This whole thead back at the...
at the front is nothing but pretty good stuff. It was not until the E8400 little thing came to market with dorked temps that it got too far off track. I only came in since the Intel thing was getting a little bit wonky...
Post a complete list of parts and pieces with memory part numbers and power supply and well...the real deal and describe your issue and some of us will take time out to take a look...I come and go, but there are those that stay a long time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
thesaucier
Are you still with dfi? can you help me with this board and cpu?
I was informed that Intel Wolfdale E8500 processors are now on backorder with no ETA
I was supposed to have a new E8500 processor in my hands now, but my local PC store says they were just informed that these were backordered with absolutely no ETA for arrival.
I have been feeling increasing concern over the reliability of these chips, so when I learned of this latest bit of news, I cancelled my order. Overclocking is enough of a risk without having to worry if the CPU is giving false temperatures and prematurely dying on the test bench.
The temperature issue, the delay with the E8500's, and the fact the G0 processors tend to overclock pretty well convinced me to try another Q6600. Unfortunately, I did not trust NCIX to ship me a good chip, so I paid more locally.
The good news is after going through the stock of available Q6600's from three local stores, I ended up with a choice of Q6600 G0 "SLACR" with either batch number L737B075 or batch number L738B023.
I chose the L737B075 because of all the great performances people have had with the L737 series, but if anyone has personal experience with the other batch number, I would love to hear it!
I am going to approach this overclock with a little more science and a lot more knowledge. Before swapping my old B3 out, I am going to run a series of test using Prime95 and Super Pi at "optimized default levels" with my motherboard. Later, I will run the same tests at the B3's maximum stable overclock with 1.400 volts.
Once I swap processors, I will do the same with SLACR boy, and see how they compare. I am hoping to get past 3600 MHz on air with the new chip, but it all depends on how "lucky" I am with the CPU lottery. I know that I don't want to run more than 1.400 volts to it until I have my water cooling system done, and that has been delayed.
On another front, tempation proved to be too great to resist purchasing one of the new ATI HD3870X2 video cards with dual 3870 GPU's and 1 GB of DDR3 memory. Initial testing posted online looks very promising, and once the drivers are tweaked a bit, we should see some pretty good results.
If anyone is interested, my Q6600 B3 CPU (lapped) and my HIS Radeon HD2900XT video cards are looking for new owners. If interested PM me...
First impressions of new CPU
To begin with, my idle temps in Core Temp are 32,27,27,32 C. That is about an 8 C drop compared to my old B3 chip. Also, my VID is 1.2125v for this chip compared to 1.3125 for my B3. Note that this is with all the CPU stuff (C1E, thermal management, etc) turned off, so it is the TRUE VID.
Next, I just want to note that the difference between the cores is only 5 C. My lapped with a 2000 grit finish B3 had a 2-3 C spread, so that is one task I probably won't need to do (at least not right away).
I tested my old B3 with "optimized defaults", and it failed anything more than 2M in Super Pi with the default 1.264v (as shown in CPU-z). The same test was just done with the new G0 stepping, and it passed the 8M Super Pi test with a default voltage of only 1.184. I also noticed that every step in Super Pi was done quicker with the new processor.
Finally, I compared the load temps of both processors after an hour of Prime 95 (both with their respective default voltages shown above), and the B3 had 50, 49, 49 50 C temperatures compared to the G0 having 42, 38,38, 42 C temperatures. Now admittedly, the don't both have teh same voltages going through them, but they are both carring the same load.
It looks like I have a great chip to start overclocking. I am going to bump the vCore to 1.250, set things at 9 x 350 MHz, and will see what it does in Prime 95.
:up: After 3 hrs of Prime 95, my load temps are at 51,49,49,51 C. Everything is running smoothly, so it is time to tweak things a bit:D
