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FRONTPAGE AMD Bulldozer Breaks CPU Frequency World Record

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ZOMFG!!! :shock:
You were not kidding when you said you had something AMAZING in store for us last nite!!!! I figured it would have to do with BD, but a WR right out of the gate? :drool:
Tapakah will be pissed once that validation makes it to the Bot for sure... He invests so much time and effort into pushing them Cedar Mills as high as they will go and now here comes AMD and trumps on that with pre-production units?... Ouch.
I really don't care much if BD is not as efficient as SB; the way I look at it:
No Coldbug + No bclck limitation + High tolerance for volts = TOTAL WIN
All that is left now is the "waiting game"... I don't know how I'm going to work the money side out, but one of these chips will find its way to my place as soon as they are available for sure... :D
 
On the Negative side: I don't want to kill the mood but we heard the same thing about sandy bridge and only 20% of the chip owners could get past 4.8ghz even with a noctua NH-D14, while i managed to get a 5.0ghz chip, that's all it can do on air, many of the poor souls who dropped a ton of money in nice boards and memory wanting to hit 5.0ghz ended up with 4.5ghz and higher than average voltages. To be garanteed anywhere near 5.0ghz on air and consider it do-able by the majority the overhead on a random chip(s) needs to be 5.5-5.7ghz on air, or 5.5ghz on the stock cooler. Sorry i bought into a lot of hype before i just don't want anyone else dropping money in something and being disappointed when i can relate how it feels when you realize you just can't do what they did because "Every chip is different".

On the positive side: 4.5-4.8ghz should be do-able by the majority from what it sounds like and that's still substantial for a long time to come. And the bulldozer is supposed to be cheaper than SB? or did i red that wrong.
 
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There is nothing that a 4.5 Ghz SB chip on air (or any CPU for that matter) cannot give you (performance wise) that a 5 GHz can except for benchmarks, then if you want to extract the most from a chip benchmarks wise then you don't use air cooling, so not sure if your complaint carries any weight Kotha?
 
His complaint was that air OC expectations were set too high for SB. There was a lot of pre-launch and early arrival internet hype about how 4.8-5GHz was going to be achievable on quite a few chips if not the majority. I agree, the reality of 4.4-4.5GHz is fantastic but Kohta is just saying how we shouldn't expect more than the high 4GHz as reasonably achievable BD OC even if this OC event says all chips provided went over 5GHz stable on air cooling.
 
Who said SB could run 5.0 GHz 24/7 on air? There were a lot of places saying it reached that for benching (indeed it's difficult to find one that won't do at least 5.0), but for 24/7 in my experience, ~4.5-4.6v was the norm with ~1.3v. Anybody saying 5.0 on SB 24/7 would be the norm were way over-inflating their numbers.
 
Yes, that's what was going on in forums, over-inflation. It calmed down after a few weeks when a better picture of retail results was possible. Par for the course with a new CPU generation release.
 
Maybe this can bring me back to AMD. I haven't been in their camp since the socket A days.

I just want to see a clock for clock comparison with SB (just like everyone else). This is still VERY cool (no pun intended).
 
Who said SB could run 5.0 GHz 24/7 on air? There were a lot of places saying it reached that for benching (indeed it's difficult to find one that won't do at least 5.0), but for 24/7 in my experience, ~4.5-4.6v was the norm with ~1.3v. Anybody saying 5.0 on SB 24/7 would be the norm were way over-inflating their numbers.


Exactly, hype was created by the "people", not the manufacturer, realism always sets in after people try it for themselves
 
Interesting note - they only tested four chips before getting the 8.4 validation. I like the last sentence:

chew* said:
I would not go as far as to say cherry picked. I blind pulled with no windows testing 24 chips based on there VID, the 4th chip we tested (note not a pretested ever chip ) did 8.4

We still had twenty chips left to try out but really didn't care after the 4th one.......
(Reference.)
 
On the Negative side: I don't want to kill the mood but we heard the same thing about sandy bridge and only 20% of the chip owners could get past 4.8ghz even with a noctua NH-D14, while i managed to get a 5.0ghz chip, that's all it can do on air, many of the poor souls who dropped a ton of money in nice boards and memory wanting to hit 5.0ghz ended up with 4.5ghz and higher than average voltages. To be garanteed anywhere near 5.0ghz on air and consider it do-able by the majority the overhead on a random chip(s) needs to be 5.5-5.7ghz on air, or 5.5ghz on the stock cooler. Sorry i bought into a lot of hype before i just don't want anyone else dropping money in something and being disappointed when i can relate how it feels when you realize you just can't do what they did because "Every chip is different".

I haven't seen a single 2500K/2600K that would not do 5ghz in a matter of less than a minute. Unless you plan on running the uselessness that is Prime95, anyone of them will do it.

Intel would not back any claim that a chip can hit 5ghz. They tell you what the chip is rated for 3.4ghz w/3.8 ghz turbo boost. Anything you assumed to be promised past that point is 100% rumor/hearsay... and never spoken by an Intel rep I can guarantee it.

AMD and Intel have different approaches to CPU's and marketing. Intel generally has faster architecture, while AMD usually rules the overall frequency. Each will exploit the work of overclocker's to their marketing gain, but will never sell you a 5ghz chip... unless they charge you for a 5ghz chip ;)

These tests and max validations are good for one thing... fun :D. Will it help AMD refine their architecture for the future... maybe, will it help them get publicity... most likely, will it do anything for the current consumer what-so-ever... no, is it freakin awesome... YES!
 
Interesting note - they only tested four chips before getting the 8.4 validation. I like the last sentence:


(Reference.)

That quote from Chew warrants more explanation - it is confusing and I was there. The 8.4Ghz chip was probably mostly untested or completely untested if thats what they are saying (not sure which they are saying) - I would believe what they say though. They had to run those chips to get the VID off them obviously though.

So while I was standing next to the table, I'm going by memory here, but they were talking about this after they switched out the first two setups they had on the bench. So I believe this was just before the 3rd setup, and it was the 4th CPU they used for the press demo to try to get the record. I thought it was weird as I was standing there Sami and Brian were discussing what to do next and Sami said something about taking a shot in the dark, just gambling on an untested CPU next. I have no idea if they then grabbed a new CPU from the tray, or picked from the trays and trays of CPUs that had already been tested in some way at least... But I thought that was sort of weird since there were so many chips that had already been tested to some degree. There were a lot with VID marked as well as LN2 pretesting to 8GHz or so labeled and sitting in the trays next to them.

So seeing all the labeled CPUs, clearly there was a lot of testing that went into determining which chips behaved which way. Checking VID and recording clocks and voltage to determine trends in frequency results across chips. AMD had sent out CPUs a week before also, where 8 BD chips hit 8GHz - they didn't say 8 out of how many. That all occurred the week before the event reportedly, simply on LN2. An 8GHz chip on LN2 is going to be a contender with 8.3GHz on LHe.

So the obvious question... If they had been through that many chips in pretesting, they had spent so much time learning about the architecture, how it behaves under cold, and recording results for each chip - Why throw a hail mary at crunch time in front of 20 hand picked journalists, plus me?

Maybe the first best CPU's/boards they just tried failed, had condensation problems, died in pretesting... Dunno, a lot of things can go wrong doing subzero. It doesn't totally make sense to put all that time into pretesting, then when it comes to do or die time take a hail mary pass... So what was the reason? Maybe the VIDs they found to hold the most promise in pretesting was enough to give them an idea of what the chips would do.
 
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BD oc

A couple of thoughtys: congrats to AMD & team for the effort and WR, way too "COOOL"; Maximus V too. This spoils my thoughts of taking a BD to Pluto for a surface OC. LHe, not something you'll find at NewEgg.

The near term release and OCers everywhere will be pretty busy for a while. Merry 2012 to all.
 
Crosshair V. Maximus = mid-range Intel, Rampage = high-range intel; Crosshair = AMD. :thup:
 
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I think you mean Rampage = high end intel :). Gene+Formula+Extreme are the board types
 
Thanks Hokie, its a question I would have asked then if I thought of it. At the time it just struck me as weird and I didn't give it further thought.
 
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