Budget Box Surprise - GREAT CPU

LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, Alaska Icrontian
edited December 2005 in Hardware
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.

Comments

  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited September 2005
    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
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited September 2005
    Great clock Leo!
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited September 2005
    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.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited September 2005
    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.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited September 2005
    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-ShuSkip-Da-Shu Republic of Texas, Central
    edited December 2005
    I posted my Sempron experiment results over here:

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