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Hardware Technology

Pentium 4 631 Overclocked to 8 GHz 271

Andreas writes "There are always those who are willing to take things one step further than others. A group of guys known as OC Team Italy is one of them. They recently pushed an Intel Pentium 4 631 to over 8000MHz using an ASUS P5B with modified voltage regulation and liquid nitrogen. Overclocking is cool and all, but this extends beyond what some would perhaps call useful. Still a milestone though."
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Pentium 4 631 Overclocked to 8 GHz

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  • Sheesh... (Score:4, Funny)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:17PM (#17716238)
    All the trouble those Italians do to cook sausage without burning it.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      I think the whole cooking aspect of P4s is way under-explored. Sure, everybody knows you can cook an egg with one, but has anybody used one to heat a wok, for example? Silicon stir fry! On a more realistic note, those processors could be great for sous-vide [wikipedia.org] cooking if they are water cooled.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by gbulmash ( 688770 ) *
        Sous-vide, IIRC, requires a consistent, controlled temperature. You'd definitely need to write a system monitor that keeps the processor at a specific load (not above, not below) so you could maintain that perfect cooking temperature.

        - Greg
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've always had a strange desire to see someone freebase off a P4...
  • by Bananatree3 ( 872975 ) * on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:18PM (#17716244)
    To save thoughs who just want to see the setup pictures [xtremesystems.org]
  • by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:19PM (#17716262) Homepage Journal
    Thats just in time!

    Vista is released in a couple of days, we need at least one machine up to spec.
  • by vlad_petric ( 94134 ) on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:19PM (#17716270) Homepage
    It's also how fast your circuits can switch, and how fast the signal can travel on the wires. The execution core of a Pentium 4 also happens to be double-pumped (i.e., it performs operations on both edges of the clock signal). Essentially, those ALUs would be switching at 16GHz ... I, personally, take this with a grain of salt.
    • by ettlz ( 639203 ) on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:25PM (#17716354) Journal
      Indeed. Light travels just under 2 centimetres in the 16 GHz period. The Pentium 4 core is not much smaller than this... it seems like they're pushing their luck on order-of-magnitude estimates alone.
    • by indigest ( 974861 ) on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:28PM (#17716378)
      The extreme cooling they are doing is not just for removing the heat generated by the chip. As temperature decreases, the mobility of charge carriers increases, allowing for a faster circuit. In fact, if they were to run a supercooled chip at the nominal clock frequency, they would have hold time violations and the chip would not work. In other words, the data would propagate so quickly that it would corrupt the previous piece of data.
      • by fossa ( 212602 )

        As I understand, semiconductor conductivity is dominated by the number of charge carriers, not by their mobility (as in metals), and the number of charge carriers generally decreases with temperature due to lack of thermal exitation. Does this becomes unimportant when doping is used to control the number of charge carriers? And either way, isn't the speed of transmission fairly constant?

      • In fact, if they were to run a supercooled chip at the nominal clock frequency, they would have hold time violations and the chip would not work. In other words, the data would propagate so quickly that it would corrupt the previous piece of data.

        That's not necessarily true - it's only the case if the logic paths speed up more than the clock paths. You get a hold time violation if one flip flop launches its data, the data gets through the logic, and arrives at the capturing flip flop before (or too soon af
    • Actually, I believe they removed the double-pumped ALU from Prescott and later to allow for even higher clock rates.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:22PM (#17716308)
    Get with it guys, now it is about making silent fanless but powerful systems....

    Not creating a CPU that sucks down 300W+, has one core and generally sucks.
  • Hurmph. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RyoShin ( 610051 ) <tukaro@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:26PM (#17716360) Homepage Journal
    Overclocking is cool and all, but [8Ghz] extends beyond what some would perhaps call useful.
    Come back in a decade or two and trying saying that. :)
    • Re:Hurmph. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:42PM (#17716566)
      >> Overclocking is cool and all, but [8Ghz] extends beyond what some would perhaps call useful.

      > Come back in a decade or two and trying saying that. :)

      Oh, I'm sure noone would ever need more than 8gHz...
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by budgenator ( 254554 )
        I'm torn between saying "Please stop the insanity" and "MUAHAHAHAH"
    • Overclocking is cool and all, but [8Ghz] extends beyond what some would perhaps call useful.
      Come back in a decade or two and trying saying that. :)
      I think they meant that the whole pouring-liquid-nitrogen-on-the-processor thing might not be applicable to most consumers.
    • I don't know if the poster meant that 8ghz wouldn't be useful or that any method of overclocking that requires liquid nitrogen is not useful.
  • Why not 8 GHz? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Snowgen ( 586732 ) on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:29PM (#17716402) Homepage

    Is 8000 MHz supposed to sound more impressive than 8 GHz?

    I'm just confused as to why it was worded so oddly.

  • by feranick ( 858651 ) on Monday January 22, 2007 @05:39PM (#17716534)
    Funny the pack of cigarettes with the government mandatory sign: "Il fumo uccide" (smoking kills...) besides the smoking board...
  • What I'm more curious about is how the frak they managed to get a FSB of 1,5 GHZ on a Pentium II 333 MHZ
    http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=159352 [x86-secret.com]
    • The CPU identifier is bullshit. The Pentium II certainly didnt support SSE3, or any SEE for that matter.
    • In that pic it says that it is capable of MMX, SSE, SSE2, and SSE3. I highly doubt that picture is true, seeing as how PII's only had MMX. Unless CPU-Z makes some assumptions about that by looking at the clock speed.
  • We were supposed to have those 10GHz Pentium 4s last year. Well, it's a start.
  • by Tmack ( 593755 ) on Monday January 22, 2007 @06:10PM (#17716844) Homepage Journal
    ...in its exceedingly fast speed, it developed AI and became aware. It quickly started amassing great stores of knowledge and began solving many previously unsolvable problems of the world, and then suddenly went silent and refused to respond to any further input...

    Tm

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by taupin ( 1047372 )
      After several million years, it printed a single integer: 42.
    • ...in its exceedingly fast speed, it developed AI and became aware. It quickly started amassing great stores of knowledge and began solving many previously unsolvable problems of the world, and then suddenly went silent and refused to respond to any further input...

      Tm

      Those P4's always overheat at the worst possible time.
  • I notice that they use CPU-Z to monitor this CPU. Seems like a pretty good tool to monitor the CPU. Get a copy here http://www.cpuid.org/ [cpuid.org]

    And as a harware engineer: As long as you dont boost the voltage too much (Which these guys prpbably did), you can not damage anything, so go for it.

    • by pm ( 11079 )
      >> As long as you dont boost the voltage too much (Which these guys prpbably did), you can not damage anything, so go for it.

      The thermal stress caused by varying rates of thermal expansion for silicon, the resin underfill and the package puts a a lot of stress of the flip-chip bumps cycling between "room temp" and cryogenic temperatures. I'm not so sure that I'd say this isn't going to damage anything.

      There'd like be no problem if you do it a couple of times, but over more thermal cycles, I'm certain
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by joshetc ( 955226 )

      I notice that they use CPU-Z to monitor this CPU. Seems like a pretty good tool to monitor the CPU. Get a copy here http://www.cpuid.org/ [cpuid.org]

      And as a harware engineer: As long as you dont boost the voltage too much (Which these guys prpbably did), you can not damage anything, so go for it.

      Isn't that sort of like going to Lambeau Field [wikipedia.org] and seeing a football and explaining to everyone that its safe to throw it?

    • As long as you dont boost the voltage too much (Which these guys prpbably did), you can not damage anything

      Sure you can! If the temperature changes too fast (creating differential thermal expansion/contraction) you can physically crack the chip (or a PCB, or whatever).

  • Fan on the GPU... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by HaloZero ( 610207 ) <[protodeka] [at] [gmail.com]> on Monday January 22, 2007 @07:17PM (#17717554) Homepage
    ...the fan on the GPU in the photo with the Fluke thermometer. Why isn't the fan spinning?
  • nostalgia (Score:2, Funny)

    by pwizard2 ( 920421 )
    This brings back the old M&M's marketing phrase, with a twist:

    "Pentium melts in your PC, not in your hand"
  • 6400 MHz ought to be enough for anybody.

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