AMD Takes Guinness Record For Fastest Chip

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There’s nothing like an “est” to really put some punch in your news. Highest, tallest, fastest, richest…absolutism makes news. And the folks out at AMD have a new “est” to their credit, having put their Bulldozer chip to the test and come out the other side with a Guinness World Record.

The record in question is a mouthful in its own right–the world record is for Highest Frequency Of A Computer Processor–and went to one of their new Bulldozer chips. Basically, AMD brought in a group of “elite overclocking specialists”, and set them to take one of these eight-core monsters (octa-core…man…that sounds like fun times just hearing the name) and run it through its paces until it topped out at a whopping 8.429 GHz. And that number doesn’t mean so much until you consider that the previous record was 8.308 GHz, and that record was, reportedly, held by Intel.

Now this puts the whole chip market in a funny position. While it’s not likely that anyone’s going to see one of these octa-core monsters in a desktop–or a laptop, or even a tablet–any time soon, the fact that AMD now has the fastest chip out there is a definite blow to Intel’s public image. Naturally, though, this only has so much effect–AMD’s theoretical maximum doesn’t do anything any better or any faster for the regular folks buying PCs of every size and form factor, at least, not yet–but it does have at least some effect.

That’s an effect that AMD would be smart to build on by developing more, faster and better chips to take on Intel properly. Intel’s got one major advantage in that it’s been face-forward for a very long time and is thus entrenched in the minds of the computer-buying public. AMD may be able to break that hold and make themselves a viable competitor if they can keep themselves face-forward. They’ve got one great edge there–world’s fastest processor–now they just need to better show how that makes a difference to anyone outside of the Guinness World Records community.

So what do you guys think here? Does AMD’s new rank as the fastest processor make you any more likely to buy hardware from them? Or do you think that they’ve got a way to start getting you to think more positively about them? No matter what you think, we definitely want to hear what you have to say about them down in the comments section!