Wheres my Q9450 FFS

[dsio]

Are there any real overclocking figures / tests on these btw? I know its going to be good, just wonder if they scale as well as the E8000s do.

[ccperf721p]

Only thing I've seen is ES models, but they are doing 4Ghz on air. I don't put a whole lot of faith in ES samples because of who's hands they were in.

Should be some production run units in regular peoples hands next week.

[dsio]

Other thing is the 8X multi. Many people are saying it isn't enough, and mobos will be FSB limited. Still not sure what mobo to get exactly, but thinking X38/48 now. Also I'm keen to use standard DDR2-800 so I can get 8GB. Wondering how that will factor in, with the reduced fsb:ram ratio.

(I havn't OCed an intel since the Celeron 300A, I honestly don't know this stuff that well).

[ccperf721p]

Don't you hate when you finish typing, hit post quick reply and your router decides it's time for a reset.

Anyway, I have been trying to research, I am 75% confident in the 790 striker, and 90% in the X38 formula. We will probably need 540FSB to get the most out of the CPU, you do lose some performance having to run on a lower divider but it's not much. I don't have the ability to move to a lower divider on my P5K so I already have memory that will go 1100+ (DDR2800 spec'd though)

Hopefully the people I trust that said they would have these boards and CPU's to test together will come through and narrow down the options. Don't want to have be the tester if I'm working on my dime..

[dsio]

I was just looking at P5Es which seam to be be hitting 520Mhz+ FSB consistantly

[dsio]

This is the plan, buying the following tomorrow:

CPU: E2200 (this is an interim chip for $90, just as Cliff was talking about, find it a great idea)

Motherboard: ASUS P5E (X38 DDR2 board, I like it, I like the layout, its cool, and seams to consistantly hit 520+ Mhz FSB which really sounds good while the Nvidia is a lot more expensive but doesn't seam to fsb scale as well)

RAM: 2X 2GB DDR800 initially, with another 2X 2GB after the quad core arrives

Graphics card: 8800GT 512MB Albatron (My 6800GT is an Albatron, and I've never once had a problem in FOUR YEARS. For a GPU, that's fairly epic. The 8800GT is $249, the 8800GTS-512 is $369, which is a big price gap, and for that the GTS-512 seams to be 10% faster at stock in benchmarks)

PSU: Thermaltake TR2 550W (I don't mind thermaltake units, I like the 140mm fan, this machine won't be quite as power heavy as my old one (6800GT is a power hog, and this unit is only a 431W enermax) so I'm happy with this unit for $115)

When I can buy, steal or teleport a Q9450 to Australia, the E2200 goes in the bin, I buy another 4GB of ram, and the overclocking madness really begins.

Or... I could go for a huge OC with an unsafe voltage on the E2200, so that it at least goes out in a blaze of glory, like the good Klingon chip that it is.

Comments / suggestions very welcome

[ccperf721p]

The TR2 is not a bad unit but there is better in the price range.

My recommendation would be the Corsair 650TX, it is ATX 2.2 compliant, more effiecient, a single 12v rail at 52 amps, a single 120mm fan and is built using what I feel are better components. I will always choose a powerful single rail over a multi-rail design after a debacle with a Seasonic multi-rail unit.

Newegg.com - CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX ATX12V / EPS12V 650W Power Supply 100 - 240 V UL, CE, CB, TUV, FCC, CCC - Retail

[dsio]

Its another $80 on top of the TR2 is all, and I don't /really/ think its going to be an issue, some of the early TT units were a bit iffy but the new ones seam to be ok.

[dsio]

Btw, what do you think about the board. Looks really good to me.

[ccperf721p]

Ouch, didn't think there would be that much of price gap between the two over there, it's 10 dollars difference here. It's definitely not worth another 80 bucks.

The P5E is #2 on my list, right behind the maximus formula, basically the same board with some features and subtle changes added. If the P5E isn't capable it would seem there isn't anything else out there that would be.

[dsio]

Yea, the Maximus Formula is listed as $449 as opposed to $295 for the P5E, and has a two week wait as its a special order 0_0. It does look awesome though.

[ccperf721p]

I keep forgetting this is Aus. $'s, the prices almost floored me..

[cloasters]

Australia's dollar is worth 0.93 of its US counterpart today. Not much of a discount. The $A was nearly at parity with the Swiss Franc recently, which is now worth more than a buck. Warm and fuzzy feeling when your pocket gets lighter all by itself.

[ccperf721p]

At .93 they are still getting quite a price for the board in Aus then.. If there's anything I can do dsio let me know..

[dsio]

Buying in two hours, with some slight variations:

Firstly, instead of teh ASUS P5E, I've ordered the Gigabyte GA-EX38-DS4 because I really would rather an AWARD bios instead of an AMI bios, and results seam about equal.

Secondly, instead of the TT PSU, I've ordered a Corsair HX-620.

[dsio]

Well, just got it built. So far the E2200 is doing 11X266 at stock volts just while I setup (which isnt bad at 2.93Ghz for a 2.2Ghz chip) and peaked at 3.2Ghz stable, at 1.375V, which is as high as I've pushed it so far.

Not bad for a piece of crap.

[ccperf721p]

That was fast. Let me know what you think of the board. The last gigabyte I owned was a 965 DS3 board, was not real happy with it.

[dsio]

The overclocking tools in BIOS are immense, haven't gotten to figure out what they all do yet, but I've never seen options this detailed.

Board is solid, layout is nice, all solid caps, good clearances, only complaints so far are that there's only one PATA port, and that its in a bad position. I really like Award bios too, never liked the ASUS AMI bioses.

The Corsair power supply, top notch, couldn't be happier.

The 8800GT, well what can I say, its 90% as good as the 8800GTS-512, 40% less price, and at $249 AU, its crazy good value.

The CPU so far has peaked at 3.45Ghz. Not bad for a peace of junk. It completely pwns my Athlon64 3200+.

btw for those of you that are curious as to what its like doing a major hardware upgrade like this (new GPU, new motherboard with new chipset etc) on a linux box, all you do is turn it on, and it works. First boot, everything came back up, including the nvidia drivers.

As for the watercooling... the backplate from the WC kit never stuck very will with the felt pad thermaltake supplied, so we used some... marine epoxy. This was on the Athlon 64 motherboard. So... the backplate is stuck. If I chiseled away the PCB, it would still not come off.

Solution: used a sheet of marine plywood, cut to a square with a couple of washers on the drilled out holes. Perfect fit. And now i get to tell people there's plywood in my computer.

Here's a little screenshot.

[ccperf721p]

Time to start dropping multipliers and push the FSB on that 2200. The gigabytes that I have worked with had problems on cold boot with a semi-high FSB (400 on one, 410 on another) which is why I gave up on them. They probably have this issue solved by now but it would probably be a good idea to find out before you get your low multi quad.

[Daniel ~]

#
# /home/Daniel/.nvidia-settings-rc
#
# Configuration file for nvidia-settings - the NVIDIA X Server Settings utility
# Generated on Sun Jan 13 11:30:56 2008
#
GPUOverclockingState=1
GPU2DClockFreqs=513,792
GPU3DClockFreqs=650,1000

":O|