AMD FX-6300 Hits 8 GHz, Scoring a Minor Overclocking Record

After a long hiatus in the overclocking world, AMD’s FX processors are back to breaking world records in 2021–just not with a Ryzen chip. Tweeted by @momomo_us, Yosarianilives on HWBot has posted an 8GHz overclock with an AMD FX-6300 CPU, making it a record holder for the highest frequency seen on a six-core CPU.

The overclock was done with a rather unique configuration involving a very high bus clock of 281MHz and a core multiplier of 28.5. The very high bus speeds along with some silicon lottery luck is probably how this overclocker managed to hit a 8GHz on his 6300. Impressively, the overclock was also done with all six cores enabled as well — usually disabling some of the cores can help increase overclocking capabilities on the remaining cores.

Keep in mind, this chip isn’t breaking any serious world records as it only pertains to AMD’s six-core FX chips. CPUs like the FX-8350 and 8370 still hold the big world records with core frequencies in excess of 8.5GHz. Currently, the CPU frequency record of all time goes to The Stilt with an FX-8370 clocked at 8.722GHz.

But, the 8GHz overclock on the FX-6300 is still impressive. Due to the much higher overclocking headroom found in AMD’s FX 8 core chips, we believe the FX six cores and quad cores were lower binned parts, so they usually have much lower overclocking headroom. That means getting a “middle of the road” FX chip to 8GHz is still quite an impressive feat.

With how long it took an FX-6300 to reach 8GHz, we expect this will be one of the last overclocking records to be broken by FX CPUs, especially since they are no longer in production.