AMD Boasts 4GHz Air Overclocks on “Phenom II”, 6GHz on LN2

With Intel’s Core i7 processors now available, and kicking ass through most benchmarks, one has to wonder what’s up with AMD. How will they be competing anytime soon? It’s true… lately all we’ve heard from them has been related to their business practises, but there’s no need to worry… they definitely look to have some tricks up their sleeves.

Our friends at the Tech Report attended a press briefing this morning where AMD showed off their latest and greatest… 45nm “Phenom II”. While benchmark results weren’t revealed, raw clock frequencies were, and if you’ve been waiting for AMD to give people a great reason to consider them again, this might be it.

Stock speeds were not disclosed, but on an air cooling setup, one of their processors clocked to 4.0GHz with 1.55v, which is around what we’ve been expecting. Make no mistake, that’s a lot of voltage, and it’s too bad that it has to go so high, but if these CPUs are better-designed to handle such voltages (compared to Intel’s offerings), it might be alright. We’ll have to wait and see on that one.

While we are used to seeing massive overclocks on Intel’s processors when using liquid nitrogen, we’ve never seen anything major on the AMD side… until now. At this event, the same CPU as mentioned above was clocked to 6.0GHz… something that’s sure to excite many of the more hardcore overclockers out there. It took -185°C temperatures to accomplish it, but that’s not the point!

This is a very exciting time for AMD, and enthusiasts alike. For a while, Intel has dominated the desktop space, especially where enthusiasts are concerned, but AMD is looking to improve that situation, and fast. “Phenom II” isn’t a major architectural upgrade like Core i7 was to Core 2, but by moving to the 45nm node, we’ll have lower power consumption and overall improved efficiency, lower temps, and as we can see, far better clocking-abilities. We should be learning more about these CPUs very soon, so stay tuned.

The slowest system-cooled with a heatsink and fan-managed to reach just under 4GHz with a 1.55V core voltage. With liquid cooling, AMD successfully pushed a 45nm Phenom II in another machine just over the 4GHz mark. That required kicking up the CPU voltage to 1.6V, however. For the other two systems, AMD took out the big guns.