Test: AMD Phenom II 42 TWKR

Technology

Okay, what is so different about a TWKR CPU, compared to an ordinary retail Phenom II?

The CPU is a so called high leakage chip. To understand how these chips are selected, we have to do a quick run through on how this selection is done by the manufacturer.

During the production there are 2 selection rounds. The first selection happens while the chip is still on the wafer, that it is made on. Here every chip recieves a certain machine programmed message, which it has to answer. This answer, or lack of such, determines if the chip is approved for further production, or if it will be discarded.

The approved chips are cut from the wafer and continue their journey into the retail stores.

The last couple of years, the chip companies have started to have people check the results of the test manually. In some cases of extreme deviations in volt output, the chip will be "saved" from the trash bin, and in some cases made into a complete chip (CPU). These CPU's are in no way certified for normal use, since their lifetime is both short and uncertain, and for this reason they are not covered by the normal warranty issued by the company. Furthermore the CPU's become alot hotter than its retail "brothers", which further decreases the lifetime of the CPU.

The chosen high leakage CPU's are then sent to overclockers around the world, where they under extreme cooling is pressed to their absolute maximum.

Let us take a close look at the CPU on the next page.