14 DAY TRIAL // When looking at both the Radeon HD 5000 series of graphics cards as well as at AMD CPUs, one could say that Advanced Micro Devices has made a sort of tradition out of providing a high overclocking headroom. This fact is especially noticeable in the company's processors that bear the Black Edition denomination. Obviously, this includes the recently launched Phenom II X6 1090T BE. This part is somewhat weaker than Intel's Gulftown and also has a less efficient dynamic overclocking capability. Still, not long ago, the 1090T managed to at least beat Intel's offer in one regard.
The Phenom II X6 seems to have broken the previous record in six-core overclocking. As shown by some screenshots and photos published by Donanimhaber, the central processing unit was pushed so high that it shattered the ceiling, so to speak. In the wake of this destruction were left some images showing that the chip was just 0.2MHz short of passing the 6.8GHz threshold, quite negligible in a way.
To make this feat possible, the overclocker(s) installed the Phenom onto an ASUS Crosshair IV Formula motherboard. This platform is powered by the AMD 890FX high-end chipset. Of course, the 6.8GHz performance was not possible through any common means and it would have been quite unfortunate for the entire configuration to suddenly catch fire. As end-users probably already suspect, it took a suitable amount of liquid nitrogen (LN2) to make sure that the processor didn't melt or explode half-way (or even earlier).
If anything, this achievement likely put the Thuban in a better light, seeing how it has, so far, been somewhat overshadowed by the Gulftown. At the very least, this record shows that most enthusiasts will never really run out of opportunities to experiment on this unit. It remains to be seen whether Intel loyalists decide to try and set a new record with the Core i7-980X.