The World’s First 9 GHz CPU | Talk at Intel
On April 19, 2024, Jon from ElmorLabs and I were invited by Intel to talk about the world’s first 9 GHz CPU overclock.
Agenda of Talk at Intel
In the presentation we cover the following topics:
- A brief history of the CPU frequency overclocking world record
- Raptor Lake, record breaker
- Chasing records with liquid helium
- Beyond 9 GHz
The first topic covers a brief history of the CPU frequency overclocking world record from the end of the last millenium to today. It is in large part based on the CPU Overclocking World Record History I track on this website. We highlight that the frequency world record improved at a rapid pace during the frequency era in the early 2000s. Collectively, the overclocking community raced from 1 GHz at the end of the millennium to 8 GHz 8 years later. However, the frequency would only improve another 10% in the following 5 years.
The second topic talks about the progression from Alder Lake’s 7.8 GHz frequency record to achieving the first 9 GHz with the Core i9-13900K. I also reference the video posted on the Intel Technology YouTube channel. Preempted by the Raptor Lake announcements made during the Intel Innovation 2022 event, on the day the Core i9-13900K launched the ASUS ROG team broke the 10-year old overclocking record with liquid nitrogen.
In the third segment, we discuss the challenges associated with using liquid helium to achieve overclocking world records. I discuss this also in Raptor Lake’s Unbreakable Overclocking World Record. Liquid helium is interesting to overclockers because it provides 73 kelvin additional thermal headroom. However, chasing records with helium isn’t simple as you need (1) the perfect CPU, (2) manage all the extreme temperature related challenges, and (3) manage your time exceptionally well.
In the final topic, we discuss the technical challenges related to CPU frequency measurement and its mitigations. We briefly discuss the usage of NOPBench.
Below you can find the presentation: