As most of us breathe a collective sigh now that CES is over, I wanted to share something that isn?t staying in Vegas. As many of you know AMD Phenom? II processors are the heart of Dragon platform technology; and even in the middle of the desert, this platform was as cool as liquid helium. During a live extreme overclocking event in Las Vegas last Saturday, January 10th, 2009 ? this platform set new world records for frequency, performance and low temperature.
The event was arranged by Xtremesystems.org and a number of companies were invited ? AMD, Intel, Gigabyte, DFI, Coolermaster, EVGA and others. With liquid helium cooling these new processors to approximately -225 degrees Celsius, we ran the popular 3DMark05 benchmark and quickly reached a 3D stable processor clock speed of 6.3 GHz. We used AMD OverDrive? tuning software to set and control performance. We ran multiple 3DMark05 runs in front of the live audience, increasing the clock frequency (with AMD OverDrive) and the score on the fly from around 44,000 3DMarks at 6.2 GHz up to the record-breaking 45,474 3DMarks at 6.3 GHz. See official results here: http://www.futuremark.com/community/hal ... /3dmark05/.
In the record breaking run, the AMD Phenom II processor ran at 6.301 GHz with the North Bridge overclocked to 3.843 GHz. The DFI LP DK 790FXB-M2RS motherboard ran OCZ Reaper DDR2-1200 rated memory modules and a pair of ATI Radeon? HD 4870 X2 graphics cards aircooled at 800 to 950MHz utilizing ATI CrossFireX? technology.
More Facts:
CPU-Z frequency 6.435 GHz verification file was saved and officially approved (although 6.509 GHz was displayed on the big screen during the show), the highest clock frequency ever recorded on a quad core x86 CPU. CPU-Z validation link for 6.435 GHz: http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=483738.
New, official 3DMark05 World record of 45,474 3DMarks was achieved in front of the live audience: the AMD Phenom II processor ran at 6.301 GHz during the benchmark, ATI Radeon 4870X2 video cards ran with the stock cooler.
Official ranking: http://www.futuremark.com/community/hal ... /3dmark05/
The first live demo with Liquid Helium cooling and sub -200C temperatures (NOTE: the temperature meters were out of range at sub -200 degrees C, the actual temperature might have been lower than -242 degrees C). The Liquid Helium cooling solution reached an idle temperature of approximately -242 C (-403.6F). AMD Phenom II CPU was stable and operational under these extreme conditions.
Pictures from this overclocking event and of AMD at CES 2009: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amd_unprocessed/
Get Pat Moorhead?s take on his blog: http://budurl.com/OnHelium
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