 levels. (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, if you're an MD then I'm scared.
Most people's respiration works on a hypercapnic drive, in other words, when you have a raised blood CO2, respiratory drive increases. Some people with COPD chronically retain CO2 and hence their chemoceptors adjust to the high CO2 level and can no longer drive respiration. They switch to a hypoxic drive whereby hypoxaemia drives respiration. This works, but is less effective than hypercapnic drive and gives rise to the possibility of iatrogenic apnoea when high-flow oxygen therapy is used.
Your statement "CO2-level is what keeps them breathing" is utterly wrong, and if you are an MD then you need to go back to the textbooks and do some reading before you go anywhere near an emergency room or respiratory ward.
An information leaflet [patient.co.uk] might help you understand a bit better.
Re:If you're going to use liquid nitrogen... (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org].
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 [wikipedia.org], 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.
Re:Cross application (Score:2, Informative)
how long till we're able to capture the heat from processors and use them to cut power requirements for computers exponentially?
Heat cannot of itself pass from a cooler body to a hotter body.
Altogether now: heat can't pass from the cooler to the hotter! You can try it if you like, but you'd far better notter. Ah yes ...
Heat is work, and work's a curse; ... and there'll be perfect peace.
and all the heat in the universe
is gonna coooooool down. 'Cos it can't increase!
And there'll be no more work
Yeah, that's entropy, man.
-- Flanders & Swann