What do you get when you cross the world’s highest-core-count consumer CPU with an overclocker and a barrel of liquid nitrogen? A supremely overclocked processor, that’s what. That’s what happened when Indonesian overclocker Ivan Cupa was given a chance to put AMD’s new Threadripper 2990WX to the test, managing to push the 32-core, 64 thread CPU to 6GHz — double its base clock speed and 1.8GHz more than its standard boost clock.
AMD’s first-generation Threadripper CPUs impressed everyone with their high-core counts and multithreaded performance at a competitive price. Although the second generation of Threadripper CPUs aren’t quite so affordable, they are still amazingly powerful, offering up to 32 cores and 64 threads to those willing to spend $1,800 to buy the top-of-the-line model. It turns out these chips overclock well, too, although liquid nitrogen isn’t a day-to-day cooling solution.
Still, it’s great for breaking records, which is exactly what Ivan Cupa did when he reached a clock speed of 5,995.4MHz. Some publications have reported that this was across all cores, but CPUZ validation and a statement from Cupa’s overclocking partner, Alva Jonathan, confirms that the 6GHz clock was only achieved on a single core. That core was considered the “best,” reaching as much as 150MHz higher than other cores. The rest were underclocked to 600MHz each, so although they were not disabled, only one core reached the peak overclock.
The pair didn’t get a chance to see what the chip might have been capable of across all cores when cooled with liquid nitrogen, but if its capabilities on one core are any indication, an impressive all-core overclock shouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility.
Along with holding the 2990WX clock speed world record, that same Cupa chip has been making waves in general benchmarks, too. One 2990WX overclocked to 5.3GHz currently holds the world record for wPrime-1024m with a time of 18 seconds and 420ms. That’s faster than two Intel Xeon Platinum 8180M chips, with 28 cores apiece, and quicker than a 96-core, four Xeon CPU setup as well.
With a little more tweaking and some additional testing time, AMD’s most powerful prosumer CPU could easily be considered the most powerful single CPU in the world.
Fancy doing some overclocking yourself? Check out our guide on how to get started.
