The massive image: Intel not too long ago invited two main overclockers to its headquarters to debate attaining the world’s first 9 GHz CPU overclock. The duo of Pieter-Jan Plaisier (SkatterBencher) and Jon Sandström (ElmorLabs) additionally regarded again at CPU frequency overclocking milestones alongside the best way, highlighting an apparent wall that was hit roughly 17 years in the past.
Record-high CPU overclocks really feel like a fairly frequent prevalence however in response to the info, that’s removed from the case. A chart accompanying the overclockers’ presentation highlights the primary chip to succeed in 1 GHz – AMD’s legendary Athlon 650 MHz – method again in October 1999.
It will take about 14 extra months for overclocking lovers to breach the two GHz barrier, and simply one other 9 months to crack 3 GHz. The 4 GHz mark was crossed in early 2002 and roughly 16 months later, the primary 5 GHz overclock was achieved.
With the percentages of their favor (and Intel Pentium 4 chips of their motherboards), overclockers didn’t look again. The world’s first 6 GHz overclock got here in Could 2004, the 7 GHz partitions got here down in August 2005, and eight GHz was achieved in early 2007. Then, all of it got here to a screeching halt.
It would not be till the top of 2022 – greater than 15 years later – that the 9 GHz barrier lastly got here down. The current world record, 9,117 MHz set by Elmor with a Core i9-14900KS, might very effectively be the brand new ceiling for the foreseeable future. And that elusive 10 GHz mark? Properly, good luck with that.
That is to not say that CPUs haven’t improved because the mid-2000s. Right now’s chips are method quicker and extra environment friendly than CPUs of yesteryear, and base clock speeds on air cooling are considerably larger than what you’d get with a retail chip a decade and a half in the past. However when it comes to sheer clock pace on a single core with liquid nitrogen or liquid helium cooling, it appears the ceiling has not budged a lot.
