AMD announces FX-9590 5 GHz processor

Two months ago, rumors hit the Internet that AMD was going to launch a CPU with a top clock speed of 5 GHz. Today, AMD confirmed those rumors with the announcement of the FX-9590 processor.

AMD’s press release states that the new chip has eight cores and is using the Piledriver design. It also says that the processor will be unlocked, which should allow for hardware enthusiasts to overclock the chip and push it to even higher speeds. AMD will also release the FX-9370 chip, which has its speed set at “just” 4.7 Ghz.

Both the FX-9590 and the FX-9370 chips will start showing up later this summer, but will be limited at first to PC OEMs who will sell systems with those chips inside. One of those PC companies is Maingear, which has already announced plans to put those new AMD CPUs inside their Shift line of PC desktops.

While it used to be that clock speed was the best way to determine a CPU’s performance, that has changed thanks to the new era of multi-core processors. It’s interesting that AMD has now started up the “clock wars” once again with this new 5 GHz CPU.