Intel plans to best AMD with 7GHz Core i7 on LN2 at CES 2009

A week ago AMD demonstrated a Phenom II processor running at 6GHz with LN2 cooling, and now Intel plans to do some extreme overclocking of its own at CES in early January 2009.

TechPowerUp heard Intel has given FUGGER from XtremeSystems the opportunity to show off his LN2 overclocking skills on a cherry-picked Core i7 965 Extreme Edition demonstration processor. Intel engineers reportedly carried out a large-scale binning of Core i7 processors, to cherry-pick the best chip from a batch that could be as large as 100,000 units. The goal is to overclock the 3.2GHz Core i7 chip to a staggering 7GHz, although Intel admits they'll use a couple of tricks to achieve this because they believe AMD may have cheated too:

A chief engineer at Intel, Francoise Piednoel expressed his reservations regarding the 6.00 GHz overclocking feat AMD carried out with its upcoming Phenom II X4 processor last week, saying that the overclocking capabilities of the Phenom II X4 demonstrated do not reflect those of release-grade products, and cannot be replicated in a real-world setting. AMD may have disabled several sensors on the cherry-picked chip used in its demonstration, which facilitated that overclock. In response to this, Intel would be disabling the same sensors, in its special demonstration chip. The demo could be held at CES 2009.