Dybdal

Hi guys, just thought i would share this little overclock i just made

Its a rig im building to a friend.

So far i got i clocked at 3,6 ghz at 1.42v on stock cooling and it only rises to 60 degrees celcius under full load, ambient is around 20 degrees i think.

I have also managed to unlock 6 mb of L3 cache, so i have basicly turned it into a phenom ii x4 975

Link to cpu-z validation: CPU-Z Validator 3.1

No crashing or artifacts at all so far, even when running prime95 on all cores.

But.. 2 times now after about and hour of prime95, prime95 reports an error on one of the cores, and a different core each time.

Should i be worried about this and turn of the L3 cache again or turn down the overclock?

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Im a Danish hardwareheaven addict.

Best stable overclock done:

mkk

Sounds like fun. My own 640 is too newly manufactured, so there was no L3 cache to unlock on it. On the other hand I can do without that extra heat.

Anyway, the extra L3 cache isn't likely to make that much of a difference in many applications like for instance games. Unless he'll be running something known to be able to take advantage of more cache, try turning it off. Hopefully there could be some power savings from that as well, though I'd take a watt meter to the test that idea. Chances are the L3 cache just might get powered up even when not used, if it's on the chip but simply disabled.

Dybdal

I would actually say it make a bigger difference than the overclock

The rig run a gtx 560 as gpu and the 3dmark 11 score with stock cpu is 3273 and with the unlocked cache and the overclock the score is 3877 So some difference is there

And to the powersaving issues, i will go get my little measurer from the drawers

Thanks for the reply

__________________
Im a Danish hardwareheaven addict.

Best stable overclock done:

Dybdal

With the overclocked and unlocked cpu running at 100% on all 4 cores the power consumption is 206 w for the intire rig

Now to test without L3 cache.
Without the L3 cache the power consumption is 204,5 w.

So not the big deal breaker

__________________
Im a Danish hardwareheaven addict.

Best stable overclock done:

mkk

Thanks for testing. Seems current runs through the L3 cache even when the chip doesn't use it.
3DMark, cough, yeah well if it makes a difference there.

Dybdal

3dmark is the only way i have for testing atm. But can you suggest another way to test it, it would be appreciatet

__________________
Im a Danish hardwareheaven addict.

Best stable overclock done:

mkk

Don't worry about it. Just see how much less clock or more voltage is required to get stable.

IvanV

If you mean stability testing, then Intel Burn Test. No god as a benchmark, though.

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Dybdal

It is the only bench i have

__________________
Im a Danish hardwareheaven addict.

Best stable overclock done:

Dybdal

Well good news I bumped the cpu voltage to 1.45 from 1.425, and now it doesn't get an error in prime95.

So far it has run for 3 hours without an error, and before it would come with an error after halv a hour to a hour

So now it runs unlocked and with and 3,6 ghz overclock on stock cooling and it maxes out at 64 degrees celcious

Thats value for the money

__________________
Im a Danish hardwareheaven addict.

Best stable overclock done:

IvanV

Two pointers:
- try Intel Burn Test I've mentioned, I think that it's harsher than Prime and usually finds errors fairly quickly.
- have CPU-Z running while performing the test and pay attention to the actual CPU frequency; 64°C is inside the range where Phenom II CPUs may start thermal throttling, dropping the CPU clock all the way down to 800MHz for brief periods, until it cools down a bit. That doesn't reduce the performance drastically, but you're still probably better off lowering the overclock just a little bit, until it stops doing that.

__________________
If anyone has Portal 2 and hasn't played the co-op and wants to do me a favour, let me know (PM me or whatever).