AMD's mysterious TWKR demystified

FLASH: AMD likes extreme overclocking, methamphetamine. News at 11.

There's been a fair amount of whispering going on lately about a new mystery chip from AMD, said to be a high-performance part aimed squarely at the overclocking community.

Pictures of the mysterious TWKR chip popped up a couple of days ago on wallacesantos.com, prompting much discussion about whether or not it was real or a hoax and how many volts it would take to push it.

We can now reveal and confirm after much sniffing about that the chips are indeed real, are focused on overclocking 140W CPUs running at 3.2Ghz, and are limited edition TWKR etched. If these chips are ever made available for sale they should be inexpensive and target budget enthusiasts, but that remains to be seen.

We've also been told by sources deep within AMD that the voltage on these high-leakage monsters can easily be pushed well past 1.40V or more in the hands of talented overclockers. So bring on the liquid helium, nitrogen, and dry ice!

The chips certainly look set to be record smashers, but without any actual benchmarks, we can't tell you conclusively. But, if what we've heard is correct and from our knowledge that Phenoms prefer cold over high voltages, these chips should be able to handle higher voltage better under extreme cooling, even possibly topping the 7Ghz barrier.

We're looking forward to seeing what overclockers will be able to do with these mysterious offerings, especially since the Phenom has already hit 8ghz on all four cores, something Intel has yet to achieve. The highest an i7 has ever gone with all cores enabled is just a touch over 6Ghz, and it looks like AMD is about to deliver yet another smackdown.

As to the name... We've just been told by AMD that TWK stands for 'Those Who Know'. Er...ok, so what's the R for? The answer? "It just makes it a verb that combines TWK with tweaker," an anonymous AMD spokesperson told us as we raised an eyebrow.

Right, so there you have it, boys and girls... TWKR, the chip for meth-heads! Enjoy!