14 DAY TRIAL // Advanced Micro Devices made a turn for the new and ambitious with the Fusion architecture and it looks like it intends to again make an experiment, this time involving its high-end collection of central processing units.
AMD may have handed the low-end and mainstream segments over to the Fusion series of APUs (accelerated processing units), but its range of high-end CPUs is still very much alive.
The next stop on the company's quest now seems to be a higher degree of overclockability for such chips.
One might be tempted to imagine some new technology or another being built into the unit itself, but there is one simple fact that lies at the basis of any overclocking project.
Simply put, a chip with any degree of overclockability will go up, stay fast and not die so long as it is kept within acceptable temperature ranges.
In other words, if the cooler is good enough, a chip can be pushed beyond its standard speed rating.
It is a recent report that says this is more or less what AMD considered when it began considering the option of equipping boxed versions of its FX CPUs with liquid coolers.
The Antec Kuhler H2O 620 is given as a possible example of what AMD's customers may encounter in the future alongside enthusiast processors, though neither of the two companies commented on the issue.
The above model is a sealed liquid cooler and, though more expensive, has real advantages, such as a smaller size than that of air coolers and the fact that the heat is routed directly out of the desktop case.
All in all, should the ultimate decision be favorable, AMD's “Zambezi” FX could start out with sealed LCS solutions.
A final point that the report raises is that Intel is also considering this sort of maneuver for its Sandy Bridge E units. Time will tell whether or not these considerations bear fruit.