I have been musing over the FX-9590 and FX-9370 since they were talked about and then reviewed. Most of the original reviews of course were of the FX-9590 and just about every review that tried to overclock them, said they were difficult to get stable beyond 5.0Ghz. Some were using water but were reluctant to hit the cpu with a good deal of Vcore. Sure it was unstable. Heat got up quick also.
So AMD decides to get some PR and buzz by releasing the 9590 and 9370 cpus since the "steamroller" has been pushed further out in release. They can do what we cannot do in that they run thru a bunch of silicon looking for chips that run like an over-clocked FX-8350 with reasonable Vcore.
They set the default speed of this low-leakage cpu to produce the FX-9590 and the FX-9370 and they have it. A factory pre-clocked cpu to sell. They have known all along that there was a lot of headroom in the FX series of silicon. They just took advantage of it for dollars. No big deal. Got them some publicity in a rather low interest time frame.
We have all bought a lesser version of a series of cpus and clocked them up to the level of the more expensive processor. AMD did it for us and asked for extra money. The one thing you seem most likely to get with the Uber FX's is use of a fairly low Vcore up to about 4.8Ghz since they binned for low Vcore at an initial elevated clock. However this lower Vcore is likely coming with a low-leakage cpu and back in the old days when we looked for low/high leakage and other pointers from the heavens, we saw low-leakage cpus don't like to overclock as easily as some other cpus that leak some. The low leakers do well with lower Vcore up to a point and then the cpu seems to quit.
AMD knows their silicon and pin-pointed the upper level of the FX 8 core series and found a way to make some coins. There is little more headroom in a 9590 or 9370 than a standard FX-8350 since the cpus are all the same silicon in general. Same design and fab, only maybe a little more mature FAB which happens.
So really at or around 5.0Ghz you can expect the needed Vcore to rise is my guess just as it would on a regular FX-8350. Stability may be a little more difficult since too much added Vcore on a low leaker will bring on instability as the transistors are over driven.
Just my thinking of the deal over a few months and seeing "johan45s" example FX-9370 results.
Bobert...
