Unreleased Quad-Core Microprocessor Goes Beyond 5GHz

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 09/05/2006 | 11:55 PM ]

While Intel is going to release its first quad-core central processing unit later this year, already a substantial number of engineering samples of Intel’s chips code-named Kentsfield seem to have “leaked” to enthusiasts, who can experiment with them months before official launch.

Despite the fact that Intel Core micro-architecture was not designed to operate at exceptionally high clock-speeds, a Japanese overclocker known as kaz-n has managed to overclock his Kentsfield engineering sample from default 2.66GHz to an impressive 5.25GHz frequency.

The investigation was carried out on Asus P5W DH mainboard equipped with a pair of Corsair PC-6400 (CL3) 1GB memory modules. The CPU was cooled down by liquid nitrogen.

“All four cores working at a speed over 5.2GHz. Ironically he has only performed a SuperPi 1M test at this speed, a test that doesn’t even make use of two cores, and the result was mighty impressive; 9.86 seconds. It’s the first time Kentsfield goes below 10 seconds with SuperPi 1M and then it’s just one of the four cores which is really active,” reports NordicHardware.

• NordicHardware: Intel Kentsfield Quad-Core Overclocked to 5.25GHz!