Random shut downs and the occasional blue screen.

[dlads]

lol its cool fella i dont have away of doin it i put a pea blob in the middle the wack the heatsink on

Ok i got a prog called cpuid pro an it lets me change the speed of all three fans so i upped the speed of them all to 100% just to see what would happen an heres the results after a wait of lets say 10 minutes.

I don't really wanna leave them on 100% tho, i think i just need a new case as the one i have is pants.

Oh an i don't get any more bsod's.

edit: I think this thread has mutated into another topic so i think i'll leave it there or make another for cooling, thanks for all your help tho.

 

[alienware]

I was using a freezer 64 Pro but at the moment i'm now using the stock heatsink which came with my cpu!! seems to be doign a better job but it's a lot smaller and doesn't look flashier at all, to be honest i don't really give a hoot what it looks like so long as it's cool. u have the same cpu as me, how did u overclcock it? or do i need to lower my temps before i start trying that?

Don't under rate the stock cooler that comes with the Phenom 2. Sure it's not the best on the planet but it's a good quality cooler that's solid and has a decent fan. It also sports a couple of heat pipes IIRC.

At a stock clock it is more than adequate. Infact, even with a small overclock it's fine.

Also consider that the Freezer 64 thing you are using was probably designed and engineered to work over a single core. Not four cores. This is why modern coolers have at least 4 heat pipes that can take heat away from the areas of the CPU where the cores are sitting. This is also why some coolers are absolutely rubbish on AMD chips because they have been designed over the Intel architecture.

If you are after a budget cooler that ticks every box then you absolutely can not go wrong with this

LINK REMOVED. Seems I can't get that one to paste and work. Look for the Arctic Freezer Pro 7 Rev 2

£15.85 Inc VAT

Award winner pretty much everywhere you look. Doddle to fit too and does a great job.

The Titan Fenrir is also good but it'll run you £30 plus the shipping.

Also consider that the 940 is not exactly an overclocker's dream. I have had mine at 3.6ghz a good few times now and I would get the reboot for no reason or shut down every now and then. It wasn't due to heat because at the time my CPU was idling at 29 and maxing at around 48 (Corsair H50. Sadly my GPUs were getting no air). The problem is that the edge transistors in the Phenom 2 chips are nowhere near as good as Intel chips at tollerating immense FSB speeds. This is why the black editions are unlocked so you can at least squeeze something from the MP.

10% on a Phenom 2 is good, anything more than that is bloody great tbh. People certainly don't buy them for overclocking they buy them because they were a reasonably priced quad core CPU @ 3ghz stock.

 

[AMDFTW]

i have had 3.9Ghz at 1.5v

i quite like the prolemtech megahalms,but its expensive

i would say the titan is the best bang4buck

 

[dlads]

I agree that they were reasonably priced but i love the phenom 2 x4 BE i think it's a stonking processor and quad cores over dual cores is the way forward in my eyes. Thanks for the tip on the cooler too i'll look into that.

Theres this video on youtube which has a phenom 2 x4 in it heres a link to it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB0JodKgZ0A

He breaks a world record with it running @ 6.5Ghz benchmark of 45000, apprently there is one dragon processor which i think is amd and that breaks the 7Ghz limit lol, kind of ridiculous when you consider the method they used but the potential is there so i kinda have to disagree with you comment about an overclockers dream as i have yet to see another processor beat this.

No disrepect either.

EDIT: confirmation is was a phenom 2 x4 running over 7Ghz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Hf6d404QY&NR=1

 

[AMDFTW]

yer i seen that vid,epic overclocking lol.

there not the best overclockers but they do ok,the hexcore's do alot better

 

[alienware]

I agree that they were reasonably priced but i love the phenom 2 x4 BE i think it's a stonking processor and quad cores over dual cores is the way forward in my eyes. Thanks for the tip on the cooler too i'll look into that.

Theres this video on youtube which has a phenom 2 x4 in it heres a link to it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB0JodKgZ0A

He breaks a world record with it running @ 6.5Ghz benchmark of 45000, apprently there is one dragon processor which i think is amd and that breaks the 7Ghz limit lol, kind of ridiculous when you consider the method they used but the potential is there so i kinda have to disagree with you comment about an overclockers dream as i have yet to see another processor beat this.

No disrepect either.

EDIT: confirmation is was a phenom 2 x4 running over 7Ghz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Hf6d404QY&NR=1

But how long could you sustain that overclock and how much would it cost you?

Sure, with liquid nitrogen it can do that but I'm talking every day overclocking. And for that AMD are miles off of Intel. The I7 and I5 overclock like beasts on pretty standard air coolers. On AMD the results are nowhere near as good.

For me an overclock is something you can claim from the CPU from day one and keep it there 24/7 the whole year around and remain 100% stable. And the P2 isn't very good at that.

So AMDFTW has had his at 3.9ghz? So have I. I wonder if he would care to tell us how long he had it there and how long it remained stable for.

When looking around the general consensus was about 15%. Which when you compare that to something Intel made about three years ago.The 1.8ghz C2D Allendale that would do 3ghz piss easy and all day long with a FSB tweak to 533 (or 1066) then it's clear that since the Athlon XP and the famous Opteron that did about the same (80%+) AMD have been way behind the curve.

It's not a bad thing of course. AMD were leading for a while with their Opterons and Athlon XPs but when it came to dual core Intel had serious ammounts of money to invest and throw at it. AMD did not.

So now AMD are back to being a budget chip with no super frills on. Which of course is fine because that is what they have always done.

 

[AMDFTW]

it was OCCT stabe for 6hrs

the only reason i took it off was that the temps wer crazy 55c idle over 70c load

and it was 1.54v not 1.5v

i dont think they are NOW no frills look at the hexcore for example that thing is a beast and for the first time it can reach over 4Ghz stable.

if they ever bring out a p3 it will be better,as the older phenoms were poo,but the newer ones are miles better.

AMD are not a no frills CPU nor do they invest little in there tech.it just takes them longer

 

[alienware]

it was OCCT stabe for 6hrs

the only reason i took it off was that the temps wer crazy 55c idle over 70c load

Right. And the max reccomended temp is what? 62c? So you would need water cooling to bring that under control. Going back a bit let's use the E8400 as an example. Easily OC to 4ghz on a half decent cooler and would stay there.

i dont think they are NOW no frills look at the hexcore for example that thing is a beast and for the first time it can reach over 4Ghz stable.

The hexcore is their utmost flagship CPU. Look what the 6 cored I7 Extreme will do to it. Yes the Intel costs way more but it's obviously better.

if they ever bring out a p3 it will be better,as the older phenoms were poo,but the newer ones are miles better.

AMD are not a no frills CPU nor do they invest little in there tech.it just takes them longer

And you know that as fact because...... Why?

Since the Opteron 144 and the first FX chips (the incredibly expensive ones) AMD has had to spend less and wind down. That's not just me saying that it's absolute fact. That's not a bad thing of course. AMD are and always will be a tiny company in comparisson with Intel. AMD started out making budget chips and carried on. And that's what they were always known for right up until they released the XP which caught Intel with their pants down and was wildly successful. However the FX series put a strain on them and Intel invested more money than AMD will ever even see into their C2D and C2Q range.

That's all fact. At which point AMD were a country mile behind and decided it was time to stop competing and just do what they have always done. Again fact. Yes the original Phenom was not much to write home about. That's fact. It was worth what they charged for it however and price to performance was pretty good. However Intel were in a massive lead.

Fast forward to the Phenom 2. Yes it's not a bad chip for the money but on paper it's no better than what Intel were already pressing and already making (their own 45nm quads). Yes price to performance AMD was then back on level peggings with AMD in the mid range but Intel were spanking the crap out of them in the upper range.

Then Intel released the 2.66ghz I5 which cost £25 more than the 940 yet absolutely obliterated it in pretty much everything. Benchmarks, games, speed and overheads for overclock. However you needed DDR3 so it meant new ram AND a new motherboard. That's the only reason I own a 940.

AMD have openly admitted that it is highly likely they will never take Intel on head to head like they did with the FX series. They stated that they simply did not have the finances in place to continue competing at the uber range and were winding down to make budget processors.

Take a look around and do some reading. It's all there in black and white.

If you still don't believe it? then take a look at this. This is my 940 running @ 3.4ghz in a Vantage I performed yesterday

Then take a look at the CPU score on this one. This is my mate's I5 OC to 4ghz. Spank the monkey?

Just like you continually defend Nvidia you seem to want to do the same for AMD. Hint - don't. Live in the real world like I do it's less embarassing (oh and he had a 280 OC with 4gb ram).

 

[AMDFTW]

i think you will find most of my comments in my post were not arguments they were just me pointing stuff out,fair enough abu the last bit but dude chill.

and also isent the 980x intels flgship hexcore?

AMD are less powerfull than intel BUT,they are starting to get better IMO even if they are not competing against intel

 

[alienware]

i think you will find most of my comments in my post were not arguments they were just me pointing stuff out,fair enough abu the last bit but dude chill.

No you were talking facts that were clearly wrong. If you were right? fair enough.

As for chill? I am. Just putting some facts out there for any one who may be reading.

and also isent the 980x intels flgship hexcore?

AMD are less powerfull than intel BUT,they are starting to get better IMO even if they are not competing against intel

Intel (AFAIK) only make one hexcore right now and yes, that's the 980x. AMD don't really need to get better. They have and always will have a place doing what they do.

As I said, AMD are a tiny company in comparisson with Intel. Intel make CPUs, GPUs, motherboards, chipsets, SSDs (and lead the way with the controllers, watch for the new one) server boards - the list just goes on.

TBH if they weren't so friggin mighty then the bloody nose AMD gave them back in the early noughties would have wiped them out. The very fact that they continually kept putting out inferior chips and managing to stay in business and have the finances in place to design the Core series says it all.

Designing CPUs and the architecture used in them is about money. Money money, money. Money that Intel have and always will have.

Seriously they're so powerful it's almost arrogance. The way they continually keep changing chipsets and outdating boards (due to VRM issues) is just madness. Yet none of the chinks in their armor are enough to cause them any problems.

 

[dlads]

HI To both of you guys, I don't want to start any drama here thats not my intentions, i just wanted to stick up for my cpu being a little better than a no frilled piece of poo basically lol.

Like i said i love my cpu i think its the tits, and the overclock which i posted was of that cpu, all be it on a ridiculous hardly sustainable cooling system which you just could hardly afford let alone have sitting in your office / front room / bedroom lol.

My only point was that it was possible and for the huge overclock which they achieved and that if a 6.53 oc was possible or even a 7.05 oc !!! then surely an overclock on a lesser form of cooling rather than liquid nitrogen lets say water or a super duper air cooling for lets say 4.5Ghz or even 5 Ghz would that not be possible? i think it might.

As for intels i haven't used one since my old dell p4 1.4Ghz single core (which i thought was great at the time) I've always sworn by AMD's ever since as theyre cheaper and have all the room and performance for whatever i need to do on a pc and probably more than enough for what anyone would need to do. Who the hell needs 3 ghz quad core? , games and progs hardly utilise 2 cores so 4 , 6 or the hex ( i, guessing theyre 8) wont be getting fully utilised for a long while.

Anyway like i said i don't want to start no dramas so my apologies if i did, Oh and lastly my old work ITN london, in their video editing archive they had a pc with 17 quad cpus in it, i said "yea pull the other one" when This guy Dave told me that but apparently it's true, I think even the most advanced mainstream computers have a lot to work towards to getting to that level lol. (actually it could have been 8 cores per cpu) That place was so damn cold too, had to be for all the machinery and electronics.

 

[sprento]

If u havn't already checked (u better have) then have a swatch around the power options in the right click, goddamn knows where screen settings and make sure u reset the default advanced power settings... has been a tricky bitch for me.

 

[alienware]

My only point was that it was possible and for the huge overclock which they achieved and that if a 6.53 oc was possible or even a 7.05 oc !!! then surely an overclock on a lesser form of cooling rather than liquid nitrogen lets say water or a super duper air cooling for lets say 4.5Ghz or even 5 Ghz would that not be possible? i think it might.

.

No. Sadly it isn't. CPUs have edge transitors. As an example when functioning normally they are set to 0. When you start stuffing them with heat voltage and more speed they become fuzzy and instead of writing zeroes they write ones.

Now. With AMD these days the overheads for overclock are minimal. They make budget CPUs (by their own admittance) and thus they personally are going to squeeze as much speed out of the chip THEMSELVES in order to sell it. The 950 955 and 965 are all basically the exact same chip obviously the 965s were the best of the batch when they pressed them so they will be labelled marketted and sold as 965 chips with 10-15% headroom for overclock on an air cooler.

Phenon X2 are broken Phenom x4s. Phenom x3 are broken Phenom x4s unless in the rare situation that AMD needed to make stock levels so disabled perfectly working cores. That is how it works my friend. They do not design and press lots of different cored CPUs they are all the same, on the same run, from the same die. At which point they test them to the limits and decide what they are going to sell them as unless as I said before they need to make stock levels of the cheaper CPUs. At which point they may just disable perfectly working cores.

Same holds true for Athlons. The dual cored chips can also be unlocked in certain circs. The Sempron 140 (a £28 CPU) can almost always be unlocked to be a Regor cored Athlon 2 worth about £50. All you need is ACC (advanced clock calibration AMD) or NCC (Nvidia clock calibration 9xx series Nforce chipsets) and you're good to try.

Success rate seems to be around 50% for Phenom 2 and 80% for Semprons. Sadly over time AMD have realised this and disabled ACC and NCC from being able to calibrate the locked cores.

And that's just how CPU manufacturing works. The better the run from the die? the better and more profitable for AMD.

Intel however? totally different animal mate. They design their chips with absolute TONS of headroom and masses of space. They do not cut them down to make money on dud CPUs and their standards are FAR FAR more exacting than AMDs. Why? because they have the money and the reputation.

And that's just that I am afraid..

As for water cooling a Phenom 2 to squeeze more from it? False economy, fool's gold. You are FAR better off just spending the extra money on a I5/7 and Ocing it on air. It's just way too much faffing for a CPU that is totally inferior.

 

[AMDFTW]

ime happy with 3.5Ghz my CPU does not like 3.6Ghz

 

[alienware]

Mine neither. It will run and bench but I will wake up in the morning to find that at some point it rebooted itself.

I want to point out I wasn't arguing or being nasty. Fact is that the P2 has 10-15% overheads on an air cooler as I said. I wish it was more and I wish that pushing it hard was worth it but it just isn't.

My P2 at 3.5ghz actually Vantaged less than at 3.4ghz. I don't know why, maybe the extra heat was throttling it?

I love AMD I really do but as I say it would be a bit silly to go on about how they're the best chips on the planet. Even the XP had pretty serious downsides. If you mounted the cooler even slightly wrong then the die (which was just sat on the top of a lump of silicon) would crack and kill the CPU. Physically they were dirt poor and construction of the chip was quite awful. Performance however for the money was just sublime

Putting four rubber pads on the chip was most certainly a cash scrimping way of keeping them as cheap as possible

 

[dlads]

Well damn, I feel educated, I can see what you mean now and using the same chips for all different models sounds like something a company who's trying to save a few bob would do.

U really make me feel like getting an i7 because that was my other option, or a q6600, i just found the price for the i7 when i first got my p2 a little expensive (about £300 I think)

Wish i maybe would have went with the i7 now but hey i'm still happy even without the overclock on my p2, i'm just a little pissed off with the temps, I've attached a screen grab of cpuid hardware monitor with 49 degree temps lol, ON IDLE grrrrrrr.

Really annoying it is, i plopped a fan on the side to maybe increase airflow as my case is pants, but i think it's maybe not the best of ideas, I know the logistics of cooling but its not so easy with the crappy case that ive got.

Thanks for all the info too about the p2 I think i will defo be looking into getting an intel if the intel / amd war remains like this.

Cheers.

 

[dlads]

If u havn't already checked (u better have) then have a swatch around the power options in the right click, goddamn knows where screen settings and make sure u reset the default advanced power settings... has been a tricky bitch for me.

Sorry i have no clue what you mean, no offence?!?

 

[alienware]

Power saving options. Things like turn of hard drives, sleep PC, turn off monitors and so on...

Q6600? no. Not unless you want a slower hotter CPU. It's aging now (65nm) and clock for clock the Phenom 2 keeps up with the later quads (Kentsfield? can't remember). Only time you should buy a Q6600 now is if you have a 680i with the crap VRMS (voltage regulator modules) that couldn't handle the 45nm quads.

With the Q6600 you would need to overclock it by 400mhz just to get the same clock speed as a 940.

The value now is the I5 750. It overclocks to 4ghz quite easily with the right motherboard and will stay there at acceptable temps. - Just my opinion of course !

However you can check to see if your board will flash to take a Thuban x6 because that is a new core completely (and far better than the 940 Deneb). Thing is it's VERY hit and miss as to whether your board manu has released a bios. I own two boards and one does have the bios (the Crosshair 2) but that is a premium board that new cost premium money. From what I can tell neither of the 790 AMD sets support it nor does my 480x.

 

[AMDFTW]

yer even i have been looking at the i7 930 and mobo for my transition to DDR3 but dam its expensive

@alien, with you talkng about powersaving mode turning off hardrives when they turn back on would they system hang then when your hear it spin up its kicks back in again.

 

[alienware]

Sleep mode on certain boards with a certain bios has been known to lock the system when being awoken yes.

The 680i in particular was terrible on a rev1 bios.

As for the 930? Don't. Price to performance I would MUCH rather have the 1090. Read the review on here, it's a much better design than the older Phenoms. They should have given it a new name IMO.

Stock to stock the 1090 may well be slightly slower than the I7 930 but as shown it does OC FAR better than the older Phenoms. It also has six cores and when threaded correctly that's 33% more cores than the I7 has. That's like a Phenom 2 X2 sitting along side your X4 doing more work.

Either way you'll need DDR3 and either way you need to be able to justify it. Remember, all of these benchmarks are all well and good and they do indeed make your 940 look shit. But, run a game. If that game does at least 30fps min then you won't notice much of a difference. Anything over 30 min is a bonus and unless you wear glasses milk bottle thick and have the eyes of a hawk you won't notice. This is why AMD manage to stay comfortably in business making budget chips like the Athlon 2 Regor for £50. Because believe it or not it is more than adequate when partnered with a good GPU of running any game you throw at it.

Case in point my mate has a Athlon X2 @ 2.8ghz. Not an Athlon 2, worth about £30 and he gets 49fps average with 40 min partnered to a 5850.

The key to owning a PC is making a purchase and then being happy with what ya' got. I have a 940 and even though I know that the I5 and I7 trounce it I am happy with what I have. All that money would show me actual real world figures of any actual difference. I mean crap, I bench 15,400 or so 3dmarks with this 940. The test rig used to bench the 5770s in Crossfire hit 17k. Do you really think I am worried about 1500 points enough to spend a few hundred quid?

As I said elsewhere adding an I7 with full 16x PCIEs to my computer and triple channel DDR3 would net me about another 3-5fps that I wouldn't even notice..

Sure my system as a whole won't last as long as a good I7 machine (as in the capabilty for the future) but tbh I see all PC purchases as dead money any way. Once you spend it you never get it back.

I don't even sell parts any more. I have a massive stockpile under my bed So many infact that I was able to build another complete Alienware for the price of a CPU, PSU and case. Not the ideal thing to have a Crosshair 2 rotting under your bed of course but I would rather it rot than feel gutted at only getting back about 30% of what I paid for it !

Mind you, I only paid £110 in a clearance on Scan about 9 months ago. Pennies for what you get. I am the super duper bargain hunter. Seriously some of the stuff I have bagged for next to nothing is just awesome. Perfect Alienware chassis in silver for £50 del. 750w brand new 80+ cert Alienware PSU? £25 (can still get them if any one wants one). My black chassis arrived with a crack, got a full refund and got to keep it and so on.