AMD FX-9590 Processor Hits 5GHz (But Is Speed Everything?)

AMD has outed its latest FX processors, and its broken the 5GHz barrier in the process, with the new AMD FX-9590 8-core. Revealed at E3 this week alongside its 4.7GHz FX-9370 sibling, the chips use eight of AMD's Piledriver cores – already seen in the Trinity and Opteron 6300 Series – and come unlocked for easier overclocking, should owners so wish.

It's worth noting that, if you damage your FX-9000 series chip through overclocking it, AMD won't replace it under warranty. That's even the case if you use AMD's own overclocking tools that are supplied for the chip.

Still, 5GHz may well be enough for most owners without tweaking, even if the headline speeds aren't those the chips are running at all the time. That's the "Max Turbo" rate, which the AMD Turbo Core 3.0 system will push the silicon to when the system is under particularly high load.

Of course, there's more to a processor than top core speed, and we'll have to wait to see full benchmarking before we know how the new FX-9000 series holds up against Intel's 4th-gen Haswell Core i7 processors. Some of the first examples will be used in new MAINGEAR systems, the PC builder has confirmed.

The new AMD FX-9590 and FX-9370 processors will begin showing up in prebuilt systems from the summer, before going on sale as chip-only to DIY PC builders. No word on pricing at this stage.