AMD announces 'world's first commercially available 5GHz CPU'

When is 5GHz not quite 5GHz?

Updated AMD has announced what it dubs "the world's first commercially available 5GHz CPU," the FX-9590.

"The new FX 5GHz processor is an emphatic performance statement to the most demanding gamers seeking ultra-high resolution experiences including AMD Eyefinity technology," wrote AMD client-products headman Bernd Lienhard in a statement accompanying the announcement at the E3 2013 gamers' conference in Los Angeles.

The 5GHz FX-9590 is joined in Tuesday's announcement by a 4.7GHz sibling, the FX-9370. Both are new members of AMD's FX line, and both are powered by eight "Piledriver" cores, introduced in the "Trinity" APU last May, and now found in the company's "Richland" A-Series APUs "Elite" client chips, and Opteron 4300 and 3300 and "Abu Dhabi" 6300 server chips.

Those 5GHz and 4.7GHz clock speeds, The Reg hastens to note, are not the base clock speeds of the FX-9590 and FX-9370. Rather, they are what AMD calls the chips' "Max Turbo" modes. In other FX Series processors, the base clock speed can be anywhere from 0.1GHz to 0.6GHz lower.

We've reached out to AMD to learn the base clocks of the FX-9590 and FX-9370, but as of time of writing they had not yet responded to our query*. Neither have we yet learned the TDP wattage of the new chips, nor their pricing.

Not that there is yet an in-the-box price for the new chips. As AMD notes in their announcement, "AMD FX-9000 Series CPUs will be available initially in PCs through system integrators" beginning "this summer."

Both parts are unlocked and are thus overclockable. We look forward to seeing what the liquid helium–toting overclockers who drove a "Bulldozer" core–based AMD FX chip to a world record 8.429GHz back in 2011 might achieve with the new eight-core Piledriver FX chips. ®

* Update

AMD got back to us on Thursday morning with the answers to our queries. Pricing is currently available only to system integrators, the TDP of both processors is approximately a scorching 220 watts, and the base/Turbo clock speeds are 4.7/5.0 for the FX-9590 and 4.4/4.7 for the FX-9370.