E8400/8500 degradation myth possibly busted?

[mrcape]

Seeing these guys at <1.3 and 4.2Ghz just doesn't even seem realistic. Mine is a good clocker and I need 1.32v for 4.1Ghz and 1.37 for 4.2Ghz. Pushing 4.2 on 1.28v just doesn't sound right to me, thats not going to be enough voltage imo.

Have you tried 8.5x495-500 and manually setting gtls? Reason I ask is that I had a much easier time getting stability with lower vcore using those settings vs. 9x4xx.

I think my 745a is a very good chip, one of the best I've seen looking at tons of results. Onepagebook at OCX and a few others with 743a have similar or better performance out of theirs. And like I said earlier, my 748a took 1.36vcore to be stable at 4ghz using the same test method.

Re: ambient temps, mine are pretty low - mid 60s.