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AMD Phenom II TWKR Black Edition |
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Written by Vladimir Dimitrijevic
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Tuesday, 01 September 2009 |
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Page 2 of 3
AMD TWKR
This model doesn’t differ much from standard AMD Phenom II 955 BE CPU when it comes to clock-per-clock comparison. Both have same performance levels. What differs AMD TWKR from standard 955 BE is the fact that these CPUs are made from best wafer segments (center) and it likes high voltage. Most of the standard AMD Phenom II 955 BE cannot be set to high voltage settings and achieve high frequencies.
Components, preparations and testing
AMD TWKR CPU should be benchmarked with special test instead of usual battery since this CPU is intended for competitive overclocking. We obtained 60kg of liquid nitrogen and a lot of dry ice. ASUS provided us M4A79T motherboard while OCZ provided 2 x 1GB Blade DDR3 modules (at 2GHz). Cooler Master Real power supply unit provided hefty 1250W of power. We decided to compete in: SuperPi 1M, 3DMark benchmarks and maximum CPU frequency categories.
Before extreme overclock session can begun it is most crucial to prepare configuration at air cooled conditions and especially tweaking of operating system. This means that every benchmark got its own installation of Windows tweaked accordingly. Then we were ready for next step.
| What is “pot”? |
| Pot is used in extreme overclocking contests when some sort of liquid coolant is used. Basically it is the vessel in which liquid nitrogen or helium it poured into and with has direct
contact with heat spreader of CPU or GPU. How to build a good pot is another story and involves some complicated calculations and knowledge from several areas of physics,
chemistry, mathematics, thermodynamics and mechanics. |
Since we decided to go with liquid nitrogen, good insulation was needed. Good insulator is Armaflex material that we used to insulate the pot itself. This way we eliminated possibility of condensation. Much bigger problem presented insulation of motherboard. Armaflex could not be used since it cannot fit every component on the motherboard perfectly (every air pocket means condensation problem) we decided to use kneaded rubber (some use modeling clay).
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