good ol' bh5 - part 2

lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
edited October 2005 in Hardware
My TCCD never behaved well with my 3500+ winchester for some reason. I wanted to try BH5 for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to see if 512MB in DC got me much more headroom, and secondly, I've been itching to try the +5V memory rail jumper. So far it's rock solid stable at 260MHz without any fine tuning at 3.4 volts. This game is far from over :D

Comments

  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited October 2005
    Very nice :).
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited October 2005
    So far this memory controller has no issues whatsoever with the BH5. My 1GB of TCCD would BSOD hard at anything over 255MHz, even though it was stable in memtest86+ at 300+MHz. I've been able to post as high as 277MHz on this BH5, and 270 seems rock solid so far!.. This CPU must prefer 2x256 over 2x512.

    This was at 3.7 volts, and about as high as I'm willing to go for these festivities :eek3: .. Amazingly, the dimms are cool to the touch with only an 80mm case fan cooling them.

    Some tuning is really needed, as trc and trfc on auto defaulted rather high.

    I had to tear my system down, just to get to the first dimm slot and remove the TCCD. XP90 totally overhangs the first dimm slot.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited October 2005
    I tightened up the trc and trfc, and brought my CPU clock back up to my usual 2.6GHz clock (normally 11x237 on my tccd @ 2-3-3-6).

    Memory controller didn't flinch at 10x260, 2-2-2-5 1T. Anyhow, this shaved a second off of my superPI time. I got 33s with 2.7GHz and my TCCD. I managed 32s with 100MHz slower CPU, and the tight timings/high frequency ram.

    I'm off to play some DoD.. I'm curious to see how the gameplay will be with 512MB :Pwned:

    EDIT: Gameplay was shaky until fully loaded, and then very smooth. I believe hl2 based games only use a heap of 256mb, so 512 not much of an issue.. Load time is definitely slower though, and some stuttering is evident when beginning a new map.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited October 2005
    Oh wow that looks great!!!
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited October 2005
    Yeah, that good old 256 MB BH5 is some magic stuff, that is for sure. I've been playing with my old Corsair BH5 in my P-M rig and I've memtested it up to 250 fsb with 2-2-2-5 timings and PAT enabled with 3.3v with a ddr booster and I've been able to get to over 2800 MHz with my new Sonoma 1.6/533 at 234 X 12. Here's a screenie of what it did to a 1M SuperPi.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited October 2005
    muddocktor wrote:
    Yeah, that good old 256 MB BH5 is some magic stuff, that is for sure. I've been playing with my old Corsair BH5 in my P-M rig and I've memtested it up to 250 fsb with 2-2-2-5 timings and PAT enabled with 3.3v with a ddr booster and I've been able to get to over 2800 MHz with my new Sonoma 1.6/533 at 234 X 12. Here's a screenie of what it did to a 1M SuperPi.

    Wow thats an amazing PI! Those PM's are quite the number crunchers! Think the 2048k of cache makes a big difference also, as PI seems to use it well.

    Where did you get the modified version of superpi btw?
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited October 2005
    I'm pretty sure I found the link to the newer version of SuperPi at the XS forums, lemonlime. Here's the version I'm presently using, all zipped up. I just dropped it in my original folder and made a shortcut to the new version.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited October 2005
    This is the best I could do 1:1.. My CPU will not stretch any further than 2.7GHz. Not much left in the ram, maybe 5MHz more, but some fantastic stuff to say the least.

    Amazingly, even at 3.7 volts, it is WAYY cooler to the touch than my TCCD at 2.8 volts. Must have something to do with the amount of current it draws.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited October 2005
    Man, that is some memory bandwidth, d00d. :thumbsup: I've basically been feeling out this Sonoma proc so far and really haven't gone for real high fsb speeds. The highest I've had it was at 250 fsb X 11, but it wasn't totally stable there. So I went back up to a 12 multi and have been exploring the upper limits of the proc. I know my Sonoma won't show the extreme bandwidth that an A64 can, but it's no slouch either. Also like an A64, it isn't bandwidth limited like a P4 so you don't see the large speed gains a P4 will when running tighter timings at higher speeds. I'll probably dial the vdimm up some more on the Corsair though and see what kind of gains I can get when upping the fsb speed and backing down the multi. What has surprised me a lot on this board is how low the mem latency is, especially since it uses a mem controller that is off die. Here's a few benches I've done so far.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited October 2005
    Here's the Sandra MM bench and a screenshot I just love; this P-M just chewing up and spitting out a p1481 wu. I bet you've never seen a processor eat up a wu like this before. :D
  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited October 2005
    lemonlime wrote:
    So far this memory controller has no issues whatsoever with the BH5. My 1GB of TCCD would BSOD hard at anything over 255MHz, even though it was stable in memtest86+ at 300+MHz. I've been able to post as high as 277MHz on this BH5, and 270 seems rock solid so far!.. This CPU must prefer 2x256 over 2x512.

    This was at 3.7 volts, and about as high as I'm willing to go for these festivities :eek3: .. Amazingly, the dimms are cool to the touch with only an 80mm case fan cooling them.

    Some tuning is really needed, as trc and trfc on auto defaulted rather high.

    I had to tear my system down, just to get to the first dimm slot and remove the TCCD. XP90 totally overhangs the first dimm slot.


    /me looks close at DIMMs.
    ....heyyyyyy! :D

    To think I could only get as high as 217 with those in my NF7-S. :rolleyes: Still, 512 MBs is a bit too low in terms of RAM on a high performance machine these days. I couldn't imagine going lower than 1GB anymore.

    EDIT: On the other hand you have 4 DIMM slots where NF2 mobos only have 3 (and only 2 work at any speed above 200Mhz). If you were to get another pair of those DIMMs you'd be screaming in speed and have plenty of available RAM!
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited October 2005
    TheSmJ wrote:
    /me looks close at DIMMs.

    ....heyyyyyy! :D

    To think I could only get as high as 217 with those in my NF7-S. :rolleyes: Still, 512 MBs is a bit too low in terms of RAM on a high performance machine these days. I couldn't imagine going lower than 1GB anymore.

    EDIT: On the other hand you have 4 DIMM slots where NF2 mobos only have 3 (and only 2 work at any speed above 200Mhz). If you were to get another pair of those DIMMs you'd be screaming in speed and have plenty of available RAM!

    Thanks again for those dimms TheSmJ! told ya I'd put them to good use :cheers::D

    Could be that the NF7-S was just chipset limited, but these really came to life with >3V. Sweet spot is around 3.3-3.4V. Burning them in did help as well. After running them at 3.7 for a while, they began to require less voltage overall.

    2.7V - 219MHz
    2.8V - 225MHz
    2.9V - 230MHz
    3.0V - 238MHz
    3.1V - 247MHz
    3.2V - 255MHz
    3.3V - 262MHz
    3.4V - 266MHz
    3.5V - 269MHz
    3.6V - 272MHz
    3.7V - 275MHz
    3.8V - Even more errors than 3.7.

    You are definitely correct about 512MB not being enough for todays games. Even games with 256MB heap sizes load quite slowly, and are choppy for the first little bit. DoD took much longer to load, and was choppy for the first 10 seconds or so of gameplay. Once loaded up it was fine, but overall, it was more enjoyable with 1GB of slower ram. The 2x256 is awesome for benchmarking though, and I'll definitely be keeping them for that purpose :D

    I have a feeling that my memory controller would have a hard time handling four of these dimms. It has a hard enough time with 2x512 I'm afraid.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited October 2005
    muddocktor wrote:
    Man, that is some memory bandwidth, d00d. :thumbsup: I've basically been feeling out this Sonoma proc so far and really haven't gone for real high fsb speeds. The highest I've had it was at 250 fsb X 11, but it wasn't totally stable there. So I went back up to a 12 multi and have been exploring the upper limits of the proc. I know my Sonoma won't show the extreme bandwidth that an A64 can, but it's no slouch either. Also like an A64, it isn't bandwidth limited like a P4 so you don't see the large speed gains a P4 will when running tighter timings at higher speeds. I'll probably dial the vdimm up some more on the Corsair though and see what kind of gains I can get when upping the fsb speed and backing down the multi. What has surprised me a lot on this board is how low the mem latency is, especially since it uses a mem controller that is off die. Here's a few benches I've done so far.

    That is an awesome processor mudd! I agree, quite good latency figures considering an off-board memory controller. Are these Sonoma's multi-unlocked?

    What are your system specs? are you using one of those PM adapters or a 479 mainboard? cooling? I'd love to see some pics of that system. When intel brings the PM architecutre to the mainstream, AMD will have some stiff competition no doubt!



    I'd love to see some pics of your setup man.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited October 2005
    The Sonoma procs are downwardly unlocked, just like an A64 (in the P4C800 series at least). I'm not sure what max fsb they are capable of yet, but I have seen one system listed in a thread at the overclockers.com forums running a 275 fsb. These procs feel more like an AMD proc in response that anything Intel has put out in the last few years.

    As far as the rig setup goes, here's what I have in that box, which will become a folding only rig eventually (when I get either an X2 4400 or DC Opty for my EPoX system-the vid card goes into the new main rig).

    mobo - Asus P4C800E-Dlx - $130 off eBay, new
    proc - Sonoma 730 (1.6/533) - $129 - off eBay, pull from dropped laptop
    HSF - Zalman CPNS7000-Cu - $30 from ZZF
    ram - 2X256 Corsair BH5 from my NF7-S
    video - X800XT-PE - $229 - from ZZF sale 2 months ago
    HD - Seagate 80 gig, 8MB cache IDE - $70, from Walmart gift card
    psu - 350 watt Enlight I've been having around
    CDROM - old 56X I've had in this rig for a while
    This rig also has 2 80mm case fans and 1 120mm case fan drawing off the psu, besides the Zalman
    case - old crappy Codegen mid tower that is a real POS I've had for a while

    One great thing about these P-M procs is that they use so little power compared to a P4 or even an A64 that it is easy to both power them and cool them. That 350 watt Enlight is still rock solid even at this speed and when loading the vid card with a graphics intensive program or game. As for temps, it's presently running at 40-42 C while folding and idles in the low to mid 30's.

    I'll probably try backing down the multi and cranking the fsb (and ram voltage up too) up and seeing what kind of mem bandwidth I can get out of this 2 year old design Intel mobo. IMO, Intel hasn't come out with a chipset since the i865 and i875 (which is what this Asus board uses) that even comes close to them in either longivity or versatility. When I was messing around with the 11 multi, I had the mem bandwith at almost 5800 MB/s according to Sandra.

    Asus definitely did it's mobo users a service when they designed the CT-479 adapter (and modded the bioses for those boards to run the P-M). It gave them a high performance, low power draw processor option for Intel users to upgrade to or base a system around. It's too bad companies like Abit are too proud or stupid to modify their bioses for the IC7 and IS7 series boards to where they could use the CT-479 adapter. If they did, I would probably have at least 1 more machine running P-M instead of P4.
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