AMD Ships “Formula 1” Phenom II Processors for Extreme Enthusiasts

From X-bit Labs: Advanced Micro Devices is shipping central processing units aimed at extreme enthusiasts, those, who don not care about the reliability, but only for performance in select benchmarks. Those processors are called AMD Phenom II 42 TWKR (tweaker) Black Edition and they are only available directly from AMD.

“I can confirm that the [AMD Phenom II TWKR] exists and that has the enthusiast community [is] buzzing right now. However, I cannot provide details at this time. We'll be back in touch next week with more info,” said Steve Howard, a spokesperson for AMD.

Like all of the latest microprocessors for enthusiasts, AMD Phenom II TWKR Black Edition processors come with unlocked multiplier, which dramatically eases overclocking. But in addition to that, the new chips are supposed sustain never-before-seen thermal design power, about 200W, and should be cooled using liquid nitrogen, cascade, dry ice or other extreme methods. The reason? It is believed that the new TWKR processors will hit unbelievable clock-speeds and will provide leading performance in benchmarks.

Unfortunately, the new chips are not exactly aimed at retail market and are projected to be only available from AMD and for select system makers or enthusiasts. AMD reportedly wants to position its AMD Phenom II TWKR Black Edition chips as “Formula 1” processors: the chips hardly have resource to operate at 7.0GHz – 8.0GHz for a reasonable amount of time, but their enthusiasts looking forward breaking performance records will still find them useful.

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