Llano APUs manage to get past that magical 6GHz mark

Feb 2, 2012 02:21 GMT  ·  By

AMD’s launch of the multiplier unlocked A8-3870K and A6-3670K processors have enabled overclockers to push Llano APUs to higher frequencies than ever before, such a chip just surpassing the 6GHz barrier during a recent OC competition.n.

The processor in question is actually the A8-3870K APU which, with the help of liquid nitrogen (LN2), managed to achieve a core clock of 6,067.71MHz.

By using LN2 for cooling the APU, Christian Ney, the enthusiast responsible for reaching this record, was able to push no less than 2.0V through the chip, that was running at a 258.2MHz bus speed, with a 47x multiplier.

Besides the special cooling and the AMD APU, the rest of the system used for establishing this record was comprised of a Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H motherboard, a Vertex 2 SSD and a single GeIL Evo Corsa DDR3 memory module.

The latter was also overclocked to reach an impressive 3505MHz DDR3 speed, which is actually the highest memory frequency achieved by an AMD Llano APU and just 95MHz shy of the current world record.

The stock operating frequency of the quad-core AMD A8-3870K accelerated processing unit used for this overclock is set at 3GHz, while the rest of the chip specs include 4MB of Level 2 cache memory, an integrated dual-channel DDR3-1866MHz controller, and a built-in Radeon HD graphics core.

AMD’s K-Series Llano APUs were specially designed by the chip maker to enable enthusiasts to reach higher CPU overclock, since the integrated graphics core found inside the APU limited the maximum FSB that could be reached without losing stability.

However, going for an unlocked multiplier enables overclockers to avoid this FSB wall by increasing the multi until the desired frequency is reached. Right now, AMD’s quad-core A8-3870K processor is selling for $144.99 (about 110 EUR).

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AMD Llano A8-3870K APU overclocked to 6.067GHz
AMD Llano A8-3870K APU overclocked to 6067MHz
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