Deneb is exposed

I doubt anyone with a modicum of overclocking knowledge would expect a Phenom II to o/c to 4GHz on air with stock volts... Even Penryn can't do that, regardless of the cooling used or the chip bin.

 

But even if thats true, your talking a 1Ghz overclock (assuming the rumors refer to the top end part). The Nehalem is already proven to get 1.133Ghz on air. (and in percentage terms thats much higher)

So while it would be nice, and indeed impressive to see a 3Ghz Phenom overclock to 4Ghz on air, I wouldn't say its particularly impressive in comparison to Nehalem.

 

True, but we need to frame this in context. Compared to the original Phenom parts it's a MASSIVE improvement, and very welcome.

 

Lower clocked Phenom II's will probably have more proportional head room than the highest end parts; the same holds for i7's as well. I wouldn't be too surprised if the 3.2 ghz i7 model doesn't OC very far past 3.8 ghz. Also, Kyle from HardOCP said in his video that the overvolted 3.8 OC on the 920 wasn't stable, I'd really just grant it 3.5 ghz (see 3:00 in his vid. on http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU4NSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==)

i7 OCs are still impressive; it's just that if rumors are correct I'm thinking more along the lines of a stable 4.2 ghz OC from 2.6 ghz on the Phenom II. It might sound be a pipe dream but there are some persistent rumors floating around in presentation slides and word of mouth from motherboard engineers. The strongest evidence might be this positive report about AMD's 45nm process over Intel's: http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212002243

Anyway, I realize banking on a big OC for an unreleased part is stretching things a bit thin, but it's good to see AMD better keeping pace with Intel and leaving enthusiasts some headroom and value. It would be a nice surprise if a $250 Phenom II OC'd can perform on par with a much higher priced 2.93 ghz i7.

 

I can't speak for Phenom II, but as someone who spends his days defining, automating and testing application and game benchmarks I would have to disagree with you there if you look at the current Phenom.

 

I'd be inclined to agree, same as 4GHz on Bloomfield is apparently 'easy'.

I'm not saying it isn't possible, hell on a test rig with a loud cooler and a rather flexible definition of 'stable' its not that tricky at all, but theres a damn good reason my home system is running 3.6GHz.

Sites like Fudzilla throw numbers from rumors around with gospel and everyone listens to the idiots.

 

Well that's fine and dandy but we aren't discussing the Phenom, we're discussing the Phenom II.

 

Well-said. High overclocks are always glorified but rarely obtained. I also run my CPU at a mere 3.6GHz for stability, power, and heat reasons, despite being capable of much higher clocks (tested up to 4.2).

 

True, for some reason I read the original statement as CPUs don't affect games. Will be interesting to find out how Phenom II fairs.

 

It is surprising though that AMD itself is touting OC figures on its BE parts, provided that those are real slides about the Phenom II that are presented to customers that we're seeing. If they are, I'd figure they'd be somewhat conservative with their figures or risk losing significant credibility. (Not that I'd put it past them or any other company...)

As for the lack of official parts clocked at higher speeds, I think they're waiting to bin enough high clock parts before announcing a new FX line. This would be in line with rumors of a 4.0 ghz FX part from earlier in the year. Ofcourse, this is all best taken with a grain of salt.

Edit: I hope this isn't like the BS Barcelona 3Ghz demo: http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=6455 The 1.9v figure they cite for the 5 and 6 ghz OCs is a bit ugly tbh. The reasoning in that article for why AMD isn't releasing faster parts seems sound; they really can't afford a price war at this point.

 

1.55V for 4GHz? On 45nm?

Chip won't last long like that.

 

My feelings exactly.
I thought 1.55v was already pushing it..., back in the Athlon 64 "Newcastle"/"Winchester"/"Venice" (130nm/90nm) days, let alone now in a "supposedly" cutting edge 45nm process.

Even a typical 65nm Intel Core 2 Quad doesn't need that much juice to reach 4GHz, let alone a newer 45nm variant of the same chip(s).

 

Yes, it does seem high. I had to put 1.57-1.59V into my old Opteron 175 to hit 2.6-2.7GHz on (chilled) air.

Come again? 4GHz 65nm C2Qs are hardly "typical", at least on air

 

The AMD demo had both air and water-cooled variants of the 4-to-4.5GHz Phenom II setups (although there are no pictures of either of them yet).
The "juice" (vcore) comparison is perfectly valid, IMHO.

 

A 4Ghz Quad core is rare, these results are pretty good in that light. It's a decent amount of voltage but nothing shocking.

 

These temps look promising:

"On air, the Phenom II X4 was able to hit around 4GHz at 1.55V with 32ºC temps. With water cooling at 1.6V the new Phenom II X4 broke 4GHz with a 39ºC core temp and in a Vapochill setup we saw 4.4+GHz. The final icing on the cake, so to speak, was the LN2 setup where the Phenom II ran stable at speeds well in excess of 5GHz and booted at speeds in excess of 6GHz."

http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Sneak-Peeks-Phenom-II-Overclocks-To-5GHz/

 

I doubt the temperature readings are accurate.

 

They look do pretty surprising; then again AMD supposedly reduced leakage a lot with this node.