Overclockers squeeze a record-topping 9.2 GHz out of a 14900KF, just 800 MHz shy of the ten gigs that Intel promised us all those years ago

In the same way that top-fuel dragsters have no bearing on how we use everyday cars, overclocking the twangers off a CPU using extreme cooling methods doesn't have much practical use, but it's super fun to watch. The case in point here is that there's a new world record for the highest clock speed achieved by any desktop processor: 9,206 MHz with an Intel Core i9 14900KF.

You can check out the details of the record over at HWBot, but the first thing of note here is that the chip used isn't a 14900KS, the typical choice of chip for record breakers. That Raptor Lake processor was Intel's last hurrah in its previous era of 'clock speed beats all and power usage be damned'.

That CPU has a peak boost clock of 6.0 GHz by default, so it's not hard to see why it was used to achieve the previous record of 9,118 MHz. Admittedly, top overclockers never use the chips in a default configuration, and that's no different for this new record. Firstly, all the E-cores were disabled, followed by HyperThreading (i.e. simultaneous multithreading), and what appears to be a single P-core, too.

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The overclocking team also used a highly-tweaked DRAM configuration of dual-channel DDR5-5792, with timings of 32-47-41-77. Oh, and a lot of liquid nitrogen. Not a couple of litres but a comically huge industrial vat of the stuff. You can watch the team practically vanish behind a water vapour cloud in a Bilibili video on the record attempt.

Only one P-core is actually fired up to the dizzying heights of 9.2 GHz, but even so, it's still one heck of an achievement. What makes it stand out to me, though, is that the fact that it's not all that far off 10 GHz, and when it comes to Intel's processors, that's somewhat of a legendary goalpost.

Back in 2000, when Intel launched the Pentium 4 processor, the chip giant was suggesting that 10 GHz processors could potentially become a reality within the space of five or so years, because of the rapid advances being made in photolithography and wafer process nodes.

Intel employed all kinds of tricks to ramp up the clock speeds of its Netburst architecture, but ultimately ran into a massive power issue at around 3.8 to 4.0 GHz. At those speeds, the transistors were leaking so much energy that no amount of additional voltage or cooling could get the nanoscale switches to operate correctly.

Ultimately, Intel would abandon Netburst and its quest for 10 GHz in favour of a slower but more capable architecture that would come to be known as Core, and as the saying goes, the rest is history. Not that Team Blue would entirely give up chasing clock speeds, as Raptor Lake amply demonstrates.

With Arrow Lake and presumably Nova Lake, Intel has stepped back once more (power being once again a major issue), so we're unlikely to see top overclockers breaking the new world record with one of those chips. Still, you never know: Like mountain climbers of old, staring at the terrifying heights of Everest, K2, or Annapurna, that ten gig mark is now only 800 MHz away.

That's just 9% higher than what's been achieved. Just. Only. We're so close, but still oh so far away.

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