AMD has been content to let Intel offer the pricier and often faster processors to the enthusiast desktop crowd for a while now while AMD focused on the lower price crown. In fact, the company’s value-oriented Fusion processor has been a great performer for the company.
Today, however, AMD announced that its FX 8-core desktop CPU has grabbed a Guinness World Record for the highest frequency for a computer processor to date. The processor was able to run at 8.429 GHz, beating the previous record of 8.309GHz.
The team had to resort to some extreme measures to cool the processor enough to hit that record-breaking frequency. Air or water-cooling was out and Team AMD FX had to resort to liquid nitrogen for cooling. The team included some overclocking gurus along with AMD folks in the effort.
The clock speed of the processor was validated using CPU-Z and will go into the record book. Although AMD was able to overclock the FX CPU to "well above 5GHz" using air or liquid cooling systems that cost under $100, the team used a three-phase system to make its record run.
“The record-breaking processor speed that resides in the AMD FX CPU clearly demonstrates performance gains for the new AMD Bulldozer multi-core architecture, which will provide x86 computing power for this CPU and future AMD Accelerated Processing Units,” said Chris Cloran, corporate vice president and general manager, Client Group at AMD. “Along with world-record frequencies, the AMD FX processor will enable an unrivaled enthusiast PC experience for the money – extreme multi-display gaming, mega-tasking and HD content creation.”
