AMD's upcoming SB750 southbridge chip, destined for use with the 790FX and 790GX chipsets, is set to allow the company's Black Edition CPUs to be overclocked further than was previously possible.

The 790FX is already available, and implements the AMD OverDrive overclocking utility. It launched late last year with the SB600 southbridge, which was replaced in Q1 with the SB700.

However, the SB750 also supports what AMD is calling "Advanced Clock Calibration" which, according to a company document seen by Spanish-language site ChileHardware, can "enable greater performance tuning margin for the AMD Phenom Black Edition CPUs".

"The optimal gain can be seen in configurations that use high-end CPU cooling solution in combination with elevated CPU core voltage value," it adds.

Suitable motherboards don't simply require a 790FX or 790GX plus the SB750 - they also need a direct connection between the southbridge's seven GPIO pins to the Socket AM2+ processor's CPU pins. The link must be mediated by a 1.8V-3.3V level shifter circuit, the document states.

Implement all this, the correct Bios code and AMD's AOD Extreme utilty, and - potentially - a CPU that struggled to reach 3GHz before could now stretch to 3.2GHz, we hear. Not that AMD's guaranteeing anything, mind, but that's par for the overclocking course.

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