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View Full Version : Budget Box Surprise - GREAT CPU


Leonardo
24 Sep 2005, 7:38am
Stable 3.76GHz from a 3.2 Northwood. That's on air! Full load, dual channel, hyperthreading, with two instances of Folding@Home running. CPU core voltage is .05v above default.


FSB X Mulitiplier: 234 X 16
vCore: BIOS 1.60v/indicated 1.55v
FSB/DRAM ratio: 5/4
CPU/AGP/PCI ratio: Fixed
AGP/PCI: locked at 66MHz/33MHz


(See No. 3 in signature below. Case is an Antec Super Lanboy.)

I had put this box together as a budget medium/high performance Folding box. Most of the parts came from recent private deals or from my parts bin. When I opened the box shipped to me with the CPU, I was delighted to see that it was a "30 cap" Northwood, that is, 30 capacitors on the back of the die. (Northwood yes. I never even considered a Presscott, new or used.) There is truth to the buzz among overclockers that the 30 cap CPUs are superior. Many of the Northwood 2.8's have a lot of OC headroom; but I had no idea a 3.2 had much headroom left.

Shorty
24 Sep 2005, 9:48am
Well damn, that's not a bad overclock on a budget box!

Im seriously considering resurrecting my old 2500+ Athlon & seeing what I can get out of it :D

TheLostSwede
24 Sep 2005, 10:21am
Great clock Leo!

Leonardo
24 Sep 2005, 6:35pm
For a while last night, I had it Folding at 3.8GHz. The Zalman 7000 wasn't quite up to the task, though, and I had to clock it down. I believe it could run stable at 3.8, but with better cooling, such as No. 1 has (Zalman 7700 - 120mm fan). Today I'll probably swap the CPUs between systems 1 and 2.

Leonardo
24 Sep 2005, 11:12pm
3.8GHz...
hyperthreading, dual channel, two instances of Folding@Home running. :D

I moved the 3.2 Northwood to system No. 1, which has a superior PSU and much better airflow in the case. VCore is once notch above default, set to 1.575v in the BIOS. This CPU puts out less heat at 3.8 than the other (2.8 Northwood) put out at 3.5.

Leonardo
28 Sep 2005, 5:33am
Had to back down to 3.7GHz. No. 1 will run stable at 3800MHz, if, that is if I keep the room cool enough, which is on the low side of comfort. :rolleyes:

Skip Da Shu
7 Dec 2005, 6:03am
I posted my Sempron experiment results over here:

http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?p=321570#post321570