A 4.1 GHz Dual Core at $130 - Can it be True?

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Yes people, THG's article was not to compare the 805 to overclocking other processors. The article was comparing the 805 to the Pentium Extreme processors and how much bang for your buck you could get for overclocking the 805. Thus $130 versus $1000. I don't think they were telling people to go out and buy a new setup and buy the 805 to put in it. I currently have a MB that supports the dual core, has ddr2 memory and the other requirements for overclocking the 805. I currently have an Intel 640 3.2 gig processor. So I bought an 805 to see if it is really as good as Tom's says it is.

I disagree that Tom's is always ragging on AMD. If anything Tom's really likes the AMD processors. Buying an 805 and overclocking isn't for everybody, but a lot of people either already have them, or are buying them now to see how much bang for the buck we can get. I will only be overclocking as high as I can go with the upgraded fan and am not worried about the extra watts that will be used. I bet a lot of the people making a point about the extra power are not even paying for the power. Just take the article the way Tom's intended and get a life.
 
But the simple truth is that overvoltages will eventually lead to a drastically shorter life. Now, 1.5V isn't terribly high, to be true - you could probably flog the thing for a year at 3.8 before it dies, and for $130, that's a dirt-cheap 3.8.

Note - the guy running the 3.8 system above is doing water-cooling. That's about the cost of the CPU by itself, so it fails the acid-test of budget performance.

Here's the goal:
- Average motherboard, within reason. Say, $150, tops. No cheap as possible $75 motherboards, either. The goal here is to be a main computer you could build for a customer or family member.
- Nothing fancy with memory - keep your old stuff. For a new build, $50-$75, max.
- 3.6 Ghz or 3.8 with an air cooling setup that costs no more than $50 for the aftermarket cooler.
- NO OVERVOLTAGES.
- no special power supply. Stock 500W max.
- No more than $20 in auxiliary fans and such. The price-point for the total build is $400 or less, including the motherboard and memory.

I know 3.6 is possible this way - drop the thing in, alter the speed, and forget about it. 3.8 may be possible long-term - I don't know. I suspect not, since air cooling looses efficiency unless you religiously clean the fans and dust out of the heatsinks about every month. Water-coolng ends the long-term problems, but it's pricey.

I suspect that if you modded your case like I suggested and also had a 120mm fan pulling air through at a good rate, that 3.8 might be doable - but in most cases, it's an oven in there. Way too little airflow.

We should be concnetrating on finding this out as it's a hell of a deal for average consumers, as even 3.6Ghz for $130 is amazing. If Tom's had an article stating "3.6Ghz system for $400!" - that's be more to the point and a better use of their time, IMO.
 
"We should be concnetrating on finding this out as it's a hell of a deal for average consumers, as even 3.6Ghz for $130 is amazing. If Tom's had an article stating "3.6Ghz system for $400!" - that's be more to the point and a better use of their time, IMO."

Thats about where I headed with my build and its working out realy well so far :) I do however want to upgrade my video card at a later date and switch up to some better RAM and more of it (1GB isnt enough these days lol)
 
I bought one on Thursday when I first encountered the article. $140 shipped from zipzoomfly.com.

I'm going to try to find the mobo listed in the article and run my own benchmarks. I haven't been this excited about overclocking since I figured out how to ramp up my Pentium 233 to 266mhz by "decoding" the fsb and multiplier jumpers on that old Asus board!

Oh yeah. I wish it would get here today but it's scheduled to arrive Monday, so I guess I'll have to content myself with shopping for that mobo.

So yeah, great article. Cheers!
 
Dont know about everyone else but I got 3.8Ghz on a cheesy ECS mobo that cost 68$ so how premium it is I dont know lol I think with some good cooling more would be possible but 3.8Ghz is plenty enough for me im stopping there :)
Click to expand...

Hi Jonathan,

Where did you get your motherboard/processor combo? Sounds like a good price.

thanks,

buzz_X
 
Some more info on overclocking potential of the d805 in cpu magazine next month's issue they got to 4.05Ghz with the corsair nautalis system.
 
Well, I just picked up a Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI for $120. It's not the Royal version so no 8-phase power smoothing, but it lets you step up the voltage in .0125v increments up to 1.8 volts so no prob there. I plan on running my 805 at between 3.4 and 3.8 ghz (we shall see if I'm lucky :) ). Hell, I'd be happy with 3.2 even.

Plus, I picked up 2gb of Patriot DDR2 667 at $160. I'm gonna chuck in a 7900GT first, and then another one in a few months, so I expect this rig to be quite the ass-kicker when it's finished. Woot!
 
Well Im running 3.8 Stable at 1.5v now with the following setup

Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Rev 1.1 Running Bios F4
Pentium D 805
1GB Corsair DDR2-800 Twin2X
Gigabyte 3D Galaxy Liquid Cooling System
Aopen AO700-ALN 700W Power supply

CPU-Z Verification
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=93044
Click to expand...


Hey does our mb support intel's next gen processor, conroe?

No it does not. But my next upgrade will be six months from now so a cpu and motherboard to go canroe is a easy step to take from here as where my machine before this was a AMD base and to go to conroe would have ment a whole new machine.
 
So as i'm seeing..
Using ddr2 667 is the way to go instead of the old 533. Also it's about the same price. So i think the 667 will help the system with his good timing.
What you think. And a main question, for this overcloking; Does a pair of memory stick made for Dual channel is the way to go or any single mem stick can be ok too ?

Asus P5ld2-vm , P4 D805...
 
I got my 805 from Newegg.com for $128.00 and shipping was free. I ordered it on Friday May 12th and it will be delivered on Monday May 15th. The free shipping was 3 day, but Newegg usually gets it there one day early. NEWEGG rocks, I won't buy anything anywhere else. Spent a little over $3000 there last year.
 
Hey what's the noise level like? I have my new 805 system but not overclocked and i want it relatively quiet because it's in my room. If I OC it to 3.6ghz is the processor itself going to make more noise?
 
I got my 805 from Newegg.com for $128.00 and shipping was free. I ordered it on Friday May 12th and it will be delivered on Monday May 15th. The free shipping was 3 day, but Newegg usually gets it there one day early. NEWEGG rocks, I won't buy anything anywhere else. Spent a little over $3000 there last year.
Click to expand...

Thanks Nitehawk92,

Do you know if the SLI boards can use a regulars AGP card? I have some older AGP 4x cards, will they work?

I'm not into games, I just want to use the rig to encode video. Of course, my big fascination is performance per dollar. I think it's a great setup for folks that don't have that much bank.

I'm not going to overclock it to an extreme. For normal use I'll run at 3.6 and for video I'll see if I can do 3.8 Ghz

The only thing I'll get for it is a better heatsink and fan, but that's it.

Buxx_X
 
Well, the CPU itself won't make any more or less noise - though the fan will be on full-time. To be safe, you'll want to disable power savings and sleep/low-ower modes and have it running like a server - so it'll be a bit noisier.

But the big deal is fans.
Get a new case. You need a basic case with two 3.5 floppy slots and no front door. 120mm fan is a huge bonus.
- Replace all your fans with quieter ball bearing ones. I hard wire-mine into the power supply(bypass onboard control). They are on all the time. Pay attention to the motherboard - install a 50mm ball bearing fan($4 at most) on the southbridge and northbridge. OCd a board and found out the hard way a year later when the southbridge died, even though the temp was always good and it had a massive heatsink.
- Ditch the front fan. Useless.
- Use a Dremel or simmilar - any fan opening that has any sort of metal covering it - cut it out and replace it with a wire finger guard, like you see on your power supply.
- Install a slot fan. video card - blank slot - slot fan. This pulls half of the heat off of the video card. The problem isn't heat but heat that sits still and bakes itself into everything around it. If the top of your case is more than about 20 degrees over room temperature, you have too low airflow.
- put your HD in the lower 3.5 slot. Remove the cover above it. Yes, it's not terribly attractive, but it is your intake. Since it's smaller than the exhaust, it accelerates the air into the computer, cooling it down to 60 degrees or so. The exhaust fans will pull in as much air as they need through such an opening, so you can safely get rid of the intake fan. (cars work the same - it'll pull in as much air as it needs as long as it's not through a straw-sized opening. :) )

This does a fantastic job of also cooling your hard drive for cheap - and the entire system has nearly zero backpressure on the fans other than the CPU fan. My Maxtor 300 gig HD, which is too hot to touch normally, is 85-90 degrees (F) as a result. Two years without a single hint of failure. My work - had some installed in blades with typical lack of airflow - 3 months or so before they roasted.

I also put a 3.5 floppy adaptor in the 5.25 bay above my DVD drive - same deal - pulling air over it and ditching the intake fan. Yes, since the case has two openings in the front, there is noise coming out of there, but it's half as loud as before. I'll probably move to water-cooling next, just because my CPU fan is making 2/3 of the remaining noise.
 
Your welcome dude....I have never tried to put an AGP card in a PCI Express slot, but the slots are different. It would really surprise me if you could even get the AGP card in the PCI 16X slot. I am almost positive the slot starts closer to the front of the case. And even if you could get the card in the slot, I can't imagine that the computer would even boot up. The architecture for the PCI X is quite different from the AGP video. NEWEGG Rocks......
 
This ended up being a waste of 2 days and restocking fees for me.

I used the asus p5wd2-e premium board and patriot 667 ddr2.

It took me one day just to get the damn thing to boot to windows. Once I got it there it would not overclock at all.

Hopefully this was just a matter of bad luck for me, but perhaps not. I did a search when I was trouble shooting and ran into a lot of posts from people having the same problems I was having and almost all of them were with asus boards.

Just a heads-up.

Peace

***edit---typo
 
Lomotil, Thats just bad luck on your part. I hit 4ghz today. Stable with 1.5v. Gets a little hot at that setting even with watercooling.

SO I clocked it back to 3.8 which only requires 1.45v on my GA-8N-SLI board. (the performance increase from 3.8 to 4 was not noticable)

I run this system now at 3.8 all day and its dead stable. 34 c Idle temp and 45 c to 50 c load temps. Motherboard isnt even breaking a sweat and the memory is cold to the touch.

Granted it is sitting in a kick ass case. The gigabyte case has 3 120mm fans in total. One intake on the front which blows accross the hard drives (of which i have 3) and 2 120mm exhuast fans placed just below the power supply. My power supply has 120mm fan acting as a exhuast and cooling fan for it as well (Aopen 700 watter). I then purchased the water cooling that was designed for this case as well. Only problem i found was that the grapfics cards and the water pump was a bit of a squeese and i couldnt get my audigy in iether. Still trying to make a plan for that.

For the guys who want to look at the case click on the link
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Chassis/Products_Spec.aspx?ProductID=2130
 
I was thinking about a new system based on the Intel D975BxLRK with a 920 processor with plans to update to a E6000 when the prices are more reasonable. This article to seems to suggest that a ASUS P5WD2-E Premium (is it better?) and a 805 with the appropreate 2G memory overclocked and overvoltaged might be more appropriate to give future upgrading capabiltiy to the E6000 series ( or is this Core 2 Duo). I was was thinking of a liquid cooling system along with vibration isolation and a 120mm fan to get a quiet system. I am not an expert but have an engieering backgroud. Could you give any suggestions.
 
Your welcome dude....I have never tried to put an AGP card in a PCI Express slot, but the slots are different. It would really surprise me if you could even get the AGP card in the PCI 16X slot. I am almost positive the slot starts closer to the front of the case. And even if you could get the card in the slot, I can't imagine that the computer would even boot up. The architecture for the PCI X is quite different from the AGP video. NEWEGG Rocks......
Click to expand...


Thanks Nitehawk92,

OK, I see. So this means I could use an older pci video card in one of the regular pci slots? I just don't want to spend any more $ than what I have to.

I was asking because I don't know all that much about the SLI boards. I kinda felt like perhaps the architecture was different.

Buzz_X
 
I take my words back. Pretty Impressive. :trophy:

I guess then that the money spent on a phase change cooler would be well worth it indeed.

For $130 and another few hundred on a Mach II GT, you should be able to get over 5GHz stable and keep it running nicely.

Anybody care to make the investment???
 
Well, the CPU itself won't make any more or less noise - though the fan will be on full-time. To be safe, you'll want to disable power savings and sleep/low-ower modes and have it running like a server - so it'll be a bit noisier.

But the big deal is fans.
Get a new case. You need a basic case with two 3.5 floppy slots and no front door. 120mm fan is a huge bonus.
- Replace all your fans with quieter ball bearing ones. I hard wire-mine into the power supply(bypass onboard control). They are on all the time. Pay attention to the motherboard - install a 50mm ball bearing fan($4 at most) on the southbridge and northbridge. OCd a board and found out the hard way a year later when the southbridge died, even though the temp was always good and it had a massive heatsink.
- Ditch the front fan. Useless.
- Use a Dremel or simmilar - any fan opening that has any sort of metal covering it - cut it out and replace it with a wire finger guard, like you see on your power supply.
- Install a slot fan. video card - blank slot - slot fan. This pulls half of the heat off of the video card. The problem isn't heat but heat that sits still and bakes itself into everything around it. If the top of your case is more than about 20 degrees over room temperature, you have too low airflow.
- put your HD in the lower 3.5 slot. Remove the cover above it. Yes, it's not terribly attractive, but it is your intake. Since it's smaller than the exhaust, it accelerates the air into the computer, cooling it down to 60 degrees or so. The exhaust fans will pull in as much air as they need through such an opening, so you can safely get rid of the intake fan. (cars work the same - it'll pull in as much air as it needs as long as it's not through a straw-sized opening. :) )

This does a fantastic job of also cooling your hard drive for cheap - and the entire system has nearly zero backpressure on the fans other than the CPU fan. My Maxtor 300 gig HD, which is too hot to touch normally, is 85-90 degrees (F) as a result. Two years without a single hint of failure. My work - had some installed in blades with typical lack of airflow - 3 months or so before they roasted.

I also put a 3.5 floppy adaptor in the 5.25 bay above my DVD drive - same deal - pulling air over it and ditching the intake fan. Yes, since the case has two openings in the front, there is noise coming out of there, but it's half as loud as before. I'll probably move to water-cooling next, just because my CPU fan is making 2/3 of the remaining noise.
Click to expand...


Hi Plekto and All,

I don't agree with you that the front fan is useless, there is a better solution. The problem is that airflow is restricted AND doesn't have the correct direction. That means that when the front fan sucks air, it can be coming from either the outside, or the very inside of the computer. It has no direction!

I do take my cases and remove the manufacturer's stamped fan covers, those are useless and do restrict airflow. I cut them off and go and get the grill type. It does improve airflow. But that's not all I do. Read on:

These are the other steps I take:

a) I buy 4 rubber bottom furniture legs (an inch tall), like for office equipment. They have a threaded middle rod and will bolt right up to the case. Remove the little factory rubber pads and you just simply install them there. Now your case sits about an inch from the ground.

b) I remove the plastic front cover from the computer box and enlarge the little factory air intake slot (between the 2 front rubber legs or pads). I cut away on each side and on the middle to make it as big as I can without damaging the looks of the case. I then install some medium mesh window screen as a pre-filter for the fan (the pre-filter covers the area of the factory slot you just enlarged, not the fan itself!). 3 little wood screws with a little hold down tab work just fine. The pre-filter is really needed because the next step will greatly improve its useful air movement.

c) I now now look on the inside of the plastic computer case cover, between the area on top of the front fan and the start of the floppy drive area. Notice there isn't any natural separation there?

The way to remedy that is that I take a piece of cardboard and measure it to follow the contour of the front of the case cover. Once I'm done, I have a piece of cardboard that fits very snug between the case cover and the metal chassis of the computer case front. I hot glue the cardboard to the plastic case caver. I then proceed to seal off any other stamping or factory holes left in the area between the cardboard and the bottom of the case metal chassis.

The end result:
If you have followed me this far, you'll notice that once you put the computer front cover back on, there's only one area for the front fan to suck air from: ------> the enlarged and screen mesh covered intake slot on the very bottom of the plastic case cover! We now have direction!

Upkeep:
About once every so often you'll have to remove the screen mesh and clean it. However, it will keep your fan free from hair and other household debris.

Your computer will have much better airflow and your temperatures will be better. You will have 2 fans with about the same useful air circulation.

Buzz_X
 
Wow, great article. Really eye-opening as I thought overclocking could get you a small bumb in speed, but nothing like this. The over 4Ghz stuff isn't really that impressive, but overclocking a 2.66 to a 3.8 and have it perfectly fine and stable with only using a few tweaks, that's awesome.

Hey Skidd, mind if I copy your system and make one for myself?

I was thinking of getting:
$130- Pentium D 805
$66- Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128302R
$140- OCZ Gold 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227029
$60- ZALMAN CNPS9500
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118223
$50ish - cheap case + 450W PSU
$150-200 Video card. Haven't decided which one.

Now this is about $700 after tax and S&H are all considered(which is bordering the price of a X2 3800 system that's already built for me) I have some noob questions though:

1) I'm not sure if the mobo I have listed is right, are you guys talking about the super expensive $200+ mobos? I don't really want crazy 4.1Ghz rates, 3.6 or 3.8 is great imo.
2) Can I use my old WinXP Home(came with my compaq I'm using right now) and old HDs/DVD burners(ok they aren't that old, like 1-2 years) in my new system? Buying WinXP Home is another $100.
3) Any other ways to save some cash in my set-up? I work at a computer retailer so I might be able to get some cheaper RAM and Video card, but are there any other cheaper parts that are pretty much the same?
 
Another question is, why not compare the 805 OC to some other OC'ed Intel and AMD CPUs as well?
Click to expand...

Agreed......should get some high overclocking CPUs from both AMD and Intel for a review!!

because they are stressing that the point of this dual core performance can be had only at around 130. you did start with the title when you read the article correct?
Click to expand...

I did read the artle title alright........the Celeron D356 is selling for $103 USD (price in March) and runs at 5.0Ghz!! So what?? Can Intel guarantee every Celeron D356 will run at 5.0GHz on stock cooling??....I doubt that but it's good to know it has the potential to do so!!

What I am saying is that.....THG made 805 like it's the first processor they've ever overclocked!!!! Like Opteron 165s, there are reports on that it can run at 2.7GHz by OCing from 200MHz to 300MHz, and........I would like to know of all the Opteron 165 CPUs sold, how many will actually function at that speed? If AMD and Intel can say......"We guarantee cheap CPUs can be OCed to high end CPU MHz"....then I'm impressed!!!
Like overclocking CPU to high speeds is a mystery
A comparison on Intel's Vs AMD's highest overclockable CPUs would interesting like Linux_0 suggested..........
I am sure 4.1GHz is not the limit................
 
if you are running it under a full load all the time.... it would get expensive... that 805 under a full cpu load would cost close to $30 a month to run.... that is if it is under full load though. Otherwise about $15 if it idles all month.... $30 at full load roughly 500W and idle obviously 250W..... rough estimates....

edit.... that is of course with the 4+ghz OC.... not at stock
edit#2... and this is at a cost of $.10 per kw hour....
 
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