An overclocker by the name of “TiN” from XtremeLabs.org claims to have pushed the 65nm Intel Celeron D 347 processor to an insane 8.20 GHz (8199.5 MHz) clock-speed without melting a single face. This new clock speed knocks out the world's previous overclocking champ by a mere 16.8 MHz. That's an amazing feat given that, by default, the single-core Celeron CPU has an official clock speed of 3.06 GHz.
Xbitlabs reports that TiN achieved this blistering speed by using a heavily-modified DFI LanParty UT P35 motherboard (Intel P35, revision A2), OCZ Technology memory, and liquid nitrogen. Hexus adds that the overclocker first heated the Celeron CPU to over 200°C to remove the integrated heat spreader (IHS), and then inserted it into the motherboard.
But despite the amazing clock speed, TiN did not provide benchmarks to show how well the CPU performed at such a high frequency. Although it's interesting to see the Celeron pushed to an extreme limit, Hexus points out that frequencies are no longer the “defining performance characteristics” thanks to multi-threaded computing.
Still, we'd like see this jacked-up CPU tackle a younger, friskier CPU such as the Intel Core i7 clocking in at 3.00 GHz. Perhaps we'll see a few benchmarks soon. In the meantime, check out the forum post... there are a few images showing how TiN reached the overclocked speed.
