Video: AMD's Phenom II X4 TWKR CPU for extreme overclocking lunatics
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Jun 30th 2009 3:14PM
posted Jun 30th 2009 3:14PM
AMD has recently cooked up a little something they like to call the Phenom II X4 TWKR Black Edition, a hand-picked, limited edition processor that is designed to be overclocked "to the extreme." Currently labeled "Not for Sale," with no serial numbers and only one hundred of these bad boys in existence, just a few lucky folks have got their hands on one, so we've dug up some reviews (and previews) so you can see what the fuss is all about. According to the company, one of these guys could be pushed by 100MHz with air cooling, which doubles to about 200MHz with "extreme cooling." As far as impressions go, the reviewer at Neoseeker quickly decided that the units aren't meant to be overclocked on air only, and that dry ice isn't much better. Hot Hardware says pretty much the same thing. Though they weren't able to test with liquid nitrogen or liquid helium (the only way to get real speed) they did put a Koolance LN2 pot (and about 20lbs of dry ice) to the test for 4.73GHz. For best results, according to Tom's Hardware Guide, bench the processor at -190°C or cooler. But for the real overclocking experience you simply must check out the video of the "world renowned overclockers" K|ngp|n, chew*, and Gomeler as they run the gamut of "extreme overclocking techniques" after the break.
Read - AMD Phenom II TWKR Edition CPU Preview
Read - AMD's Phenom II X4 TWKR: We Give It The LN2 Treatment
Read - AMD Phenom II 42 TWKR Black Edition Processor
Read - AMD Phenom II TWKR Black Edition Processor
Read - AMD Phenom II TWKR Edition CPU Preview
Read - AMD's Phenom II X4 TWKR: We Give It The LN2 Treatment
Read - AMD Phenom II 42 TWKR Black Edition Processor
Read - AMD Phenom II TWKR Black Edition Processor
Wow. I'll take 4.
100 MHz? Surely that must be a typo?
yeah...engadget, try 1000 and 2000 MHz. Or save us all some time and brain pain and just say 1GHz on air and 2GHz on liquid
I did a triple take on this one. I can do +300 rock solid stable on my x2 7750 with a stock air cooler.
It means 100mhz more than a 955 equivilant...
Eg. whatever you can overclock to on a 955+100mhz is what you will get on TWKR chips/
The legit reviews piece does say just that Blaine. They don't say 200 mhz with "extreme cooling" and one wonders why anyone would call them "the company". Nor is it clear at all from Engadget's piece that they understood those were frequencies above the 955's max OC.
I haven't found a press release from AMD yet, so it's possible they have a similar quote, but even if they do this is still really crappy blogging. It's just a question of how crappy.
if you guys ever did any overclocking you'd understand how big of a difference a 100-200 MHz boost is. This is the unmultiplied value in each core of the CPU. When multiplied, it'll give you your actual GHz rating. It's not a typo, it's just not translated into layman's language.
BS binary. Read legit reviews and its clear where the author got his info. It's also pretty likely this author doesn't OC and doesn't even know what he posted, much less would be able to translate it for a layperson.
Talking Bus speeds without mentioning that they are Bus speeds is pointless, and I've never read OCers do it. I'm pretty tame with my overclocks, and don't claim to be an expert, but I've read enough experts doing it before trying my own to know your "translation" BS is just that, BS. The author IS talking about core speeds after multiplication, he's just grabbed some numbers that were relative to the 955's OC performance and either neglected to mention that or didn't realize that's what they were.
The legitreviews article makes it clear that they mean 100mhz/200mhz above the regular parts' top speeds, which is fairly significant. Basically, these parts are CPUs that are less power efficient and need a higher voltage, and usually overclockers need to raise the core voltage to get higher clock speeds, so AMD figured instead of throwing them away slap a funny acronym on them and ship them out to reviewers for some free PR.
oh so 100MHz over the stock clock speed without adjusting the voltage. that makes sense. but is still rather pointless. real OCers up the voltage.
No no no, its 100Mhz more with overclocking. It's not a 100Mhz processor.
ne of these guys could be pushed by 100MHz with air cooling
Wow... What a feat!
LOL....warning, only experienced world champion overclockers are able to do this safely.
It means 100mhz more than a 955 equivilant...
dude, that's the core clock speed without multipling the multiplier...which is a value that exceeds 10 for sure. my phenom ii 805 runs at 200 MHz multiplied by 12.5 to give me 2.5 GHz per core...
@binary, you don't even know what the unmultiplied speed is called--it's a Bus speed, FSB for acronym happy.
For someone coming into a post lecturing people about if they only knew more about OCing, they'd understand, you don't seem to know much about your own equipment. On top of which, your interpretation of the post is dead wrong. Blaine figured out the meaning, with no thanks to the author.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1009/1/
Bullshit on that binary, look, bus speed, same as internal core speed is 200...
@sleey0:
ne? What is ne?
so they are saying you can get the bus speed from 200MHz to 300MHz? my Phenom II 940 has a stock 15x multiplier so based on that you can run this at 4.5GHz on air cooling? wtf thats ridiculously unbelieveable. or are they saying you can get the final speed up by 100GHz? but thats nothing
i have my PhenomII 940 at 220x16 = 3.52GHz up from the stock 3.0. im a little confused what this 100/200MHz thing is
By the way, I think "tweaker" has more negative connotations than positive even within the PC community. As long as you're over the age of ten you tend to associate that word with drug addicts.
Maybe AMD likes Arrested Development.
Maybe it really takes off once you give it a little meth? Runs crazy fast for 3 weeks at a time, however you can't reboot it or shut it off during that time.
After you install the CPU, you've got to put that cool box to good use. "You put your weed in it" :)
Insane, very cool. I thought I read like 3 years ago Intel had a chip running at 5 gHZ in room temp...
Boing!!
BONK!
PoW!!
touché!
(http://www.batmania.com.ar/images/images_serie/serie_touche.jpg)
Pang!
pfff this sucks 100 to 200 mhz...
At least take the time to read a few comments before you post. 5 people have already mentioned the obvious typo, and there were only 9 posts before yours.
@LMM
I did read them but that does not mean it's true
That's where common sense comes in... would anyone make a big fuss about this processor if it "sucks" like you said? The answer, of course, is no. Therefore, it was either a typo, or the 100-200mHz is RELATIVE to a stock processor of similar make (ie the 955, as Blaine Oliver has kindly pointed out).
I know you're not supposed to believe everything you read on the internet, but that adage is more of a warning against blind trust rather than an encouragement not to use reasoning to determine the truth.
This is presented in the same manner as the processor from Pi. Cool.
Oh, it's AMD. Not cool.
As much as I appreciate being able to hit ridiculous speeds, overclocking for me has always been about practicality and price/performance ratio. Ive got a budget Core 2 Duo (E7400) at 4.05GHz on air and im getting about 80% the performance in benchmarks of my friends brand new i7 in Crysis's CPU benchmark ( mine averaged 14.42 fps maxed out, his with the same settings hit 18.3 fps ). If you cant run those speeds consistently then its no good. Even water cooling is cumbersome, dangerous, and time consuming as you have to consistently refill the resevoir unless youve got a specialized system. I loved getting to overclock my friends Phenom 9600 as theyre now dirt cheap. Went from 2.3 to 2.75 GHz and saw huge jumps across the board. In both his and my setups I used a cheap but effective Arctic Cooling heatsink. ( 64 and 7 respectively )
Reservoir refilling is easy and safe with a $10-$15 fillport and a few minutes of dremel work. If you put a leaky water cooling loop into a PC, you're doing it wrong.
as soon as your friend decides to overclock his i7 you won't be anywhere 80% of his benchmarks.
TWKR. Cute.
AMD partnered with Motorola to bring you cutting-edge high-quality processors.
http://www.wallacesantos.com/2009/06/30/twkr-update-and-giveaway/ maingear is giving away 2 of them
You rock for sharing that. Now I just need some help rating your comment down to improve my odds xD
How nice that THESE guys seem to be able to include Canada in THEIR giveaway...
Hmmmm.
nothing to see here folks. move along.
I'm sorry, but this does not impress me. They should be proud of what the chip can handle with normal cooling. AMD needs to focus on making portable cpus and chipsets, and stop focusing on the small percentage of overclockers.
They don't need "street cred" they need amazing low voltage, fast, cheap cpus and chipsets to compete with Intel.
Street cred is one of the main things that has kept AMD viable. They can't act like Intel because they don't have Intel's resources.
Lots of people decide which brand to buy based on the opinions of those few overclockers. They are the influentials in the processor market. Intel's recent popularity was boosted by the opinions of that same small group on the Core2Duo. AMD can't afford to lose those people, even if you don't understand why.
I guess the 1 person who thought this naming scheme was awesome when motorola was using it works at AMD Marketing.
Remember, kids, always recycle. TO THE EXTREME!!!!!!!!!!
Its fun and all but I don't see much point. Overclocking for real world application is great , but this is just for fun I guess.
Plus its not fair they overclock from the desktop, they should be forced to reboot and do it from the bios
Wow.. that is one lame video full of nerds.
The one guy keeps saying that he is into overclocking for 'free speed'. However, this type of extreme overclocking is nowhere near free and if you were actually using it for anything other than to do a benchmark and say you beat a record, you would need a team of people and a whole lot of nitrogen to keep it up and running.