Overclocking Intel's Wolfdale E8000

[muk]

We look at the 45-nm Core 2 Duo E8000's overclocking potential. We also focus on power consumption, simulating real-world applications with SysMark 2007. Wolfdale truly breaks performance-per-watt records.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/19/wolfdale_on_steroids/index.html

 

[jimmysmitty]

An OC to 4.2GHz is not that bad for a first generation 45nm. They also forgot that it uses the new HK/MG which does lower power consumption and increase performance.

Overall the Penryn series shows to be promising. I am sure as well that after the nect few revisions we will see better OC'ing abilities as well as even better performance per watt ratios.

 

[compy386]

Just out of curiosity since I know very little about overclocking. Around what kind of voltage increase do you start damaging the processor and the board? Seems like a .25 v increase on the processor would do a number on it over the course of its life.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Just out of curiosity since I know very little about overclocking. Around what kind of voltage increase do you start damaging the processor and the board? Seems like a .25 v increase on the processor would do a number on it over the course of its life.

As long as it stays within its voltage arena provided by the CPU vendor its fine.

For instance, the Q6600 G0 will run on as little as .95v and will be fine with as high as 1.5v. Of course the latter will kill the CPU much faster. But I OC'ed my Q6600 to 3GHz on air on the stock voltage of 1.25v.

 

[Craxbax]

Actually, there are several other points that weren't mentioned that show the advantage of a quad over a dual core. ie. The yorkie is only at 3.2ghz yet is still very close to the the wolfie at 4.2ghz. Any quad comparison with dual core at the same ghz will best the dual core. Why not show a 9450 or 9550 OC'd compared with an 8400/8500? Also in most cases where the dual core beats the quad even at stock speeds the real world results are not visible. (ie FPS at 100+) This is not to say the wolfies are a poor choice; rather only that if you can afford the quad you are getting more for your money across a much broader spectrum and really suffering no real world performance loss in the areas the OC'd wolfie bests the quad. That even applies to the Q6600 in most cases. If the Q6600 drops into the low $200 (US) it is a no brainer choice over a smiliarly priced 8400.

 

[Waspy]

Intel's 45-nm technology is amazing stuff.

 

[amddiesel]

Intel's 45-nm technology is amazing stuff.

indeed!

 

[elbert]

The E8000's may as well be celerons as they simply loss against the Q6600. Stock for stock or OC for OC the quads are the fastest so Intel better be ready for a sub $250 price for E8000's. One only needs note that the stock Q6600 beats the OC'ed E8000 at 3.8GHz on a few benchmarks to see the Q6600 can well over power the dual in quad optimized programs.

 

[hughyhunter]

Actually, there are several other points that weren't mentioned that show the advantage of a quad over a dual core. ie. The yorkie is only at 3.2ghz yet is still very close to the the wolfie at 4.2ghz. Any quad comparison with dual core at the same ghz will best the dual core. Why not show a 9450 or 9550 OC'd compared with an 8400/8500? Also in most cases where the dual core beats the quad even at stock speeds the real world results are not visible. (ie FPS at 100+) This is not to say the wolfies are a poor choice; rather only that if you can afford the quad you are getting more for your money across a much broader spectrum and really suffering no real world performance loss in the areas the OC'd wolfie bests the quad. That even applies to the Q6600 in most cases. If the Q6600 drops into the low $200 (US) it is a no brainer choice over a smiliarly priced 8400.

First off I think that this article shouldnt and wasnt addressing Quad vs. dual! We know that a quad will best a dual any day off the week or 9 times out of 10.

The bottom line is that there are no 45nm Quads available right now besides the high end. Of course a $1200 is going to outperform and run laps around a $220 proc.

I myself bought a E8400 for several reasons. 1st: No 45nm quads available yet 2nd: super low power consumption compared to Q6600 (I really dont think the Q6600 o'cd to 3.6 is that much better than o'c 4ghz E8400... it only bests it by a mere 5% in most benches and for the $50 savings I couldnt go wrong 3rd: I wanted the E8400 over E8500 because it's almost $100 cheaper and I couldnt even find a E8500 online. Besides the E8500 is only 2-5% faster... that's not enough to justify a $100.

Bottom line is Intel came out with a good product... this puts them well ahead of AMD in the performance/price standpoint and also energy consumption. Conroe was long live but now penryn will be the next best thing. Quad's arent available yet because there simply isnt a market for them yet in the mainstream desktop. I work for a corporation called the US Gov and it doesnt buy Quad's (I'm talking millions of computers not your one sitting on the desk at home) it buys Pentium D's if that... In fact in my whole building here we have one desktop that is a dual core X2 and all the others are still Pentium 4 single cores.

Intel is wise in it's marketing strategy. They will have the market by 10-20$ in the desktop (dont know about server and mobile) for at least another 18 months guaranteed.

 

[ritesh_laud]

Actually, there are several other points that weren't mentioned that show the advantage of a quad over a dual core. ie. The yorkie is only at 3.2ghz yet is still very close to the the wolfie at 4.2ghz. Any quad comparison with dual core at the same ghz will best the dual core. Why not show a 9450 or 9550 OC'd compared with an 8400/8500? Also in most cases where the dual core beats the quad even at stock speeds the real world results are not visible. (ie FPS at 100+) This is not to say the wolfies are a poor choice; rather only that if you can afford the quad you are getting more for your money across a much broader spectrum and really suffering no real world performance loss in the areas the OC'd wolfie bests the quad. That even applies to the Q6600 in most cases. If the Q6600 drops into the low $200 (US) it is a no brainer choice over a smiliarly priced 8400.

Bottom line: If you use quad-optimized programs quite a bit, get the Q6600. If all you do is game and browse the web, get the Wolfdale as for those programs it's faster per clock, overclocks higher, uses less power, comes with SSE4, and on top of all that it's cheaper. It's really a no-brainer. Few games will be significantly quad-core optimized for at least another year or two, so when they are just drop in a quad which will be down to $150 or less by then.

 

[starcraftfanatic]

Quite some amazing feats, especially since the E8400@4.2 tends to beat the stock Q6600.

I'm interested in what MrsBytch, Thunderman or even BaronMatrix would say when they read it.

 

[epsilon84]

The E8000's may as well be celerons as they simply loss against the Q6600. Stock for stock or OC for OC the quads are the fastest so Intel better be ready for a sub $250 price for E8000's. One only needs note that the stock Q6600 beats the OC'ed E8000 at 3.8GHz on a few benchmarks to see the Q6600 can well over power the dual in quad optimized programs.

So now all dual cores may as well be Celerons in your view? :lol:

Nevermind that 1/2 the benchmarks show the E8x00 in the lead.

 

[MrCommunistGen]

Some temperature info would have been nice alongside the power consumption... some data other than the (mostly) obvious claim that temps stayed low... feels like the 8GB in Vista x64 article in that respect.

-mcg

 

[dude14]

Bottom line: If you use quad-optimized programs quite a bit, get the Q6600. If all you do is game and browse the web, get the Wolfdale as for those programs it's faster per clock, overclocks higher, uses less power, comes with SSE4, and on top of all that it's cheaper. It's really a no-brainer. Few games will be significantly quad-core optimized for at least another year or two, so when they are just drop in a quad which will be down to $150 or less by then.

Ok, regarding this whole dual-core vs. quad core discussion.

Have I missed something or..

Everytime there is talk about the usefullness of a quad-core processor, people always talk about multi-core optimized applications.
Same thing can be seen in all the benchmarks, from for example tomshardware.. (With focus on how fast you can render a scene, or encode some mp3)
What about multi-core optimized operating systems?
I really don't care about running one single application really fast. I'm interested in running several application without them interfering with each other. Yes i'm talking about multi-tasking. And each application can very well be single threaded. But I want them to be distributed on the avalable cores, and run simultainiously.

So if i'm running a file download, watching a video, and browsing in a lot of tabs. (and having anti-virus, and other stuff in the background) How well does this perform?
I guess a lot of this is up to the operating system, as much as the CPU..

So does anyone know of any test that has focused on this aspect of utilizing a serveral core CPU?
Perhaps comparing dual-core with quad-core, on both XP and Vista.

Thanks in advance

 

[zenmaster]

The E8000's may as well be celerons as they simply loss against the Q6600. Stock for stock or OC for OC the quads are the fastest so Intel better be ready for a sub $250 price for E8000's. One only needs note that the stock Q6600 beats the OC'ed E8000 at 3.8GHz on a few benchmarks to see the Q6600 can well over power the dual in quad optimized programs.

And many programs are not quad optimized.

While the Q6600 is great for somethings, the E8xxx series is better for others.

The $250 price you are seeing is not Intel's price, but rather due to excessive demand. You could buy the processor for as low as $189 (MicroCenter) for the first week or so after release.

I expect the price to float down again in a couple months as stock repopulates.

Personally, I would nearly always suggest the Q6600 at near equal prices, but if there is a $60-$70 price difference the Exxxx may be better.

 

[Craxbax]

No, it wasn't about quad vs. dual per se but they made the comparison. It really is about hyping the E8000s and a lot of peeps don't mind jumping on the band wagon because it suits their world view. Look at all the data. They are not comparing the maxed out E8000s against maxed out quads of any stripe because they would simply be less than sensational. The other aspect is that performance gains on existing software is largely meaningless. Claiming quads are pointless for gaming ignores that people run a lot more apps simultaneously with the gaming and quads help keep the minimum frame rates up.

So gamers answer this question for yourselves: What is better higher max/average frame rates or minmum frame rates. All the quad FPS avg/max rates are well above visual differences compared to dual cores. What they needed to show is what happens on the typical home system with all the extra apps running as what the minimum frame rates are. There is an observable difference as many who have had both will attest to.

You don't need a E8400 to game or browse the web so your logic falls short of your argument there also. The Yorkies will be here soon enough and within a year dual core will be budget system cpus regardless of how well they OC. The Celeron comparison may be more appropriate than you wish. Quit hyping the E8400 and dogging people who chose the quads and I won't call you on your BS.

 

[jalek]

All this stuff about performance per watt.. then you add SLI or even single 8800 video cards, and is the processor power savings really all that significant?

Maybe I'm looking at it wrong. Would you accept less performance if it meant less power consumption?

 

[epsilon84]

All this stuff about performance per watt.. then you add SLI or even single 8800 video cards, and is the processor power savings really all that significant?

Maybe I'm looking at it wrong. Would you accept less performance if it meant less power consumption?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q9300_13.html#sect0

The power savings aren't insignificant, especially compared to a Phenom.

 

[ritesh_laud]

Claiming quads are pointless for gaming ignores that people run a lot more apps simultaneously with the gaming and quads help keep the minimum frame rates up

Yammer on all you want but you can't change the simple facts that all the benchmarking sites out there are proving: that the Wolfdale delivers more frames in today's games and COSTS LESS than a C2Q. And will likely do so for another year or more. And can hit 4 GHz on air, which the C2Q more than likely can't. And uses less power. And offers SSE4. So why are you advocating that gamers SPEND MORE for a slower processor? Use your head.

Who ever said that quads are pointless for gaming? Any C2Q paired with a top end GPU is more than powerful enough for just about any game currently out there. The only point being made here is that with the Wolfdale you get more frames for less cash. And that could very well make a difference in recent games like Crysis that bring even top-flight systems to their knees.

And having multiple apps open while running a game means next to nothing for CPUs unless those apps are actually DOING something, like Folding or rendering. Gamers in that situation need to get a quad. And that is certainly less than 10% of gamers out there.

 

[computertech82]

According to the CHARTS, (toms and others) the DUAL is the SUPERIOR cpu for gaming. Only one-two games actually benefit from quad cpus. gee, surpise, surprise...not.
Now if more companies spend MONEY to code in multi cpus, then it might be good idea for quads, other then that, dual is the way to do (obviously the Duals stomp the crap out of the quads in most games).

 

[miahallen]

However, extreme overclocking attempts require extreme measures to squeeze out a few more megahertz, which is the reason why hardcore enthusiasts worldwide have continued to remove the heat spreader once in awhile.

:lol: This is funny, they claim to be "preforming an extreme OCing attempts" yet they're using only a Zalman air cooler. You've got to be kidding me!!!

With my Q6600 and the same Zalman cooler, I was only able to hit 3.2GHz (1.50V) with full stability, but after upgrading to the Thermalright 120 Ultra Extreme (TRUE) I attained full stability at 3.85GHz (1.575V) and I can bench 90% of benchmarks at over 4.0GHz (1.60V). But, I don't even consider my OCing "extreme"....and no, I have not removed my heat-spreader.

Just out of curiosity since I know very little about overclocking. Around what kind of voltage increase do you start damaging the processor and the board? Seems like a .25 v increase on the processor would do a number on it over the course of its life.

I've already seen results of people stable on air with up to about 1.6V and on extreme cooling with over 1.85V. I'm not reccommending it, I'm just saying these processors can handle A LOT!

 

[randomizer]

However, extreme overclocking attempts require extreme measures to squeeze out a few more megahertz, which is the reason why hardcore enthusiasts worldwide have continued to remove the heat spreader once in awhile.

:lol: This is funny, they claim to be "preforming an extreme OCing attempts" yet they're using only a Zalman air cooler. You've got to be kidding me!!!

They never claimed anythig, nor did they say they removed the heatspreader.

 

[jimmysmitty]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q9300_13.html#sect0
http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu/core2quad-q9300/power-1.pnghttp://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu/core2quad-q9300/power-2.png

The power savings aren't insignificant, especially compared to a Phenom.

Thanks, those are nice. And even the difference from the Q6600 to the Phenom is more than I expected. And the Q9300 looks pretty nice on power consumption.

Yammer on all you want but you can't change the simple facts that all the benchmarking sites out there are proving: that the Wolfdale delivers more frames in today's games and COSTS LESS than a C2Q. And will likely do so for another year or more. And can hit 4 GHz on air, which the C2Q more than likely can't. And uses less power. And offers SSE4. So why are you advocating that gamers SPEND MORE for a slower processor? Use your head.

Who ever said that quads are pointless for gaming? Any C2Q paired with a top end GPU is more than powerful enough for just about any game currently out there. The only point being made here is that with the Wolfdale you get more frames for less cash. And that could very well make a difference in recent games like Crysis that bring even top-flight systems to their knees.

And having multiple apps open while running a game means next to nothing for CPUs unless those apps are actually DOING something, like Folding or rendering. Gamers in that situation need to get a quad. And that is certainly less than 10% of gamers out there.

I agree but I like saying I have a quad core OC'ed to 3GHz. Plus in the future I wont have to buy a new CPU and hopefully this will last until the 32nm shrink of Nehalem aka Westmire. That way I can upgrade the 2 things I really want such as to 4GB memory when I go 64 bit and the GPU when ATI releases R700, which hopefully is very fast compared to the R600. That will benefit gaming more than the CPU.

 

[Craxbax]

Yammer on all you want but you can't change the simple facts that all the benchmarking sites out there are proving: that the Wolfdale delivers more frames in today's games and COSTS LESS than a C2Q. And will likely do so for another year or more. And can hit 4 GHz on air, which the C2Q more than likely can't. And uses less power. And offers SSE4. So why are you advocating that gamers SPEND MORE for a slower processor? Use your head.

Who ever said that quads are pointless for gaming? Any C2Q paired with a top end GPU is more than powerful enough for just about any game currently out there. The only point being made here is that with the Wolfdale you get more frames for less cash. And that could very well make a difference in recent games like Crysis that bring even top-flight systems to their knees.

And having multiple apps open while running a game means next to nothing for CPUs unless those apps are actually DOING something, like Folding or rendering. Gamers in that situation need to get a quad. And that is certainly less than 10% of gamers out there.

LOL No...use your head. Again you can't see past what your told and you miss the point!

 

[yipsl]

Ok, regarding this whole dual-core vs. quad core discussion.

Have I missed something or..

Everytime there is talk about the usefullness of a quad-core processor, people always talk about multi-core optimized applications.
Same thing can be seen in all the benchmarks, from for example tomshardware.. (With focus on how fast you can render a scene, or encode some mp3)
What about multi-core optimized operating systems?
I really don't care about running one single application really fast. I'm interested in running several application without them interfering with each other. Yes i'm talking about multi-tasking. And each application can very well be single threaded. But I want them to be distributed on the avalable cores, and run simultainiously.

So if i'm running a file download, watching a video, and browsing in a lot of tabs. (and having anti-virus, and other stuff in the background) How well does this perform?
I guess a lot of this is up to the operating system, as much as the CPU..

So does anyone know of any test that has focused on this aspect of utilizing a serveral core CPU?
Perhaps comparing dual-core with quad-core, on both XP and Vista.

Thanks in advance

They need to focus on that, but I haven't seen many multitasking articles since dual core first arrived. My wife needs a quad, or at least a triple core, and she'll get one in April. She downloads anime, uploads and downloads modder related files, all the while posting on The Elder Scrolls boards, playing games or watching anime. So, she needs more cores than 2, even without considering her 3D and graphics programs.

Me, I just play games and post, and not at the same time. So I only need 2 cores right now. Still, I think a B3 Phenom or a Q6600 is a good deal for futureproofing. That's because I expect more games to be like Supreme Commander and use well over 2 cores. I expect that by holiday 2008.

So choose a Wolfie over a Kentsfield if you want to upgrade in a year. If you want your CPU to last 2-3 years (regardless of whether you overclock), then get a quad this spring. Intel is doing their fans a disservice by going extreme edition with 45nm quads. They create the market by availability, because apps and games will be coded to match what's in the mainstream.