The Ultimate Hardware Guide [Last Update: 4-14-06]

[luminaris]

Because he's the moderator and he wanted to review it. :lol:

 

[dvdpiddy]

oh ok man thx for the info

 

[luminaris]

No problem man. Anytime I can help, you know I will :lol:

 

[SidVicious]

Please allow me to point out a couple innacuracies :

The first Pentium 4's ran on Socket 478, which is Dual Channel, DDR1 Memory.

The first P4 was based on the 180nm Willamette core which ran on the short lived Socket 423, PC-100 SDRAM and PC-800 RDRAM were the norm back then.

The Pentium 4 Prescott has larger Level 2 Cache, 2MB vs. 512KB or 1MB in the Athlon 64. Which is in place to leverage the bottlenecked Front Side Bus, but I personally believe that larger Level 2 Cache does not mean greater performance, and in some cases, I believe it to decrease performance.

A larger cache won't decrease performance in itself but the manufacturers do have to trade off latency in order to implement the larger cache while increasing CPU frequencies.

As you can see Here the L2 cache latency went from 16 cycles for the Northwood to 23 cycles and 27 for the Prescott and Prescott 2M respectively.

That post is sticky material, thanks for spending your time on it 😀

 

[MadModMike]

Thank you for correcting my P4 first socket, but when I mentioned the Latency issue, that is what I personally have noticed comparing a 3500+, 3700+, 3800+, 4000+ for A64 and 530, 630, 540, and 640 for P4. I cannot comment on what benchmarks show, but my personal use, I have noticed small decreases in performance in some appz using higher cache, but that is just a personal experience.

Piddy: It was locked because the moderators were reviewing it for Sticky, unfortunately, due to me being new and my "not the nicest guy" attitude, they have refused. But in the future, it may be up for sticky again.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

 

[luminaris]

I wouldn't worry about your post not becoming a sticky man. Keep plugging away and just let it be known your hard work is appreciated man

 

[MadModMike]

Thanks Lumi, I appreciate that alot. I have an update planned, actually within the next few minutes, read the original post for changes , I think you'll find them helpful.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

 

[mpjesse]

Ahhh... RDRAM. RDRAM was even available for Pentium 3's for a while. Ironic that AMD might just be using XDR RAM in future chips.

Who would have thought?

 

[MadModMike]

UPDATE: View first post for new information.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

 

[WINDSHEAR]

Looking real good if we can keep the fanboys out.

Chipsets probably belong in another thread, sicne they can get very complicated, and we dont want too much in one thread.

hey hergie i wont post any bias cause mike asked so nicely ok and watch out for windshear and ycon.

I couldn't resist responding to this... :lol: I'm not biased against AMD, AMD makes very good processors, however, I like my Intel P4 better... because it runs cool, and overclocks well, and outperforms AMD's, IMO. Simply a matter of opinion. I'd be happy to use an AMD or recommend it to someone if they weren't going to overclock at all. Just thought I'd clear that up. 😉

so far I like this thread, it's very good.

 

[MadModMike]

Windshear, I gotta ask: How "cool" is your P4? And how fast do you have it at? I'm just curious because I know my 3700+ OC'd to 2.6GHz would probably beat any P4 4GHz or below in Performance and Heat, mine stays 29c Idle and 36c Load, w/ Stock HSF, throw on my Tornado, and load temps are 33c and 27c idle. Pretty low temps for somethin' that benches above an FX-55 8O.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a tme

 

[corvetteguy]

i don't know why they didn't make this a sticky, if its accurate and informative, your personality shouldn't matter, and your not a noob cause i saw you have an sli website and it looked pretty professional.

And ya, a p4 doesn't know the meaning of cool

 

[mpjesse]

what's ur SLI site? i'd like to check it out.

 

[MadModMike]

I'm not sure where he got that from, the only website I have is my Rubyworks Entertainment, and that server is RAMless right now. He must have saw something else and refrenced it to me, which is fine 'cuz I know enough about SLI I should make my own site 😉....I probably will..hehe.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

 

[mpjesse]

Oh. Nevermind then. 🙂

 

[endyen]

I'm glad you asked WINDSHEAR that. I wanted him to compare to my 3200 venice @ 2.5, since I think a 25% OC is not terrible, but didn't want to turn this into a fanboy war thread.
Not that he has a chance of beating our OCs unless he is using liquid.
Where ever did he get the idea that Amds dont OC?

 

[MadModMike]

Not sure, there is a fact that AMD's don't overclock as high (a 2GHz Venice will get to about 3GHz +-10% stable, but not much after that) whereas a 3.0Ghz P4 could hit 5GHz (100c idle and 150c load though, and i bet that 3GHz AMD would still beat it).

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

 

[mpjesse]

My rig is an absolute bitch to OC. I can't get above 2.34Ghz. I've narrowed the problem down to 2 things:

1. my PSU is underpowered. it's a 485w enermax and i'm running 2x GTX's in SLI. I think by OC'ing i'm asking too much of it in terms of voltages.

2. I have 4 DIMMs.

Otherwise, I've tried raising timings to 3-4-4-7, decreased HT multiplier to 4, increased voltages to both CPU and RAM. I just can't get this bitch above like 215Mhz.

My ram is leet... 2-3-2-6 DDR400. I should be able to get way more than 15mhz out of those whores with 3-4-4-7 timings. Or maybe not...

Any ideas Mike?

-mpjesse

 

[endyen]

You think he's talking extreme fugger OCs? I doubt he even knows what a peltier is. If that is the case, the top benches are pretty close, so he really is full of it.

 

[mpjesse]

Peltiers... do ppl still use those? I know back in the late 90's and early 00's they were popular. I haven't seen anyone use them in a while now.

-mpjesse

 

[endyen]

Easy enough to find out if it is the ram. Just set you ram to 333. If you can OC higher, that's what was holding you back.

 

[MadModMike]

Sure jesse, I can help you. I just need to know a few things first.

1) How many amps is on the +12v RAIL of your PSU?
2) Is there more than 1 +12v RAIL?
3) How much overclocked is each GTX?
4) What size is each stick of RAM in those Modules?
5) Who is the manufacturer of the RAM?
6) What CPU do you have and what Motherboard?

One I know those, I can determine how much of an OC you should be able to get. But even from what you told me, you should be able to hit 10% OC from your CPU (2200 to 2420 for example) with stock voltages on CPU and MINOR volt increase on your RAM.

Here is some average power requirements for system components, see if you have an excess in any:

AGP Graphics Card: 20 to 90 Watts
PCI-E Graphics Card: EST 30 to 120 Watts
PCI Expansion Card: 5 to 10 Watts
SCSI Card: 20 to 35 Watts
Floppy Disk Drive: 5 Watts
Network Card: 4 to 8 Watts
CD-ROM Drive: 10 to 20 Watts
DVD-ROM Drive: 15 to 25 Watts
CD-RW: 10 to 30 Watts
DVD-RW: 18 to 40 Watts
Zip Drive: 10 Watts
Sound Card: 5 to 25 Watts
60/80/120mm Fan: 1 to 5 Watts
USB Devices: 5 Watts
Keyboard: 3 Watts
Mouse: 3 Watts
FireWire Devices: 8 to 10 Watts
RAM: 10 to 15 Watts per 128MB
5400RPM HDD: 5 to 15 Watts
7200RPM HDD: 5 to 25 Watts
10000RPM HDD: EST 10 to 35 Watts
Motherboard: 20 to 60 Watts

BTW: jesse, 2-3-2-5 isn't leet, I can get my RAM to 1.5-2-2-2, that's leet ;D.

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

 

[mpjesse]

1. http://www.enermax.com/english/product_Display1.asp?PrID=22
2. looks like it has just 1 12v rail
3. They're factory overclocked to 490/1.3Ghz. However I have them both pushed even futher to 504/1.35Ghz.
4. 256MB per DIMM
5. Corsair
6. Athlon X2 4200+ Revision BH-E4 (I wish it was E6)

I go to bed now. Thanks for the help.

 

[mpjesse]

OH and i've got about 5 million devices hooked up to this system. 2x WD Raptors, 1 optical, usb crap, wireless nic, 2 120mm case fans.

But I removed an optical drive (to replace it) last week... and i still get the same results in trying to go over 2.365Ghz... crash.

 

[MadModMike]

Okay.

It seems your PSU has Dual +12v RAIL's at 18 Amps each. For SLI of 2 7800GTX's, according to nVidia, a 500w PSU is required (uh oh) and 22 Amps +12v for single cards, and 30a for SLI (you're good there). The X2's have an improved Memory Controller over the A64 single cores and have been known to get 320MHz Core Clock at 1.52v and 240MHz at 1.45v.

Your problem is your PSU, it is not able to supply your video cards and CPU with enough power to run at overclocked speeds. And add in the extra components you said you have, you're stressing the PSU out. I would recommend A) Getting a new PSU or B) Getting a PSU Bypass Adaptor (fancy words for a piece of copper) and run your extra components on the 2nd, provided you have enough extra components to warrant doing that.

This PSU is what I have in my 3700+ and I can get to 2805MHz on my San Diego and push further, and I run an SLI of 6800GS's overclocked to 515/1.25 stable and I can go further. It's $100 and it works fantasticly.

IIRC: Revision E6 reduces the volts and internal max temp, this is good for OC'ing but 65c is the new high for the CPU vs. 75c for E4 (not that I would allow my A64 to get that hot lol)

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time