Phenom II overclocked to 6GHz

Posted at: 1:35pm 21st November 2008 by Ben Hardwidge on http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/605226/phenom-ii-overclocked-to-6ghz.html

Dry ice and liquid nitrogen cooling used to overclock AMD’s new CPU to 6GHz and beyond

Intel’s Core 2 architecture not only had AMD’s original Phenom over a barrel in terms of bangs per buck; it also had a much higher overclocking ceiling, but it looks as though AMD could have sorted the latter issue with the forthcoming Phenom II ‘Deneb’ CPU. AMD recently demonstrated the overclocking abilities of the new CPU using both dry ice and liquid nitrogen cooling in Texas, with some stunning results.

Unfortunately, it looks as though a lot of the details of the event are being kept under wraps until the CPU is officially launched; no cameras were allowed and no exact clock speeds have been revealed. However, it looks as though some suitably vague reporting has been allowed. PC Perspective reports that ‘the Phenom II reached WELL over 5.x GHz (read: REALLY over)’ when cooled with liquid nitrogen (-196°C) at 1.9V, while Nordic Hardware says that the chip was even able to ‘move north of 6GHz’ at a higher voltage.

As well as this, Nordic Hardware also claims that AMD demonstrated Phenom II CPUs running at 4GHz 1.6V with just air cooling, at a voltage of 1.6V. PC Perspective estimates that the chips will be very scalable when it comes to clock speed, while still retaining a reasonable heat output. The site reckons that a 3.6GHz Phenom II, for example, could have a TDP of 125W.

We’ve yet to see Phenom II for ourselves, but these reports suggest that the Phenom II has the potential for some amazing clock speeds with the right cooling equipment. As a point of comparison, we managed to overclock Intel’s new Core i7 to 4.27GHz using air cooling, while Asus has managed to clock the new chip to 5.4GHz using liquid nitrogen.

Of course, if the performance of the original Phenom chip is anything to go by, the Phenom II may not be able to match the Core i7 in terms of work per clock. However, it may be able to make up for this with a large amount of overclocking headroom and an appropriate Intel-beating price. Either way, it’s good to see that AMD may be becoming competitive again, and we’re looking forward to trying out Phenom II for ourselves.