- It has been overclocked to 5GHz on just 0.904V
- Another overclock took all 4 cores to 7.012GHz
- Disable half the CPU cores, and 8GHz is possible!
Now, as someone familiar with CPU technology since AMD's Athlon XP days, I can tell that if you tried to do ANYTHING on these computers, they would gib and die; but this is the case with all these publicity overclocks: No.1 is self-explanatory since if it could run at that voltage at 5GHz, then there would be no question - it would be sold like that! No.2 has an alarmingly low BCLK of 91.07MHz, which would completely fuck up the clockgen causing cascading failure of many system buses including SATA; No.3 runs at 2.259V, and the video is a parade of screenshots with no live footage, also the BCLK is suspiciously stable given how No.2 fared. In spite of all of these overclocks offering no useful benefit to anyone, they still serve to lift spirits - anyone remember Sandy Bridge and how it wowed us with Stable Overclocks of 4.9GHz on air cooling? Okay, not quite along the same lines, but I can make a conservative estimate that Haswell will allow 5GHz overclocking to become the rule, not the exception.
Another thing I would like to address is AMD, and it's Kabini (Laptop), and Temash (Tablet) CPU lineup; this is quite exciting for me, fondly remembering Athlon 64 and how it showed that the Emperor, Netburst, had neither clothes nor testicles. Touted as AMD's final hope, these CPUs do indeed look quite the contender for Intel's godawful Atom (seriously, since when did a good CPU only ever only do things one at a time?), but the one that *really* caught my eye is the A4-5000, which is a quad-core at 1.5GHz, a GPU with 128 shaders at 500MHz, drawing only 15W; I feel the need to press that home: This is a quad-core which can merrily power an 11in netbook! Not only that, but this includes the GPU, so overall system power isn't likely to exceed 30W, ever. I seriously hope AMD does manage to cling to life, and Haswell doesn't wreck it's shit for good, but then again that is just my inner 12 year old talking, change happens...
On the GPU front, Nvidia is prepping to release the GTX 780, basically a Titan for play-it-safe scrubs like me, not those rich-fuck-scrooge-mcduck early adopters! Meanwhile ATi (not AMD!) has booted the HD 7990 6GB out of the door and taken the GPU performance crown back... yep, I said I care not so much for graphics, funny since CPU performance is completely moot these days especially for gaming. There is, however, one question I have - If GPUs are getting more power efficient, where are the performance passively-cooled graphics cards? All we have are those silly little HTPC cards with crudely machined aluminium blocks for heatsinks, how about a passive GTX 760? I'm sure that the concept of a PC with only 2 fans in the entire thing appeals to a great many gamers (I know I'd like to silence my GTX 560, but then again I bumped the clocks from 810MHz to 950MHz so why the hell am I complaining?), after all, the NoFan CR-95 found a market despite the fact that it is basically a GIGANTIC fuck-off block of copper (180mm diameter x 148mm height, frankly I'm surprised it "only" weighs 730g). I wouldn't care if it took up 4 slots, If I had a silent PC in the works I would snap that mother up!
Well, that's my lot on the scene, I would love to know how you think the perennial CPU war of AMD vs Intel will pan out, will AMD finally be steamrolled despite it's ingenuity; perhaps comments on whether passive performance cards are a good proposition? Your minds and mouths are weapons free...
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