Digital Home Thoughts: AMD Phenom II 955 BE Overclocked to 7.0GHz

"Sunnyvale-based Advanced Micro Devices wants to show the world that its processors are capable of breaking the world records when it comes to their overclocking capabilities. As such, the company sponsored an overclocking event in Finland, where its AMD Phenom II 955 Black Edition processor was pushed up to the impressive speed of 7.0GHz, a figure that might become a new world record in case the results are validated."

7 Ghz? Sweet mother of motherboards! That's...insane. I drool at the thought of encoding h.264 video at 7 Ghz. So the question is, if this new chip is capable of insane speeds like that, why don't we see chips in the more "mundane" range of 4 Ghz or 5 Ghz? Power consumption? Stability? Longevity of chips? I'd happily accept a 5 Ghz chip that only lasted 36 months if I knew it would be stable during that period.