AMD Phenom II X4 955 Overclocked to 7.1 GHz

A group named LimitTeam successfully overclocked AMD's Deneb 45nm Phenom II X4 955 processor (Black Edition) back on April 30, and submitted the results for validation to CPU-Z. During the process, the group used the Asus M4A79T Deluxe motherboard, dubbed as the Asus "multidimensional performance platform" featuring support for an AMD 140W CPU and the AMD 790FX/SB750 chipset. Additionally, the group threw in 4 GB of DDR3 memory from Apacer Technology and a ATI Radeon HD 4800 series graphics card. As a result, the group reached 7.127 GHz, beating the previous score of 6.7 GHz. However, LimitTeam didn't reveal any specifics in regards to cooling during the overclocking process.

Late last month, AMD said that it managed to hit 7 GHz in "extreme overclocking tests," more than doubling the original 3.2 GHz clock speeds enjoyed right out of the box. Apparently the CPU can be safely overclocked at home with speeds up to 3.8 GHz; anything greater will need "exotic cooling materials." AMD's product manager Brent Barry was noted saying that liquid nitrogen and liquid helium are best suited for high-overclocking environments, the former bringing the temperature down to about -140 degrees and the latter to around -240 degrees. Unfortunately, both solutions are somewhat dangerous to use. "This is fairly insane, science experiment stuff," Davis said.

Earlier in February, Team Finland reached 6.7 GHz with an early version of the Phenom II X4 955 chip using a similar configuration. However, neither LimitTeam nor Team Finland has overcome to the world-wide #1 score listed by CPU-Z. Clocking in at 8.1 GHz, a user simply named "duck" overclocked Intel's 65nm Cedar Mill Pentium 4 631 processor back on July 20, 2007 using the Asus "Commando" motherboard and 2 GB of DDR2 memory.

  • stryk55
    4 cores at 7.1 GHz for a total of 28.4 GHz of processing power...Now that is insane. :)
    Reply
  • rooseveltdon
    7.1 ghz???? holy shit!!!
    Reply
  • 10tacle
    I don't know anything about AMD CPUs as I've never built one, but I do find it interesting they blanked out the core voltage field in CPU-Z. Why can't some of these folks give us some FPS benchmarks for fun?

    Jeeze, and I thought I was doing good with a little E8400 that has hit 4.4GHz on air stable under Prime95. (Run it at 4.2 full time).
    Reply
  • mlcloud
    Now imagine if we could actually STRESS test that 7.1ghz, rofl.
    Reply
  • zerapio
    stryk554 cores at 7.1 GHz for a total of 28.4 GHz of processing power...Now that is insane.Sir, that's some funky math :). GHz do not represent processing power unless you restrict the comparison to a particular architecture. You can instead do 4 * core_flops for an idea of how powerful the CPU is. This allows you to compare the number with other CPUs even with different architectures. Just my 2$/100.
    Reply
  • apache_lives
    heh a Pentium 4 years ago hit 7.3 but sadly enough a stock E6600 (2.4ghz) blows it in superpi, now 4 cores capable - amazing.

    Is that all 4 cores, cache etc? and how solid and for how long?
    Reply
  • nachowarrior
    i can fart 12ghz. come on really...

    okay, but really, i'd like to see that put through the paces at that speed. :-p
    Reply
  • dextermat
    Hey everyone, drop to you local store and use liquid nitrogen to overclock your gear !!!!!!

    Hopefully nothing will break!!!

    Food for thoughts
    Reply
  • LATTEH
    OH SHIT
    Reply
  • cadder
    Well, what was the superpi score? I read about 5 months ago about someone breaking 7GHz with an E8600, and they were happy to report their superpi 1M score of just under 7 sec. I don't know what the maximum overclock has been with an intel core2 quadcore, but I don't think they will go as high as the dual cores.
    Reply