14 DAY TRIAL // There are rumors and then there are rumors, and what we have here, thanks to the nice folk at Hexus.net
, is definitely one of the latter, likely to leave a lot of people reeling.
To avoid a lengthy egress, it has been reported that Advanced Micro Devices is working on a central processing unit with a clock speed of 5 GHz. Without consumer overclocking.
That's right, while NVIDIA is right in the middle of the top-tier graphics card market, AMD is getting ready to make a splash on the CPU front.
It might even be enough to give Intel pause really. Not every day does a company publish plans for a chip worth $795 / 609 – 795 Euro.
To be fair, AMD didn't exactly announce this. Still, a report is a report, and we're definitely not letting this one go.
The chip would be called FX Centurion Super Processor and will be based on the same Piledriver architecture as the Vishera lineup.
We aren't exactly sure if 5 GHz will be the base clock speed or the highest level achievable by the Turbo Core technology.
Since the FX-8350, the current flagship, reaches 4.2 GHz at its best, we suppose both are possible. Obviously, it would be exciting for 5 GHz to be the base, but even Turbo Core 5GHz will be massive.
Oddly enough, the folks at Hexus could not find out whether the chip will have 8 cores like the 8350 or fewer.
Given the price though, it is clear that AMD is not sparing any expense, especially if it doesn’t have to bother making more than a limited run of the things.
The 5 GHz clock will be stable on air cooling, suggesting that if enthusiastic overclockers ever get a hand on it, new clock speed records will be set in a matter of days.