New Horse in the Barn!

[Scout]

Well, I finally went over to the dark side! A shiny new P4 Northwood 1.6 overclocked to 2.13 GHz. on an SiS 645dx board. This thing runs circles around my Athlon in SETI!

I ran the exact same SETI work unit on both the P4 and my Athlon XP 1700+ (overclocked to 1.5 GHz.) and checked MFLOPs readings with SETI Spy. The P4 was 24% faster!

I know... I know... the P4 is clocked 42% faster, but still, it's a pretty nice SETI rig. It is consistantly pushing out sub 4 hour work units!

The Northwood 1.6a has got to be one of the best buys out there!

Scout

 

[Owl]

Wow that's Great !!!!
But my P90 will run seti......
How about you Join The THG UD TEAM ???????

<font color=blue>Join THG UD TEAM WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW</font color=blue>

 

[FatBurger]

Get it up to 2.5 like mine, it'll run even better

<font color=blue>If you don't buy Windows, then the terrorists have already won!</font color=blue> - Microsoft

 

[Scout]

Actually, I'm already part of another UD team. I only run it on one of my computers (1.55 GHz. Athlon T-bird) but it sure seems those work units are strange in UD. Right now, I'm hung at 79% on one and it keeps restarting if I shut the machine down like I do at night. I plan to start on it on Saturday morning and let it crunch all day. It's a tough one!

Scout

 

[Scout]

Is that what you've found the upper limit of these chips is? My buddies keep egging me on to see where it'll go! I hate trashing my Windows load though as I've done several times with other overclocking efforts!

I'm amazed it was such an easy overclock to this 2.13 point though. I've been running it a couple of weeks at that speed now and it doesn't seem flaky at all...

Scout

 

[FatBurger]

I haven't really found the absolute limit, I just hit 155MHz and 160MHz wouldn't come easily so I stopped. I'm more than happy with a 55% overclock.

<font color=blue>If you don't buy Windows, then the terrorists have already won!</font color=blue> - Microsoft

 

[Scout]

Darn shame there's no way to unlock these things!

Scout

 

[digikid]

what kind of RAM do you have? what does it run at with FSB155?

 

[FatBurger]

I have double-sided Samsung PC800, and my RAM is at 3/4 speed.

<font color=blue>If you don't buy Windows, then the terrorists have already won!</font color=blue> - Microsoft

 

[killian2]

What was your MFLOP reading on the P4?

 

[Scout]

I just bought a generic stick of Samsung DDR2100. It's supposed to be CAS 2.5, but I run it at CAS 2 with no apparent problem. I get Sandra memory benchmarks just over 1100 with that RAM.

I haven't tried anything faster than 133 on the FSB... yet!

Scout

 

[Scout]

It hovers around 280 to 290 MFlops.

Scout

 

[killian2]

That is pretty good. I'm thinking of building a new rig with the 1.6a Northwood to overclock and compare to my AMD systems. I'm just trying to figure out what motherboard and RAM to use. I'm not as familar with the Intel components as I always build AMD based rigs.

 

[Scout]

I think the secret to P4 overclocking is to buy a motherboard with a chipset that supports 133 X 4 (533 MHz) FSB speeds. I think the SiS 645dx is the only one that does right now, but I'm not sure. I've found this 645 board to be totally stable and very fast!

In the past, I wouldn't have touched a P4, but with the larger cache on these Northwood chips and the extreme clock speeds, they become very competitive. I liked the old Pentium III/Cereron CuMine chips, but they are slow by comparison to the AMD and now P4 chips.

Scout

 

[FatBurger]

The best performing overclocks (not necessarily the highest clock speed overclocks) are done on an i850 board. With 3.25GB/s of memory bandwidth in Sandra, why would I want to touch DDR? :tongue:

<font color=blue>If you don't buy Windows, then the terrorists have already won!</font color=blue> - Microsoft

 

[DarkPhire]

Because DDR has about HALF the latency(lag, access time, whichever ye prefer) of RDRAM

--DarkPhire(United Devices team : AMDZONE.com; Member name : The Collective)

 

[FatBurger]

Relative or real-time? Both are in the favor of RDRAM, check the latency thread in Memory for proof.

<font color=blue>If you don't buy Windows, then the terrorists have already won!</font color=blue> - Microsoft

 

[Scout]

You're right, the 850 and RDRAM performs about the best, but the faster DDR seems to be getting close in the benchmark tests now-a-days.

Why would you want to touch DDR? To stay away from Rambus! They're such a jerky company I don't think I'd buy their stuff out of general principle. Lets see... what's their motto... "Let's sue somebody!"

Scout

 

[FatBurger]

So you won't buy any Via or Intel products either? They've heavily sued each other recently.

<font color=blue>If you don't buy Windows, then the terrorists have already won!</font color=blue> - Microsoft

 

[Scout]

Sure I buy Via and Intel. I guess the difference is name someone Rambus HASN'T sued!!!

Rambus just seems legal happy with their patent lawsuits and from what I understand they were really sort of underhanded the way they participated in joint development and standards setting, then snuck off and patented what was invented and has been suing everyone else ever since!

Scout

 

[FatBurger]

So it's ok to be sort of evil, just not really evil?

<font color=blue>If you don't buy Windows, then the terrorists have already won!</font color=blue> - Microsoft

 

[DarkPhire]

generally thats the idea fatburger when deciding whether or not your going to give money to a company.

Think of Microsoft, i dont think anyone really LIKES microsofts business practices, but they do seem to have the most accepted product on the market. So most of us buy windows. If you considered microsoft really evil then you would switch to linux. But if you only marginaly hate microsoft and have more of a love-hate relationship, then its probably acceptable to buy their products

--DarkPhire(United Devices team : AMDZONE.com; Member name : The Collective)

 

[Scout]

Ha ha... At least you admit Rambus is REALLY evil!

Sorry I don't things so black and white as you.

Scout