CPU-Z Invalidates Gigabyte's 8 GHz World Record Amid Lack Of Evidence

LN2 Overclocking
LN2 Overclocking (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Gigabyte's 8 GHz Alder Lake world record fiasco has finally come to an end. Doc TB, CPU-Z Validator's developer, has confirmed that CPU-Z has rejected Gigabyte's CPU-Z submission after the manufacturer failed to provide proof of the overclocking feat.

The CPU-Z team has been in contact with Gigabyte in an attempt to shed some light on the overclocking record. However, the company was unable to send over concrete evidence of how it allegedly pushed the Core i9-12900K to 8 GHz. According to Doc TB, the original submitter, which we suspect to be overclocking guru HiCookie since his name was on the submission, even admitted that he wasn't able to reproduce the 8 GHz result.

The developer behind CPU-Z previously detailed a theoretical bypass to take advantage of a silicon errata inside Alder Lake chips to fake clock speeds, despite Intel's 0x12 microcode fix. The team is aware of the workaround and is working diligently on a new CPU-Z revision to catch the funny people that exploit this bug,

Apparently, this wasn't Gigabyte or HiCookie's first rodeo. When AMD launched the Ryzen 5 5950X, Gigabyte was avidly promoting how its X570 Aorus Master motherboard had set a new world record with the Zen 3 chip reportedly at 6,362.16 MHz. The submission was rejected due to a known bug with Ryzen 5000 chips at launch. Doc TB utilized the new analysis algorithm on the CPU-Z submission and has confirmed that the 16-core processor was really running at 5,683.94 MHz. Guess who had submitted that dubious result to HWBot?

The CPU-Z team is cooking up a new algorithm to identify the bogus submissions from the real ones and will reprocess all the Alder Lake entries to remove the fakes. At the time of writing, the current record for the Core i9-12900K is at 7,543.95 MHz, achieved by overclocker Jon "Elmor" Sandström with liquid helium on Asus' ROG Maximus Z690 Apex motherboard. This puts an end to the overlocking soap opera, and Gigabyte would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for a meddling CPU-Z Validator developer.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • Colif
    Why are we shrinking words to fit in headers?
    I was trying to work out what Invalis was???

    Invalidates. Is it that hard to write it out?
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    I have an editing thing over spelling. Last paragraph second sentence, "At the time of wirting..." I assume you meant writing. Just a friendly heads up!
    Reply
  • Colif
    I was a Readers Assistant at a Printing Office, I have had to spend years using chat programs to retrain my brain from seeing every little typing error. It still happens.

    I can't find an explanation of what a reader did online now. Its only 20 years ago... shakes fist.
    Readers used to get the original of whatever was being printed and needed to check it against the copy which is what was being printed, and confirm they match, The assistant would often have to read out loud the copy including all punctuation, to the reader, to help confirm they matched and allow reader to find any mistakes.

    My Entire job got replaced by spell checker.

    I can't type so I have to be careful who I correct as its only a matter of time before I stuff up myself :)

    I didn't read the rest of article, header just made me wonder what Invalis was... as I don't know every word :)
    Reply
  • watzupken
    Another Gigabyte boo boo for the year. Quick to try and claim glory, but slow to resolve exploding PSU.
    Reply
  • escksu
    Haha ok.... But seriously, its pretty useless anyway. Vast majority of these CPUS can't even run any benchmark without crashing... ITs good only to boot into windows, launch CPUZ and take screen shot or click the validation button....
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    Relevant rant:

    4gEDJmlC_fEView: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gEDJmlC_fE

    I know der8auer did one, but BZ!

    Regards xD!
    Reply