Recommended method to discard one CPU

[kbits]

No CPU are created equal for overclocking purpose.

I will get my hand on two Q6600 next week, but I can keep only one of them. I won't have much time to decide which one, so I was wondering if there was a quick and dirty way to figure out which one is the better overclocker without going through all the overclocking process / testing.

Is the FSB cranking until no post method is a good indicator? Maybe a CPU would post but not being stable under stress, while another would post at lower FSB but being stable at higher FSB than the 1st one?

How would you pick one if you had only couple of hours to choose?

Thxs

 

[festerovic]

I don't think you will get the results you want by doing it quick and dirty. But if I had to go that route, I would drop the ram to lowest speed, and crank the FSB as high as it would go at stock voltage on both chips.

Then I would make a good guesstimate on what would be a good OC voltage (look at other people's OC attempts to gauge whats normal) and try high FSBs again.

After that, I would do some quick benches and a short stability test, and keep the chip that was most stable ( the amount of speed gain is not really important if its not stable)

"Is the FSB cranking until no post method is a good indicator? Maybe a CPU would post but not being stable under stress, while another would post at lower FSB but being stable at higher FSB than the 1st one? "

I think this could totally happen, thats why everyone does stability tests

 

[kbits]

Thxs for the input. Too bad I had to pick one on very short notice. Hope I got lucky!

 

[festerovic]

Have you got to OC it or do any tests yet? Mine only went to 3Ghz.

 

[kbits]

All I did for now is testing memory with memtest. I haven't installed an OS yet.

The board is a P5K-VM HDMI, a fairly good overclocker from what I read, and I installed a Xigmatek DK S1283 to keep things cool.

3.0ghz only? Is it a G0 or B3? What board?

 

[festerovic]

G0. Its a Biostar p965. That board should be able to hit higher FSB than 333mhz, reviews using other chips got to 500+ mhz in some cases. Not mine, oh well. Cooling is not an issue, neither is RAM. It's just being stubborn to taunt me.

Good luck.

 

[kbits]

Well change of plan.

After swapping parts, I came to realize that my PW5DH DLX didn't fully support a E8400 I had for it, even after flashing the BIOS to last version. It does work, but some BIOS option like VCORE are stuck to auto, so I decided that the Q6600 would go on this board and the E8400 on the P5KVM (a more "natural" fit anyway).

I did a quick overclock on both. The P5WDH manage to hit 3.2GHZ, which doesn't seem so bad considering the board (975X chipset) isn't the best overclocker out there from what I read.

On the P5KVM, I could push it up to 4.1GHZ, tested with 2 hours of Prime95. I will try again tomorrow.

One thing about the E8400 and P5KVM, it seem one core temp can't go under 38C, which is fairly common, but more annoying, the CPU temp is reported at 46C and can't go lower than that either. It is the first time I see a stuck CPU sensor reading above core value. So I'm left with only one core temp that seem to work properly to monitor my temp. It feel like I'm half-blind.

 

[kbits]

Final stable overclock:

P5WDH DLX + Q6600 >>> 3.4GHZ @ 1.408V on load in CPU-Z

P5KVM HDMI + E8400 >>> 4.2GHZ @ 1.288V on load in CPU-Z

I'm pretty happy with those.