AMD's Phenom II X4 TWKR + Overclock

Two AMD Phenom II X4 42 Black Edition TWKR (whew, that's a mouthful) CPUs, side by side. This is a picture that you'll likely not see anywhere else. After all, these are pretty rare chips. The TWKR-edition CPUs are currently the most sought-after and coveted AMD processors in the world, at least if you're a hardcore overclocker. Ever since pictures of the TWKR CPUs were leaked a few weeks back, enthusiasts everywhere have been buzzing about them. What hidden superpower do these chips have? What makes these processors so special? Tom's Hardware, along with Team IRONMODS, will put these two chips to the test to see what really makes them tick. But first, here's a bit of background on these unique offerings.


According to AMD, there are approximately 100 TWKR processors in the world. These chips were created especially for the extreme overclocking community to operate beyond the specification of typical production-level processors. What makes these chips special is the fact that they are considered “high leakage” parts. In this context, high leakage means that the processors "leak" more current than a normal Phenom II CPU and consequently run hotter, which actually turns out to be a positive for the overclocking crowd (even if it means they're more likely to die an early death). They can take on more voltage and generally tend to scale higher when cooled with extreme methods, such as liquid nitrogen or liquid helium.

So, how fast can these processors go? It turns out that AMD's binning, which filters out these high leakages parts, works in favor of the extreme overclocker. Pushing approximately 1.75 V to the CPU, we were able to hit 6.4 GHz. Could the processor hit even higher frequencies? We are pretty sure it could with even more voltage and better cooling. We did not try more than 1.75 V on this chip for fear that we'd cut its already-destined-to-be-short life even shorter, or even kill it on the bench. We have a lot more tests that still need to be run and a dead CPU doesn't perform well.


Is it possible that your retail Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition processor might perform as well or better than one of these TWKR chips? The simple answer is, yes. The chances are fairly slim, though. With the TWKR, extreme overclockers know that the chip they have in their hand has all the attributes of an exceptional performer.


The speed that can be achieved by one of these processors is neither guaranteed nor predictable. Just like retail processors, the overclocking headroom on each chip will vary. At its default settings, the TWKR boots at 2 GHz (10 x 200 MHz). Under more traditional cooling methods (air, water, phase change, and cascade), the TWKR will probably perform similar to retail Phenom II Black Edition offerings. Indeed, the Phenom II X4 42 BE TWKR is designed to shine under extreme sub-zero cooling with LN2 and LHe.



Tomshardware!