Hi all. I thought I’d try my hand at a bench log.
I feel a need to explain what I’m trying to get across to you with this post.
The thing is, I’m not looking for a 24/7 over-clock here, so it’s not an over-clocking log or guide.
This is basically a suicide over-clocking session to test the limits of my cooling system and benchmark the hell out of whatever chip I happen to be testing. A suicide run is just for benchmarking and knowing your absolute limit, not for 24/7 operation.
First up is some pics of the test rig.
Pics 1 and 2 are the NB/CPU loop.
This consists of:
Swiftech Apogee GTX with Copper top
Swiftech MCR Series 360mm Triple Radiator : MCR320QPK
Laing DDC1+ Ultra Pump 600 L/hr with XSPC Reservoir Top
The northbridge waterblock is the block that comes with the Gigabyte GA-EP45 Extreme DDR2 motherboard.
A 2x2GB kit of G-Skill DDR2 1066 PC8500 CL5-5-5-15 ram and a XFX Radeon HD4890 1GB make up the rest of the kit.
I’ve messed up on my VGA loop. Need to take it apart and clean it out due to a rather poor flush job I did on it. So I have had to improvise a little. This is a XSPC X20 DUAL 750 water-cooling kit that belongs to my work. With some extra bits from my VGA loop I’ve managed to attach this to my HD4890 and it’s working like a charm.
The CPU of choice today belongs to the brother-in-law. An Intel Pentium E6800 that he’s just picked up for £70 from our local distributor. Wolfdale-3M dual core 3.33GHz 1066FSB 2MB cache 65W.
Unfortunately HWbot doesn’t have any submissions up for this chip, so there’s not much I can use as an indicator except the other chips in that family. Flying blind then.
Time to introduce my BIOS.
M.I.T.
Gotta love Gigabyte. This is where I do all my CPU and Ram over-clocking. I can’t get on with motherboard over-clocking software in Windows. I’m not going to show loads of pics of bios, but there’s a couple you need to see. I’m really sorry about the wonky pics here.
These four screens represent the overclocking features of my mobo.
Screen 1 shows the CPU clock ratio which is basically the multiplier which advances in steps of 1, below that the fine CPU clock ratio which advances in steps of 0.5.
Next is the CPU Host Clock Control which is either disabled for stock frequencies, or enabled for overclocking.
Screen 2 shows the system memory settings and the start of the voltage control features.
Screen 3 shows all the voltage options available, this is where I set all the voltages for the system during the bench run.
Screen 4 is the CPU voltage options.
As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve already reached 4.7GHz at this stage.
What I’ve done is picked what I consider to be a moderate vcore setting for this chip and then raised the host frequency until the system became unstable.
Looking at screen 3 and checking thru the voltages, some of them might need explaining.
The MCH core is the north bridge and it’s set to that voltage because I’ve tested extensively with this board and I know that’s a safe setting. The higher the FSB required, the higher voltage, but the cooling system does have limits.
The ICH I/O and ICH Core are the south bridge and are set because as the vcore and north bridge voltages are raised, it drains voltage from the south bridge. This compensates for it.
I don’t know if this affects all core 2 mobo’s, but every one I’ve over-clocked so far suffers this same problem. This saves me from doing it later on.
To reach 4.7 I first set the CPU clock ratio to 10 (max is 12) and the CPU host frequency to 400Mhz. I want to run the memory on a 1 to 1 ratio to give me plenty of headroom. As it’s 1066 rated that gives me 200Mhz to spare before I have to worry about it. That sets the CPU at 4.0GHz with the vcore set on auto and the DDR2 at 800. From there I increased the CPU host frequency by increments of 10 at a time.
To test each setting I ran a couple of benchmarks to check stability and if they worked I increased again.
It wasn’t till I reached 4.7GHz that I had to up the vcore from auto. To be honest, I found it hard to believe. That’s a massive over-clock on auto vcore in my experience. What are they doing with these chips nowadays.
The first screenshot shows 4.6GHz at 1.312 vcore, which is auto. 4.7GHz needed an increase to 1.360. It has to be noted that cpu-z and the bios don’t agree on vcores. Where cpu-z shows 1.36 bios shows 1.375
To monitor the temperatures I use HWmonitor from cpuid and realtemp from techpowerup.
A quick run of wprime32 and a peek at the temps and off we go.
These temp sensors are all over the place. Core 0 hit 43 while core 1 hardly moved from 35 to 36. I know wprime 32 is only a short test but setting the thread count to 2 uses both cores, so??
4.8Ghz was much of the same, idle and small load temps hardly moved. 4.9Ghz and the temps started to rise a bit more.
With the vcore now up to 1.456 in cpu-z the idle temps never even budged. But the load temps were starting to climb. Not enough to be worried yet.
5.0GHz and 5.1Ghz . it would seem I’ve reached 5GHz again. This time with a chip that cost only £70.
At this stage it was time to optimize for the benchmarks.
There are system services running in the background with windows. Most of these services take up valuable resources and can be shut down temporarily. I’m not going thru the list of things to do here, enough to say I turn off a few windows services in order to free up cpu time and resources for the tests.
The final push takes the CPU to 5.150 but the voltage required has reached 1.6 vcore. This starts to worry me. The idle temps sit at 39 while the load temps hit 68 and 57. I don’t know if my system is reading the sensors on this chip properly as it’s so new. Anyway, 1.6v vcore is enough for my water-cooling system. Still, I don’t recall having a chip run wprime over 5GHz before so it’s a first for me.
The final benchmark run.
CPU-Z @ 5.150GHz
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1543290
PCMark05 @ 5.0GHz.
Pifast @ 5.0GHz.
Superpi 1m @ 5.15GHz.
Superpi 32m @ 5.1GHz.
Wprime 32m @ 5.15GHz
Wprime 1024 @ 5.0GHz.
There are a few other things I can do to over-clock a bit more, but time is against me as the brother-in-law wants his chip back. I have to say this. For £70 that’s some chip.
As I said at the beginning this is not an over-clocking log or guide. This is merely a log of my latest attempt at benchmarking. You’ll have to let me know what you think. Whatever you do, watch your temps.
PCTwin
I feel a need to explain what I’m trying to get across to you with this post.
The thing is, I’m not looking for a 24/7 over-clock here, so it’s not an over-clocking log or guide.
This is basically a suicide over-clocking session to test the limits of my cooling system and benchmark the hell out of whatever chip I happen to be testing. A suicide run is just for benchmarking and knowing your absolute limit, not for 24/7 operation.
First up is some pics of the test rig.
Pics 1 and 2 are the NB/CPU loop.
This consists of:
Swiftech Apogee GTX with Copper top
Swiftech MCR Series 360mm Triple Radiator : MCR320QPK
Laing DDC1+ Ultra Pump 600 L/hr with XSPC Reservoir Top
The northbridge waterblock is the block that comes with the Gigabyte GA-EP45 Extreme DDR2 motherboard.
A 2x2GB kit of G-Skill DDR2 1066 PC8500 CL5-5-5-15 ram and a XFX Radeon HD4890 1GB make up the rest of the kit.
I’ve messed up on my VGA loop. Need to take it apart and clean it out due to a rather poor flush job I did on it. So I have had to improvise a little. This is a XSPC X20 DUAL 750 water-cooling kit that belongs to my work. With some extra bits from my VGA loop I’ve managed to attach this to my HD4890 and it’s working like a charm.
The CPU of choice today belongs to the brother-in-law. An Intel Pentium E6800 that he’s just picked up for £70 from our local distributor. Wolfdale-3M dual core 3.33GHz 1066FSB 2MB cache 65W.
Unfortunately HWbot doesn’t have any submissions up for this chip, so there’s not much I can use as an indicator except the other chips in that family. Flying blind then.
Time to introduce my BIOS.
M.I.T.
Gotta love Gigabyte. This is where I do all my CPU and Ram over-clocking. I can’t get on with motherboard over-clocking software in Windows. I’m not going to show loads of pics of bios, but there’s a couple you need to see. I’m really sorry about the wonky pics here.
These four screens represent the overclocking features of my mobo.
Screen 1 shows the CPU clock ratio which is basically the multiplier which advances in steps of 1, below that the fine CPU clock ratio which advances in steps of 0.5.
Next is the CPU Host Clock Control which is either disabled for stock frequencies, or enabled for overclocking.
Screen 2 shows the system memory settings and the start of the voltage control features.
Screen 3 shows all the voltage options available, this is where I set all the voltages for the system during the bench run.
Screen 4 is the CPU voltage options.
As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve already reached 4.7GHz at this stage.
What I’ve done is picked what I consider to be a moderate vcore setting for this chip and then raised the host frequency until the system became unstable.
Looking at screen 3 and checking thru the voltages, some of them might need explaining.
The MCH core is the north bridge and it’s set to that voltage because I’ve tested extensively with this board and I know that’s a safe setting. The higher the FSB required, the higher voltage, but the cooling system does have limits.
The ICH I/O and ICH Core are the south bridge and are set because as the vcore and north bridge voltages are raised, it drains voltage from the south bridge. This compensates for it.
I don’t know if this affects all core 2 mobo’s, but every one I’ve over-clocked so far suffers this same problem. This saves me from doing it later on.
To reach 4.7 I first set the CPU clock ratio to 10 (max is 12) and the CPU host frequency to 400Mhz. I want to run the memory on a 1 to 1 ratio to give me plenty of headroom. As it’s 1066 rated that gives me 200Mhz to spare before I have to worry about it. That sets the CPU at 4.0GHz with the vcore set on auto and the DDR2 at 800. From there I increased the CPU host frequency by increments of 10 at a time.
To test each setting I ran a couple of benchmarks to check stability and if they worked I increased again.
It wasn’t till I reached 4.7GHz that I had to up the vcore from auto. To be honest, I found it hard to believe. That’s a massive over-clock on auto vcore in my experience. What are they doing with these chips nowadays.
The first screenshot shows 4.6GHz at 1.312 vcore, which is auto. 4.7GHz needed an increase to 1.360. It has to be noted that cpu-z and the bios don’t agree on vcores. Where cpu-z shows 1.36 bios shows 1.375
To monitor the temperatures I use HWmonitor from cpuid and realtemp from techpowerup.
A quick run of wprime32 and a peek at the temps and off we go.
These temp sensors are all over the place. Core 0 hit 43 while core 1 hardly moved from 35 to 36. I know wprime 32 is only a short test but setting the thread count to 2 uses both cores, so??
4.8Ghz was much of the same, idle and small load temps hardly moved. 4.9Ghz and the temps started to rise a bit more.
With the vcore now up to 1.456 in cpu-z the idle temps never even budged. But the load temps were starting to climb. Not enough to be worried yet.
5.0GHz and 5.1Ghz . it would seem I’ve reached 5GHz again. This time with a chip that cost only £70.
At this stage it was time to optimize for the benchmarks.
There are system services running in the background with windows. Most of these services take up valuable resources and can be shut down temporarily. I’m not going thru the list of things to do here, enough to say I turn off a few windows services in order to free up cpu time and resources for the tests.
The final push takes the CPU to 5.150 but the voltage required has reached 1.6 vcore. This starts to worry me. The idle temps sit at 39 while the load temps hit 68 and 57. I don’t know if my system is reading the sensors on this chip properly as it’s so new. Anyway, 1.6v vcore is enough for my water-cooling system. Still, I don’t recall having a chip run wprime over 5GHz before so it’s a first for me.
The final benchmark run.
CPU-Z @ 5.150GHz
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1543290
PCMark05 @ 5.0GHz.
Pifast @ 5.0GHz.
Superpi 1m @ 5.15GHz.
Superpi 32m @ 5.1GHz.
Wprime 32m @ 5.15GHz
Wprime 1024 @ 5.0GHz.
There are a few other things I can do to over-clock a bit more, but time is against me as the brother-in-law wants his chip back. I have to say this. For £70 that’s some chip.
As I said at the beginning this is not an over-clocking log or guide. This is merely a log of my latest attempt at benchmarking. You’ll have to let me know what you think. Whatever you do, watch your temps.
PCTwin
