Bulldozer Does It Again: Overclocked to 8.58GHz
by Kristian Vättö on November 3, 2011 7:45 AM ESTLast week, we reported that Andre Yang had managed to overclock AMD's FX-8150 CPU to 8.46GHz, breaking the former record set by AMD. Andre Yang has now been able to break his own record by roughly 120MHz, which is fairly notable increase given that the previous record he set was only 30MHz greater than the record before that. The new world record is 8584.8MHz to be exact, 123.3MHz greater than the previous. The record is not official yet, though, as it has not appeared in CPU-Z's validation database.
Andre used the same Crosshair V Formula motherboard and the only difference seems to be the higher core voltage, which was 2.076V in the new record (1.992V in the old one). Andre used liquid nitrogen for cooling, so even higher overclocks could be achieved with liquid helium, which liquefies at -269 Celsius while it's -196 Celsius for nitrogen in atmosphere pressure. Bulldozer's upcoming B3 stepping could also improve the overclock-ability, possibly making 9GHz plausible.
Source: XtremeSystems
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Kristian Vättö - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
Well, I don't think there is any real world significance. Only one Bulldozer module (i.e. two "cores") was enabled, so this was just aiming for as high frequency as possible. With all cores enabled, you will be looking at much lower frequencies.Basically, this is one kind of a sport. We don't benefit from it but a world record is a world record. You don't benefit if someone breaks the 100m sprint record, do you? ;-)
r3loaded - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
There is no real-work significance. All we learn from this is that Bulldozer can be clocked really high in theory (much like NetBurst). It still sucks in normal usage, even overclocked under water cooling against Sandy Bridge.Targon - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
I agree about these experiments, but it has been shown that the performance issues are due to how Windows is currently assigning threads to the cores. It's a scheduler problem as much as it is a design issue.Basically, if Windows(or any other OS) is set to assign threads to one core per module as the way to assign threads, you get higher performance than if you load up core 1, 2(module 1), then 3 and 4(module 2), leaving the remaining two modules unused. The whole "module" approach is a big part of the performance problem. Some have even wondered if you force the Core i7 scheduler to be used instead of the normal "default" scheduler if that would work better with Bulldozer at this point.
Assimilator87 - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
Jeez, what's with all the negativity? While the max overclock isn't 24/7 stable, it IS an indicator of how well the architecture overclocks in general, at all levels of cooling. It could help someone avoid a really terrible line of processors. For example, if I had done some research on the original B2 Phenom's overclockability, I would have steered away, but unfortunately that was not the case.Targon - Friday, November 4, 2011 - link
I am looking at this from a rational perspective, not being negative. Clock speed, as seen in the days of the Pentium 4 vs. Athlon 64 means less than performance when running applications.I am an AMD fan, but when it comes right down to it, if Windows 7 by default shows that an 8-core Bulldozer processor doesn't win hands down compared to a Phenom 2 at the same clock speed, that shows that there are problems. The CORE design of Bulldozer is supposed to be better, clock for clock compared to the previous generation, and we are not seeing that. A 4-core processor based on a Bulldozer core won't perform as well clock for clock compared to a 4-core Phenom 2 due to modules.
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
I think that is AMD's propaganda. While W8 is still in pre-beta state, the tests have shown that it won't really improve the performance. Of course, it may improve later on as W8 develops.However, what is the point? Intel will have IB out before W8 and AMD should also be out with Piledriver soon.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambez...
piroroadkill - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
The exact opposite is true according to AMD, because if you leave two modules asleep, they get power gated off, turbo kicks in, and the two modules you're loading get a much higher clock speed.Targon - Friday, November 4, 2011 - link
Clock speed does NOT equal performance, which is why so many people are posting negative comments about the performance of Bulldozer. Better performance per clock means that Turbo Core is a nice idea, but the "module" concept is currently acting as a performance bottleneck.4-cores active with 1 core/module being used provides better performance than 4 cores with 2 cores/module being used, even with Turbo.
Targon - Friday, November 4, 2011 - link
I found the article I was thinking of that you might find interesting:http://techreport.com/articles.x/21865
JMC2000 - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
I'm waiting for someone to clock BD at 9GHz, just for the eventual flood of "OVER 9000!" memes...