It"s always a cool thing to see someone try to boost the speed of a factory-made PC processor well beyond its design limits. Today, there"s word that Intel"s new Ivy Bridge family of processors can be boosted up to a much higher clock speed, provided you have the right set up and equipment to do the job.
The Hardware hacker known as "Hicookie" has announced that he was able to increase the clock speed of an Ivy Bridge-based Intel Core i7 3770K processor all the way up to 7.03 GHz. Normally, the clock speed for this chip is a mere 3.77 GHz. As reported by PC Gamer, this new record was achieved with a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H motherboard and, naturally, a lot of liquid nitrogen.
The final result showed an increase in clock speed that"s almost a full GHz faster than the previous overclocking record for Intel"s previous Sandy Bridge processors. You can see how "Hicookie" achieved that new record in the video above.
While it"s not likely that most PC users will be able to achieve the same results without tearing apart their rig and pouring in lots of liquid nitrogen, the fact that these processors can be pushed up to just over 7 GHz is still an impressive achievement.
Source: PC Gamer