Highest CPU Clock Speed Ever Reached Is Now 8.309 GHz

Overclocking is a pastime that not overly many IT users engage in, but some of those who did led to the appearance of the now updated overclocking hall of fame and, thus, increasingly outlandish chip frequencies.

CPU-Z is a program which, though it identifies and lists all information available on the CPU run by any system, is best known for being the application used to track the exact clock speed of such processors during overclocking scenarios.

Indeed, there is even a CPU-Z Hall of fame, where the greatest frequencies ever recorded are exhibited for everyone to feel awe.

It so happens that the entire hall of fame went through an emergency rearrangement because of the actions of a certain overclocker.

Using the name of Tapakah, the Latvian man took one of Intel's units and, with a liberal application of liquid nitrogen, pushed it to well beyond multiple times the stock clock.

The CPU wasn't any Core series model either, instead belonging to the Celeron brand and featuring a single core.

For those that want some numbers, the single-core Celeron D 352 was pushed from the stock 3.2 GHz all the way up to 8.309 GHz.

This was accomplished on an ASUS P5E3 Premium Intel X48-based motherboard equipped with 1 GB of DDR3 from Corsair and the aforementioned LN2 cooler with Gelid Solutions GC-Extreme thermal paste. The voltage was pushed to 1.984V.

Unfortunately, though the chip did survive enough to attain this record, it was not running stably enough to enable benchmarking tests.

Those that might entertain the notion of duplicating the results, however, may find an obstacle in the fact that the 65 nm chip has been discontinued (it was released over five years ago, back in Q2 2006).

The CPU-Z Hall of Fame can be perused in detail on this page.