Amd 4770k

In your face, Netburst!

AMD has a knack for reaching milestones before the competition. The Sunnyvale chip designer is generally credited as being the first to reach 1GHz with its Athlon chip (a claim Intel disputes, by the way, as it was also shipping 1GHz Pentium III parts), and just like it's the year 2000 all over again, AMD is again touting a speed victory by unveiling the world's first 5GHz processor for consumers.

The processor in question is AMD's newly minted FX-9590, an 8-core Piledriver part, though there are a couple of points worth mentioning. First is the fact that we've since moved on from the time when clockspeed was king. It still matters, but of more importance these days is the architecture that's driving the silicon. And secondly, the 5GHz claim is the processor's maximum Turbo speed, not the default clockspeed.

AMD isn't letting these tidbits get in the way of its bragging rights.

"At E3 this week, AMD demonstrated why it is at the core of gaming," said Bernd Lienhard, corporate vice president and general manager, Client Products Division at AMD. "The new FX 5GHz processor is an emphatic performance statement to the most demanding gamers seeking ultra-high resolution experiences including AMD Eyefinity technology. This is another proud innovation for AMD in delivering the world’s first commercially available 5 GHz processor."

AMD also announced a slightly slower version, the FX-9370 clocked at 4.7GHz (Turbo). Both of these 9000 Series processors are 8-core parts, and both feature unlocked multipliers. Look for these chips to be available later this summer. No word yet on price.

Peppy chip put through its paces

AMD once tried to dispell the MHz/GHz myth when Intel's Netburst architecture was pushing clockspeeds to new heights. That was a long time ago, and these days AMD is totally psyched about its new FX-9590 processor, a Piledriver part that qualifies as the world's first commercially available 5GHz processor. It's actually stock clocked at 4.7GHz, though it can reach the braggadocios 5GHz mark under load (Turbo). Wondering how it benchmarks?

Wonder no more! The folks at KitGuru tossed the FX-9590 chip onto its treadmill of benchmarks, slapped its backside, and watched as it was off and running. The testbed it used consisted of a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 motherboard, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance Pro Series RAM clocked at 2,133MHz (10-11-11-28), Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 6GB Toxic graphics card, Patriot 240GB Pyro SE solid state drive (SSD) as the boot device, Patriot 240GB Wildfire SSD for storage, Corsair HX850 power supply, Asus Blu-ray drive, Lian Li X2000 chassis, and an Apple 30-inch Cinema HD display.

There are a whole bunch of benchmarks to digest, including PCMark 7, 3DMark 11, Cinebench R11.5, Tomb Raider, Metro: Last Light, and many more.

As was the case in the Netburst days, clockspeed isn't everything, which would explain why Intel's Core i7 4770K quad-core processor clocked at 4.5GHz trumped AMD's flagship part in several tests, including video encoding. We'll save our verdict for when we post our own evaluation, but in the meantime, it's looking like the FX-9590 is a pricey part that's going