It's been ordered!

[Baked]

My curiosity has got the best of me. After seeing your E6400 OC like that w/ the el cheapo RAM, I will attempt for 3400 tonight.

 

[n7]

Seems like this crappy RAM may not be what's holding me back at all, even @ DDR2-850.

I think i have neared the limit of my CPU, not because of vcore, but because of temps.
Till i can figure out why it's reporting so exorbitantly high, i don't want to increase vcore.
To get from 3.33 GHz to 3.4 GHz, i had to bump it up quite a bit, & that resulted in 70C under Orthos small FFT load, so yeah...

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/746/e640034ghzsuperpi32myf3.jpg

The amazing thing is that the RAM is Comstar brand, & all it says is TwinMOS DDR2-533 CL4.

And i have it @ 850 5-5-5 w/ 1.95V :Q
I bet if i tweaked it more, i could get even better.
I'm mainly trying to get the most out of the CPU now though, since i won't be keeping this RAM anyway.

 

[Baked]

I'm doing Orthos right now. 8x425 @ 3400. Vcore 1.325V, Vmem 2.1V. 5-5-5-15 timing. I can boot w/ 3600, but can't do Orthos or dual SuperPi. We'll see how long 3400 can last. This thing's really cooking @ 58C right now. I hope I get my Ultra 120 soon.

 

[n7]

Well, that's pretty damn good for your HSF.

Far better than my problems with heat anyway.

If it's stable @ 3.4 GHz w/ only 1.325V, holy crap :Q
That's below stock.

Is that 1.325 in bios, or after vdroop in Windows?

 

[Baked]

No, the stock vcore for my chip is actually 1.265V. I can run it @ 3200 w/ 1.275V, 4-5-4-15 @ 1.9V, orthos or memtest. Voltage is set in BIOS, and confirmed by CPUZ and SpeedFan. I would like more voltage reading programs though, just to confirm it.

 

[n7]

Damn.

BTW, if you look thru the Intel whitepapers, it states stock vcore is anywhere from something really low to 1.35V.

So i'm not sure what we can really call stock anyway...

 

[Baked]

Yeah, I did a search for stock C2D voltage and couldn't find anything concrete. I'm just gonna go w/ whatever the minimum voltage the chip can boot up on. When I booted the system up for the 1st time, 1.265 was the vcore. Could be different for different mobo brands and models of course.

Wow, load temp jumped up to 62C doing 460000 Lucas-Lehmer using 12K FFT.

 

[n7]

My Team Group DDR2-1000 arrived today finally!

I could push a bit higher for both scores, but i'm tired.

SuperPI 1M - 16.406s
Asus P5B Deluxe | C2D E6400 @ 3.52 GHz 1.44V | Team Group PC2-8000 @ DDR2-1100 5-5-5-15
http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/8675/e6400352ghz4555515superpi1m16406shh9.jpg

3DMark05 - 13238
Asus P5B Deluxe | C2D E6400 @ 3.48 GHz | Team Group PC2-8000 @ DDR2-1088 5-5-5-15 | ATi Radeon X1900XT 512 MB @ 650/1500 MHz
http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/871/e6...48ghz45555153dmark0513238650775us4.jpg

 

[pm]

I placed my order. Should arrive this afternoon.

E6700
Scythe Infinity
DFI Infinity 975x
2GB Kingston DDR2-667 ECC
nVidia 7600GT

I do a fair amount of CAD work on my PC and I want stability - hence ECC. My first upgrade in a long time on my Northwood system.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

PM, I got an e700, scythe Infinity, P5W DH, 2 GB Corsair value (should be here before the end o' the week).

Very similar! Lets see how each board handles our CPUs

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: pm
I placed my order. Should arrive this afternoon.

E6700
Scythe Infinity
DFI Infinity 975x
2GB Kingston DDR2-667 ECC
nVidia 7600GT

I do a fair amount of CAD work on my PC and I want stability - hence ECC. My first upgrade in a long time on my Northwood system.

DFI & ECC Kingston RAM in the same rig?!
Each to their own i suppose :Q

You working at Intel tells me you obviously feel you need it, but why ECC?

Is non-ECC really that bad for long-term stability?

 

[pm]

Originally posted by: n7
DFI & ECC Kingston RAM in the same rig?!
Each to their own i suppose :Q

You working at Intel tells me you obviously feel you need it, but why ECC? Is non-ECC really that bad for long-term stability?

What's the problem with Kingston and DFI?
I actually made a typo. I'd been thinking about the Kingston. But instead I went with Crucial.
I bought this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146523

I got the parts from Newegg yesterday afternoon and built the system last night. Everything went smoothly and I am very pleased. My new system benchmarks at twice the speed of my old Northwood system in most things... sometimes edging on 300% faster. And it's so much quieter than my previous system. It's funny - the noisiest thing in my computer now, when I'm in Windows just surfing, is my hard disk. On my old computer I didn't even know that my hard disk made any noise at all, and now it's annoyingly loud compared to the rest of the computer.

The Scythe is huge. It made me smile to see how it big it is in the case.
I enabled ECC - and I presume it's working. I may try to inject an error tonight. But I'll see.

As far as ECC, I did an experiment last autumn where I turned on an ECC detection logger, left my computer on 24/7 for about 7 weeks, and then just watched. I logged 4 ECC hits in 7 weeks. Which is consistent with what I have seen previous times that I've done that. 4 hits in 7 weeks is not much. And there's no way to know if those hits would have caused a problem, or just changed the color of a pixel on the screen from orange to red. Maybe it would cause one color to change, maybe it would unexpectedly crashed the application, maybe it would have corrupted my hard disk requiring me to reinstall Windows. It's hard to know what would have happened. But from my perspective, I don't need to worry about what would have happened.... ECC just fixes the errors on the fly. I paid a bit more for the memory - right now at Newegg the difference is $5 out of $130 memory ($130 for non-ECC, $135 for ECC), so about a 4% price premium (see links below). I think it's worth it. If it saves me from any one problem, it has more than paid for itself.



* (Today 9/13/2006)
Crucial Technology 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) System Memory Model CT12864AA667 - OEM $130
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146571

Crucial Technology 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC Unbuffered Server System Memory Model CT12872AA667 - Retail $135
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146523

 

[n7]

Nothing wrong with DFI + ECC.

Just unique, since DFI is generally known for overclocking & tweaking, & ECC for extreme stability.

Good to know.

Also, i didn't really realize it was so cheap for ECC.

Here up north, it's usually alot more for ECC.