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

Page 20 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
I am not crashing or anything, I haven't even become unstable or switched off of stock voltage. It is just a plain heat issue I am having. On my previous CPU, I was able to run @ 3.8ghz stable (the 630) and have a FSB of 253mhz (bus speed of 1012mhz). Its just that I kept it at 3.6 so there was a temp of 58C in a 90F room. As far as I know, this 805 OCing benefits is having a higher multiplier of 20x allowing a problem such as too high of FSB not to be an issue. I am running at 3.4 for now (which is only FSB 170mhz, bus 681mhz) and only thing that stresses my CPU the most is the CPU test in 3dmark06. I left my temp history running and it hit 64C. Any ideas or did I get a "bad" chip for ocing, maybe the grease has to still cure? It has been running for about 10 hours non stop and the 200 hours is suppose to be on off treatment so it can cure each time it cools. I really hope the temps drop after a while.

I read your link darklife41, I didn't see it posted before, I must have missed it. Your results are a little better than mine. Right now, like I said before, 3.4 is the highest I am going until the heat goes down. I ordered a PCI exhaust fan to suck out my video cards heat and an HDD fan device which will just use a slot in the forn off my tower to further suck air out since I have more fans sucking in at the moment than out.
 
Dexman, the Silverstone FM121, is that to replace the fan on the actual AC freezer 7 pro? And if so, is that also able to be done for an AC freezer 7 non-pro? And how much does it cost and where can I get it? That is, if it impoves heat performance. Thanks

Edit-

Nvm, I looked it up, not what I thought it was.

Edit-

Here is my 3dmark06 benchmark from last night at 3.4:

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=332879
 
I jumped in and bought an 805 and without doing enough research also bought the Foxconn 955X7AA motherboard. I love the features on the board, including support for 8 SATA drives and 6 PATA drives, 1394A and B, etc.

However, the board apparently does not support the 805, as it only supports CPUs with a FSB of 800. Is there any way to run this processor on this board that I'm not aware of? The gentleman at Foxconn made it sound as if they were working on a solution, maybe a new bios (but that would require the use of a compatible cpu to flash, no?).

If not, what motherboards does everyone recommend with similar features?

Also, I have an older Koolance PC2 case with the CPU200 waterblock. The socket 775 adapter is listed to work with the CPU300 waterblock, but it appears to take the same bracket as the CPU200. I went ahead and ordered the bracket, anyone have experience with this?

Thanks for the help with my "n00b" questions. Definitely appreciate it.

Cheers,
Brant

Attempted hardware:

Foxconn 955X7AA board
Pentium D 805
2Gb PQI Turbo 533 I think
eVga 7600 GT
any other info as requested.
 
The Silverstone FM121 is actually a touch larger than the heatsink itself. It sits out about 1/2 inch on each side of it. The biggest benefit is that it can push up to 110cfm which is about double that of the stock fan that comes with the Arctic Freezer 7 Pro.
Right now I have the fan running at 1000rpm (800-2400rpm). I'm going to test the theory that being able to push so much air to cool the heatsink will mean lower temps at the higher clocks. It would be pretty funny to see my air cooled sytem oc better than water, but that's likely wishful thinking 😉.

After I play around with seeing what my 805 setup can do, I'll be putting the vf-1 plus heatsink on my x1800gto. Hopefully that won't be another 4 hour ordeal....
 
I bought an ASUS P5WD2-E Premium, one of the boards that THG used in thier tests. I started out overclocking to 3.6 ghz, which is 180 mhz front side bus and haven't had a problem at all. It has run stable and cool for 2 weeks. Once I get a better fan, I will shoot for 3.8 Gig. Not bad for a $128 chip, I think Newegg has it for $122 now. Tom's and Newegg both rock.......



ASUS P5WD2-E Premium
Intel Dual Core 805D
2 Gig OCZ Gold Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2
eVGA 256P2-N563-AX Geforce 7900GT CO 256MB 256-bit DDR2 PCI-X
2x WD Raptor 74GB
 
I bought an ASUS P5WD2-E Premium, one of the boards that THG used in thier tests. I started out overclocking to 3.6 ghz, which is 180 mhz front side bus and haven't had a problem at all. It has run stable and cool for 2 weeks. Once I get a better fan, I will shoot for 3.8 Gig. Not bad for a $128 chip, I think Newegg has it for $122 now. Tom's and Newegg both rock.......



ASUS P5WD2-E Premium
Intel Dual Core 805D
2 Gig OCZ Gold Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2
eVGA 256P2-N563-AX Geforce 7900GT CO 256MB 256-bit DDR2 PCI-X
2x WD Raptor 74GB
 
I bit the bullet and bought that board (Newegg, obviously). Should arrive tomorrow I hope. Hopefully won't have any trouble installing my old school IDE drives.

Also ordered the koolance slot 775 adapter. Says its for the cpu-300 waterblock, while I have the older cpu-200 block, but it looks like the blocks have the exact same hardware, so we shall see.

Have you had any problem with the passive cooling on the board, particularly the northbridge?
 
I haven't had any problems with the cooling at all, Northbridge or otherwise. But I haven't tried to get it past 3.6 gig yet. That will be the next step with better cooling.

I have yet to use any type of cooling other than pretty much stock fans. What do the water blocks you have used run? Are they fairly easy to install?
 
3.6 Ghz achieved, DDR@720Mhz, same 4-4-4-12 timings, STOCKvoltage of 1.30V, 29-31F Idle temps w/FM121 running 1250rpm.

I'll have to setup a screenie later on my web site and post.

Not bad considering I haven't had to touch voltage at all. :)
3.6 Ghz was what I was planning on running this computer at most of the time.
I will try for the exciting 3.8 and 4.0/4.2 speeds later tonight perhaps. I'm going back to work to let it sit on 3.6 until I return home.[/img]
 
I have an older Koolance case, the PC2 series with the standard waterblock. You can't buy them anymore, now you have to get the CPU-300 or CPU-305 block, which I think is around $70. We'll see if I can mount my block to the socket 775 tomorrow afternoon (the adapter should have arrived today), and how much heat it will pull off of the 805. I don't have a chipset block yet, but may end up doing so if I see high temps there.

Any idea of what temps are too much for the northbridge? Should I expect a significant rise as I up the FSB?

(My only oc'ing experience was about four (?) years ago on a P4 2.53. I never really worried about the northbridge then because my board, a GB, had a decent fan on the nb heatsink. The Asus board does not, so I suppose I'll have to watch out.)
 
I had the Koolance 300 CPU block. It broke (completely cracked around the edge) when taking it off the NF4 board for the 805 test. No biggy as it was replaced under warranty for the 305 block within 24 hrs. Different look to the 305 on top, but same exact specs and fit.

I use the Koolance chipset block and the gforce 6800 block too, so can't say how the passive cooling works. But I get a max of 52C on the chipset with the water cooling at 4.2GHz. I run through the CPU first, then through the chipset, and lastly through the vid card.

Oh, and the P5WD2-E has had no problems seeing my ATA drives, but they are only for backup as my SATA2 drives are used for the OS. 🙂
 
Just finished next round of tests last night and into this am.

Reached 3.870 Ghz. Stabilized after upping voltage to 1.4v on cpu and bumping memory voltage to 1.9. Timings relaxed to 4-4-4-13 for stable memory.
Ran Prime 95 and CPU Burn in simultaneously to push both cores to 100%. Left running overnight (8 hours).

Idle temps at 3.8Ghz seem to be 30C to 31C.

Max Cpu temps at 100% never went over 45C.

FM121 was running at 1250RPM throughout. Could probably drop the fan speed more, but I don't hear it so I'm not too worried about it.

Passed 3Dmark06 tests without crashing.

I could go to 4.0 next, though I'd likely have to up the memory timings to cas5. Dunno what the trade off performance wise in going from cas4 to cas5 is.

So far I'm very happy though :).
 
I think the water cooling will keep it cooler but not improve performance of the 805 much from what I've seen. 🙂


Glad to see I'm not the only one who can boot to 3.6GHz with stock voltages.

My project is done. Uploaded results for air cooling on 3.6, 3.8, 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2GHz. Uploaded results for 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2GHz on water. At 4.3GHz the system crashes when I put any stress on the CPU, although temps don't get over 62C. Our plan is to sell systems with the OC preset to 3.8v on air. We tested 3 CPUs and all achieve 3.8 easily and with no heat issues. After that, it takes a bit of fine tuning.

One bit of advice, DO NOT jump right to 1.6v for high overclocks on the 805 and expect it to work. I've found that I can boot to 4.2 or 4.3GHz at 1.5v and am stable on both systems at 1.575v, but can't even load windows at 1.6v. As I said before, I'd start with the lowest voltage that the sytem will boot to and move up a notch at a time until you find stable. Higher voltages seem to do more harm than good with this CPU.

Best of luck to everyone with their projects. 🙂

http://www.ultramaxcc.com.au/intro.htm
 
I agree that you shouldn't start out with high voltage and go down. I'll be the first to admit that going into bios, changing voltage, rebooting, testing crashing, resetting, rinse and repeat is a tedious PITA, but it's the safest way to go.

Dark, I was reading through your article on your setups there and was curious about a few things:

I'm using 667 mem and you are using 533 mem. We're both using asus boards and bios.
At the lower cpu/fsb speeds my fsb ratio to mem clock ratios was 1:2, but when I started getting up to the higher fsb settings I had to go to a 1:1 ratio. Right now my FSB/DDR speed is 760/760.

Why is your mem speed at 507/570?

Also I noted that your Idle is 12 to 14C higher and 17C higher on full load 8O . Are you using the stock cooler?

If I start clocking at 4Ghz, I'm guessing I'll have to set my DDR to 666/800 to retain cas 4 timings, or up voltage and drop to cas 5 to get my ram to 800/800.

I'll have to download PCmark so I can compare score differences with my timings versus yours. IT will be interesting to see if higher Frequency but lower timings or lower frequency and tighter timings makes much of a difference.
 
I'm also interested in the results of your high frequencies/more relaxed timings test. I think a lot of people have the same questions as they push their 805's higher and higher.
One strange thing I've noticed is that my 805 requires at least 1.4v vcore at 3.6GHz, and at least 1.5 at 3.8GHz, and it just seems to clime from their. I don't think I'll ever get my chip anywhere near stable at 4.2. I wonder if I just got a very power hungry 805, or if it's my motherboard (ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe) which is an nForce4 board. It seems most of the people doing these overclocks are using Intel bases boards.
The advice darklife41 gives about starting with the lowest voltage, and working your way up is very solid advice. It will also help you find the most efficient settings for your processor...the 805 is already power hungry enough, why waste any more power on it that it doesn't need!
So I think I've taken my CPU as far as it will go with practical air cooling (3.8GHz @ 1.5v vcore), and am now considering moving on to water cooling. I would like to hear what suggestions my fellow overclockers have. I would like to see if I can get up to 4.1 and have it stable, so I'm going to need a system that can easily handle 260+ watts of waste energy. My first impulse is just to go out and get the Swiftech H20-220 APEX ULTRA, but I would like to hear what my fellow overclockers have to say.
From what I understood according to the Tomes Hardware article the 805 requires almost 475 watts of energy at full load...am I going to need a system capable of pulling that much heat off it?
 
Dex,
Seems you're confusing the ratio with the divider. The idea is to get your RAM running as close as possible to its designed speed using the provided dividers. Using a 1:1 ratio without dividers is ridiculous unless its at the maximum speed of your RAM.

I have no clue as to what you mean by 760/760. Assuming you mean @ 190FSB (3.8GHz), in my Asus BIOS's I have the options of 380MHz, 507MHz, 570MHz, 633MHz and 760MHz. For the DDR2-533, I use the 507MHz setting and tighten the timings to 4-3-3-8(3). The system will not boot using the 570MHz setting no matter what the timings are set at. Ideally, Asus should provide a setting between the 2, as 540MHz would be ideal. With the DDR2-800, I use the 760 option. Both situations are underclocking the RAM, but allow for tighter timings to compensate.

If you can boot to 760MHz with DDR2-677, that's probably the best performance option. I suspect you're still using a divider though, since 1:1 for 667 without a divider would be 166.75MHz. If I were you, I'd still try to tighten the timings to see if it works or not. Then i'd compare the results with tighter timings at 633Mhz, as you have nothing to lose. CL will probably have to remain where it is, but the rest may come down significantly.

I'm curious to see your results as well, although Sisoft Sandra has better comparisons for memory than PCmark (IMO). I doubt 667 will show much improvement over the 533, but will know for sure when my (back ordered) OCZ DDR2-675 gets here, probably end of next week.

If I were you, to get 4.0GHz I'd set the frequency to 667 and manually try to tighten the timings (again, leaving CL as is). Just no point in running DDR2-667 @ 800MHz if you have to relax the timings to get it. 🙂


As far as temperatures, I use a Gigabyte G-Power Pro for the air cooled system and have water cooling on the other system. Both systems have accurate sensors on the side of the CPUs. My temps are cooler than TG reported with the Zalman.

I've been reading your temps all along and find them amusing. I didn't want to offend you, so kept to myself about it. But dude, I've been building computers since 1980 and had my own custom computer business for the past 5 years. Either your computer is operating in a freezer, or your temperature monitor is just plain wrong. What does BIOS (power/hardware monitor) say about your temps? Your system is idling at that point and I'm betting its nowhere close to 31C. Even your motherboard temp is higher than that. Think about it. 31C is about 84F. If that were the case, your CPU would be cold to the touch. I wouldn't recommend touching the CPU when its idling, let alone under load. 🙂
 
okay, i'm not going to read through 21 pages of difficult english computer language lolz.. but because i;m noob if it comes to this,

this 4,1 ghz stuff, you will just have to buy "Pentium D 805" <---- this processer? And it will work like 4,1 ghz if i'm not wrong? for games, music, download and everything right..?

thanks
~Noobone
 
Hi Dark,

I have to admit I've found the CPU temps I've been reading to be amuzing too. I did what you recommended and watched the temp monitor in Bios for a while. At the 3.8Ghz speed it's running now, temp stays average at 35C. It is rather odd that the asus AI booster and PC Wizard 2006 are all reading 30C while I'm typing this post... So if the temp reading sensor through bios is 5C more than what my monitors are stating, I wonder if it is 5C off at both idle and full load?
 
Hi Dex,
The BIOS temps typically run hotter than OS and other hardware monitors read. However I was expecting more like 52C-55C from your BIOS.

Because your BIOS temps are also low, I suspect your motheboard's CPU sensor is wrong as your temps aren't in line with anyone else's posts on the subject, and are better than my water cooling system.

But hey, if its working correctly, you've got refrigerated cooling temps from a CPU fan. Helluva deal!

I suspect AI Booster "system" temperature is reading the chipset, not the CPU, as that temp matches the motherboard readings for PC Probe II for the motherboard on both of our systems. But this is why I run multiple sensors as I've never trusted just one.

Guess you won't know for sure until you try the higher OCs (4.2GHz) and have problems, or no problems. Best of luck. 🙂
 
Hi everyone....it's been a week, and things have been going well......however, while playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, every now and then I noticed some odd graphic "errors." Not too often, but often enough, especially when rendering blood! :twisted:

So, I ran Prime95 and sure enough, it failed! This was running at 3.6Ghz, Vcore up to 1.325, and no other modifications.

I've decided that I can live with 3.5Ghz, and I'm testing right now. I've raised the memory voltage (OCZ Gold Dual Channeled 1Mb each) to 1.90v, and I've raised the PCIE voltage to 1.55v. I'm hoping this will do the trick....so far its been 2 hours without a hitch!

Of course, this makes me wonder why Prime95 did not fail before at my previous settings.....hmmm

Jeff
 
Well if Prime95 is failing it's usually the vcore voltage that's the culprit...well at least that has been my experience. If you are getting weird graphical anomalies, then I'm not sure it would be the processors fault, more likely your graphics card being overclocked or something.
 
Did you go straight from 1.325 to 1.55? I know it's a PITA, but I would just go incrementally up from 1.325 and keep trying prime95 until you don't get any errors. Better to use less voltage if you can.
 
Thanks for the replies! 😀

Tom_Shaftoe, yeah, I'm not 100% sure what is causing the graphics issues. Heck, it could even be the game itself! I need to learn more about overclocking vid cards, however, I've done nothing that I'm aware of concerning a manual overclocking of the vid card.....

DexMan, There are a bunch of different options in both my BIOS and AI Booster (My board is an ASUS P5WD2). My VCore is still 1.325, and the PCIE voltage is a separate choice.....1.55v is .05 above the defult of 1.5. Also, my memory voltage is just one click above its default....I've let Prime95 run for many hours now (I'm at work, with the results waiting for me when I get home).....also, I have TM2 on, so I should have no problems.....I'm running the chip at 3.5Ghz, and I don't expect the CPU temps to get above 62C.

Jeff
 
Hello,

I am embarking on this OC project and have just received my Pentium D 805 proc. In comparing what I received to the article, it appears there is one difference just looking at the proc. My proc has a "05A", whereas the article proc has an "05B" on the proc in the picture.

Is there any reason for concern here?

Thanks

fourstar77