How the times have changed. It used to be that Intel missed no opportunity to remind the press that, in the chipmaker’s opinion, overclocking was bad and compromised system stability. Judging by the first day of the IDF, all this seems to have been forgotten. Instead, Intel’s technicians demonstrated an overclocked quad-core system at 5.9 GHz cooled by a series of cascaded compressors and radiators. This system set absolutely spectacular new records in the well-known benchmarks 3D Mark 2005/2006 and Cinebench 10. According to Intel, the system is 100 % stable. The CPU is super cooled to minus 60°C when idle. Patrick Gelsinger proudly spoke of a new world record in processing speed. At any rate, no mention was made of the system’s power consumption. Intel’s overclocked setup used an Asus motherboard, which raises the question why the chipmaker decided against using one of its own boards – the 975XBX2, for example.

Just under four years ago, THG’s editors set a speed record of their own using a Pentium 4 processor cooled with liquid nitrogen in our Record Attempt: The 5 GHz Project. The final result – an impressive 5.25 GHz.

The performance of Intel’s 5.9 GHz machine is certainly impressive, with a score of 83,745 points in 3D Mark 2001.