Zardon

Ok well I recently sold on my AGP stuff, and ive stuck with the PCIe rig I have, which has a 3.4GHZ EE, 2 gig of DDr2 ram, an intel 925x board and an ATI X800XT. Now as you would expect this motherboard offers no overclocking at all. Its boring, but man is it stable, its yet to give me a single lock or problem. You cant knock intel boards for stability.

Now as we all know, Intel have never supported overclocking and I thought this would always be like this. today I pick up a UK magazine called PC Pro, and im reading about this new review on a 3.4EE PCIe rig they are testing and they mention an app called "Intel(R) Desktop Control Center" which allows you to overclock a little amount. After the shock had settled and I actually realised that intel were acknowledging the overclocking crowd a little I went to hunt for this app which I had obviously missed. went to intels site and give up looking with their site as I was finding errors on pages. then went into trusty google and found it on betanews.

anyway to cut a long story short you install the app, run it then go into the "burn section" and this allows you to overclock a small amount. I guess they are playing safe. As you do this you are then asked if you wish to install this into your bios. mmmm. I took a chance, and the computer resets the 925x motherboard and you are greeted with a long beeping tune (yes im not kidding). then the system boots up. going into CPUz, I saw 3580mhz from 3400 it had worked. there are also settings for ram and latencies etc, along with configuring fan speeds within zones. its overall a very nice application and although it might not be a big deal to many of you, the fact intel are acknowledging overclocking and supplying an application to do so on their own stock boards even to a minor scale is quite a breakthrough thing to me.

dipstick

Very impressive, especially coming from Intel lol. Nice being able to finally OC an Intel board

GutterPunk

Very sweet app it looks like, they needed to do this.. DUH! pull out some competition from ASUS and ABIT. I love the intel stability on the boards, now that they offer this it may give a new light to the intel mobo trail. thx for sharing this Z

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mkk

An additional positive surprise is the well made layout, as most manufacturers software of similar type has really bad interface design. Now there's just the need for hacking this utility to improve on its limitations.

Zardon

Yeah im sure the overclocking crowd can increase the thresholds for overclocking, I cant say id be too happy pushing this much further on stock cooling so I figure intel are playing it safe. its nicely laid out and even shows HT CPU usage with all relevant functions in the one window, you can minimise the top section, that has all the overclocking and voltages etc.

I honestly think this board while having limitations in regards to overclocking is probably better than any abit board ive owned. Stability is the best ive experienced, now that its almost 3.6ghz ill have to see if it still holds true but with self adjusting fans it should ease the risks a little. Its very unusual the way it works - most of these windows apps only run in windows, but this sets up figures and alters the bios....... if it allowed for higher figures I am not sure if it would be a wise option, overcook it, no going back, even with a CMOS reset, it would only reset to the last stored overclock.

I think intel put alot of thought into this and are catering for noob type overclockers with safe figures. everyone knows an intel cpu hits 200mhz MIN over stock with stock volts. they are working on a 4% principal as a threshold.

Im still quite amazed they are doing this, intel have been so against overclocking in the past, it figures when they did eventually go down this route they did it in a way that would be as safe as possible.

its very nice, rock solid app too. (just dont load cpuz while running it, they obviously take some of the same calls to the OS and the machine hard locks).

There is also a stress test and benchmark app in the options.....

pr0digal jenius

very cool....may see if it works on the server end of intel's spectrum a bit later

Zardon

if you have a built by intel mobo dont see why it wouldnt.

Nacht

oooooooooooo looook at all dem purty graphics!

drakesteakn

i still wonder why it took this long for intel to do this simple task. it helps them gain sales cuz they now have a utility to oc on their boards.

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pr0digal jenius

Asus mobo with intel chipset?



UPDATE:
failure

No_Style

Yeah that's some pretty graphics alright

So Z-man has left the AGP realm. Do you still have a kick ass 3DMark03/3Dmark01 scores with that rig?

Planning to stick with that Intel or are you looking for others in the future?

As for Intel's overclocking stance.. Well just look at the fiasco with mobo vendors trying to circumvent the overclock cap.. I guess they don't officially condone it, but since they put a cap so that people can't reach 1066 FSB easily.. You could say they want OCing in moderation. By now, mobo vendors have found ways around it.

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Nacht

his old sig said he got around 140003dmarks right?

eggs420

Looks really nice. I'll be able to afford that in 2010.

Zardon

I think I hit 14,700+ 3dmark03 and just over 30,000 in 01se on the oced EE AGP rig but the PCIe rig isnt as fast, its not watercooled either mind you...... fast enough

No_Style

I bet it's less hassle as well without the Watercooling

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Zardon

well there is one bonus, ive now 2 gig of ram and its all stable, works wonders in the rendering apps I use. I could never get 4x512 modules stable in the Abit AGP board.