14 DAY TRIAL // If anyone thought the Sandy Bridge CPUs had good overclocking capabilities, they will be surprised to learn that the Ivy Bridge line easily outdoes them.
We're going to cut right to the chase here, since we doubt anyone wants to do anything but see exactly what makes this possible.
As the title says, the upcoming Ivy Bridge central processing units can overclock system memory to over 3 GHz.
This would be a huge deal on its own, but the chips actually have what it takes to pull it off on four DIMM modules at once.
We don't have the photos to prove it, but overclocker Sin0822 does. He has already posted screenshots of the Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H motherboard running an Intel Core i7-3770K at 1,638 MHz.
The core clock isn't what's important here though. The relevant bit is the multiplier (x16) and the bus speed of 102.37 MHz.
The result of applying these numbers to four G.Skill 4 GB memory modules was a frequency of 3,276 MHz for each.
Sure, the memory modules themselves weren't slouches, but they were rated at “only” 2,666 MHz with a latency of 11-13-13-36 and a 2T command rate.
Needless to say, 3.2 GHz is quite a bit beyond the call of duty, even for such an enthusiast memory solution.
Sin0822 managed this feat by making liberal use of the 29.33 memory divider in the UEFI BIOS, something Sandy Bridge lacks.
The overclocker also says that it is possible to achieve greater speeds as long as fewer modules are tested at a time.
Of course, it all boils down to whether or not the memory itself can survive such workloads. We're pretty sure testers will need home-made test benches and liquid nitrogen for cooling. Anyway, we'll sit back and wait for more records to be broken, while wondering what Ivy Bridge-E will bring next year.
