Phenom II 955 BE Proving Grounds

AMD has posted a video on YouTube of their Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition being overclocked on air, dry ice and Liquid Nitrogen. The processor is overclocked by Chew*.



Chew* spent three weeks tirelessly overclocking stock AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE processors and recently published his results spanning air, phase, dry ice, and liquid nitrogen. He pushes DDR3 and the extraordinary north bridge of the 955 to the limit. The stock 955 has tremendous north bridge scaling potential and achieved overclocks at significantly lower voltages than prior processor models. Gigabyte and OCZ provided additional support.

The Proving Grounds on Youtube in HD : http://links.amd.com/PROVINGGROUNDS

The Proving Grounds on Youtube in Standard Definition: http://links.amd.com/SDPROVINGGROUNDS

Result Summary :

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU ”Dragon” Technology
Overclocker Brian Mclachlan / chew*

#2 3DMark06 23,883
Single ATI Radeon HD 4890 Class

#1 3DMark06 28,831
Dual ATI Radeon HD 4850 Class

#1 3DMark06 Score 32,281
Dual ATI Radeon HD 4890 Class

Results on DDR3
DDR3 5-5-5-15-20 At 1443 Mhz
DDR3 6-6-6-16-22 At 1636 Mhz

Results on Air
4515 Mhz All Core Validation
4070 Mhz Extreme Stability CPU 1.50V

Results on Dry Ice
5217 Mhz All Core Validation
4717 Mhz Extreme Stability CPU 1.60V

Results on Liquid Nitrogen
6405 Mhz All Core Validation
6283 Mhz Benchmark PI 1M (6283) 11.078 DDR3 9-9-9 1700
5751 Mhz Extreme Stablity CPU 1.80V

MA790FX-UD5P DDR2 Motherboard
MA790FXT-UDP5 DDR3 Motherboard

Phenom II X4 940 BE @ 6.5GHz on Liquid Helium

From Las Vegas XS OC Event, below is a link to the video of the world record setting overclock of 6.5GHz for Phenom II 940 BE using liquid helium. They also set the world record for 3DMark performance at the same event.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB0JodKgZ0A

This 7-minutes Dragon Platform/AMD Phenom™ II video on YouTube, has received over 250,000 hits since it was posted a week ago, on January 22, 2009.

More pictures here at XtremeSystems Forum.

AMD Releases DRAGON platform and Phenom II

Empowering consumers to get elite-level computing performance for under $900 U.S. dollars, AMD today launched “Dragon” platform technology for desktop PCs featuring the new AMD Phenom™ II X4 processor. Even the most demanding users such as enthusiasts and high-end gamers desire affordable systems capable of delivering HD entertainment, graphic-intensive game play at the highest settings their monitors can handle, as well as quick and easy transfer of video entertainment to and from mobile devices.

The processors launching today from AMD are the Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition and Phenom II X4 920. The major change in Phenom II is that it is built using a 45nm immersion lithography manufacturing process which, "enables higher frequencies, tighter tolerances and lower current leakage." The other major change is the L3 cache which is now three times as large at 6MB over 2MB of Phenom and the L3 cache is also 2-cycles faster. There are a number of other improvements as well, ACC (Advanced Clock Calibration) is now apparently baked into the silicon so a SB750 chipset is not required to get more overclocking headroom out of the Phenom II. Another thing to note is the HT bus on these new processors runs at 1.8GHz instead of 2GHz of the 9950 due to a trade off in priorities to get the chip ready to market. The bus isn't even close to being saturated with anything but servers so this isn't a major loss.

Major feature enhancements for 45nm AMD Phenom II:

Enhanced Total Cache: 8MB (L2 + L3)
Cool'n'Quiet 3.0 Technology: Additional power states, significantly (~40%) lower idle power and lower power consumption under moderate loads
Increased frequency: AMD Phenom II 940 3.0GHz @ 125W TDP
Massive headroom using extreme and experimental cooling techniques

Initial pricing Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition will be at $275 and the Phenom II X4 920 at $235.


"Dragon" is a synthesis of power, strength, and wisdom. Specifically, it is the fusion of the AMD Phenom™ II processor, ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 series graphics, AMD 7-series chipsets and AMD software that puts you in control. It's the PC platform designed for high-definition gaming, video processing and entertainment at an affordable price. The AMD Phenom II processor at the heart of Dragon platform technology is AMD's highest performing processor ever with superior efficiency.

The media reports:
AMDZone
Tech Report
AnandTech
CRN
Neo Seeker
GameWare
Guru3D
X-Bit Labs

Getting To See Phenom II Before It Launches

After AMD showed off the new Phenom II processors and the Dragon platform to the media they went one step further and did a private showing to select forum members that were able to come to a scheduled showing in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.

Legit Reviews put an alert out to forum members about the event and XstollieX jumped at the chance and made it to the Chicago event (December 9th). By going to the event he was able to get a sneak peak at Phenom II a month before it launches and will be getting one when they launch next month.

The first thing he saw were two large displays. Each one was connected to the new Dragon platform set up in the new Antec Skeleton cases. Each machine was running the Phenom II X4 940, a Gigabyte 790GX motherboard, and an ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card. To show off what these machines could do they had the game Race Driver: Grid set up with the full Logitech driving seat, wheel and pedals. The games were set at the highest resolution and ran flawlessly. They had Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Company of Heroes, and last but not least Crysis.

Then he found table with two more computers set up on it, both were connected to 50 inch displays, and both playing Crysis. The computer on the left was AMD’s new Dragon Platform, and the computer on the right was the new Intel Core i7 @3.2GHz. Both machines were running the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card. The two computers side by side ran great on the highest settings.



The last area was more of a spectator event. This was the overclocking demo/contest. For this there were two teams. The first was from AMD and the second team was from Finland. The contest was done in two parts. The first part was air-cooling and the second was done using Liquid Nitrogen. Each team was randomly given Five of the Phenom II X4 940 chips cooled by a Cooler Master Z600 in a push-pull configuration. The goal of this was to achieve the highest stable overclock. Stability was tested with two loops of the Crysis CPU test. Each team worked side by side with only 30 minutes to achieve their highest stable clock. Both teams were using the Gigabyte 790GX motherboard and the 4870 X2 graphics card. The result was astonishing. Team AMD achieved a 3.94GHz clock speed and Team Finland fell just short with a 3.9GHz.

After a short break for the overclockers, the fun began. Liquid Nitrogen was used to cool the CPU. Using liquid nitrogen they were able to bring the temperature of the chip’s close to -180 degrees. Using the new AMD Dragon platform Team Finland won this round achieving a core clock of 6.0GHz. Team AMD fell just short at about 5.9GHz. After they ran the Crysis CPU for two loops they ran 3DMark05. It scored ~35,000 3dmarks when all was said and done.

Introducing AMD "Dragon" and Phenom II

AMD plans to bring higher-performance and more energy efficient 45nm processor technology to the desktop PC market in Q1 2009 with the AMD platform codenamed “Dragon”. This platform will be the second generation AMD performance desktop platform, featuring all next-generation components in comparison to the first generation AMD “Spider” platform released in 2008. The AMD “Dragon” platform is designed to harness the power of fusion by optimizing the performance of new 45nm AMD Phenom™ II X4 quad-core processors with award-winning AMD 700 Series chipsets and award-winning ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 series graphics.




For introduction slides explaining AMD Dragon, please download here:
Geocities (Limited Quota)
MegaUpload

Branding logo of AMD Dragon, the replacement platform for Spider: