The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

speaking of CPU OCing,

i couldnt seem to get stabel above 465FSB on my maximus II forumula nad Q9950, but then the NB wasnt getting any air to it. at 480FSB OCCT CPU test would be perfect, but the RAM test would fail within the minute, but at ram at 2.2 running under rated speed (960MHz) and then did a memtest fro 3 hours ont he memory and it wasnt at fault, so i thought it might be the NB over heating. stuck a fan ontop of the nb and seems to be good right now at 470

 

For serious overclocking passive cooling alone doesn't cut it. I've always gotten better results from active cooling chipsets. A little extra cooling on the memory is also a plus when you're trying to run it well beyond specification.

I've considered picking up a Q9550 to throw into one of my other systems for BD encoding but I've done my last build for personal use for a while. I'm wating to see what Intel 35nm chips are capable of and what AMD has on the drawing board. I want an 8 core 4 GHz 64 bit system. MORE POWER!!!!>}

 

$170 for a 192 core GTX260? You should probably have shared that in the deals thread. I recommend the HD4870 over the GTX260 216 typically due to its lower price, but I would hardly say there is any similarity between the 260 and 280 - $240 vs $400.
Oh and yes, it is still in my posession, Gm...
I've not tried actively cooling my NB to try and get a stable 455FSB at the wall. To be honest, I'm happy with 430 for the moment, I've got my 21k 3dmarks XD

 

One can always count on Sam for pointless sarcasm which is as always misplaced. Who said anything about paying $170 for a GTX260. Since when is an HD 4870 useful for folding which is my primary purpose for purchasing it?

Exactly how much do you think you can get a GTX260 with 216 stream processors for? The best that I've seen lately and the price has come down some, is around $250 to $260 with most approaching $300. One can however get a 192 stream processor GTX260 for around $200 if they purchase it at the right time with promotions, I did. At the time I purchased mine the closest 216 stream unit was over $260 and I saw no reason to pay that.

In tests that I've seen the GTX260 beats the HD4850 across the board at stock speeds and beats the HD4870 with high quality settings and overclocked it approaches the GTX280 in performance. This is of course moot because for folding it is almost 3 times as powerful as an HD4870, and hence my purpose for getting one.

 

Here's an MSI for $199.99 with free shipping and no need to mail in rebates.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127361

 

And one can always count on Soph for cryptically retracting previous statement.

Since the GTX260 216 core costs $240, that meas you must have spent $170-$180 on your 192 core, quite a bargain. The GTX260 216 has cost $240 for a while too, so don't say it was before the prices changed:

I genuinely think if there are 260s going for 170 bucks people should know about it.

Being pedantic, they're actually $247.99, but after rebates, pretty much any 216 card can be scored for $240 or less.


All this said, especially for folding, I still think you made the right choice, the 192 core 260 is hardly far from the 216 in performance, and as you say, the HD4870 has far less ability at folding.

 

And one can always count on Sam not reading what was written as it was written. I never retracted anything but you do it a lot such as during our monitor debate. Even now there are no 216 stream processors for less than $248 not $240. secondly when I purchased my card there were none for less than $260 at the same time that I paid $199.99 for my card. Key word being when I made my purchase and not what is out there now.

Here is the link to the lowest priced 216 stream that I know of and it is $247.99 or $248. At the time that I made my purchase it was going for a whole more and if you read down a bit you will see this.

Now doesn't that sound like a recent price reduction to you?


Before that it was a good $70 more than I paid for mine 192 stream.


Now why don't you spend time trying to find more retractions in my statements that don't exist.

This is just blatantly wrong.

 

I didn't spot the holiday savings part, so fair enough on that, but even so, the post-rebate price of the 216 cores has been lower than $250 for some time now, I know because I routinely check. For gamers at least, the price of the 216 is the main reason why I recommend the 4870 instead.

 

The next lowest price I've seen to the $248 card is $259.99 or $260.00.

Donald, L8, and I check them everyday as well and we are only looking at Nvidia cards for now because they are the folding champs. When we see good deals we grab them quickly. Donald has about a dozen cards now and he's never paid more than $60 for any of them. Donald and I have always differed in our approach to things. He chose to go with lower priced cards and stack 4 of them in a case. I chose to go for higher stream processing cards which cost more but have proven to be more future proof. A recent change in a new WU dropped 8800GS cards from 5000PPD to 3000PPD which is a loss of 2000 points but my GTS (G92) cards dropped by about 1000 points on the 511 point units and less than 100 Points on the 384 point units.


I haven't seen a lot of good prices on the 216 stream units and I don't think that they are that much more powerful than the 192 stream units to even warrant paying the current $48 difference. After Christmas I'm expecting that if sales aren't good because of the current economic crisis, along with the release of the GTX295 card, the prices could fall well under $200 and then I'l grab a couple more. I figure once I'm done folding I could do worse than a GTX260 SLI setup.

 

I say again, after rebates. I'm in agreement that I don't think the 216 core GTX260 is worth buying either. Had the GTX260 been $170-$180 it would be of interest to gamers as that would make it cheaper than the equivalent HD4870. However, $199 puts it the same as the 4870, so I would recommend the superior card for anything but folding. As far as I'm aware you can stack multiple GPUs in folding without needing to use SLI, so you could do well with multiple GTX260s, gaming or otherwise.

 

You can indeed use multiple cards for folding. I limit mine to 2 per case. Anymore would be sill with the big cards, but for the 112 stream single slot cards it can work. The GTX260 fried a 550 watt Antec and then had a 600 watt Coolermaster for desert. I've ordered two more 750 watt Corsairs which are excellent and can handle to GTX260s'. The power supplies had been out of use for some time so it was no loss.

 

Well, that's why I don't recommend either of those PSUs. The GTX260, or even two of them, hardly makes for anywhere near a 500W system.

 

I would imagine if they were overclocked they Could. I believe Sophocles has his video cards overclocked for Folding. Plus, I'm sure that it also depends on what the total system consists of and if the CPU and memory are overclocked as well. A lot of unknown variables there such as what specific models the PSUs are, how old and how much previous use they had under what conditions.

That being said, how can you make such a broad statement like that without knowing the facts? Not being a Smart a$$, just asking!

Russ

 

I say it because the GTX260 only uses 10-11W more than the HD4870 1GB, and the HD4870X2 uses as much power as two HD4870 1GB cards to within about 5 watts. Therefore I surmise that two GTX260s would use no more than 25W above a system with an HD4870X2 such as mine. Overclocked at its present state, my system uses 390W under full load, CPU and graphics. Therefore I'd estimate two GTX260s would use no more than 420W, a fair way short of 500.

 

I do indeed overclock my cards for folding. Donald took out two power supplies in the same power range and finally moved up to an 850 watt Antec. The Coolermaster is a mediocre power supply but the Antec neo was rated fairly well. Few power supplies can handle a full load at their rating and folding 24/7 can be a real killer.


The Thermaltake toughpower 750 watt has been exemplary and I've put it through hell and back, but it's a little high in price so I've been using 750 Watt Corsairs' which are very good and much better priced.

 

There's also whether the GTX 260s are 192SP or 216SP cards. Both idle at the same max peak power, but the 216SP max peak power is 324 Watts while the 192SP max peak power is only 268 Watts. You would rarely ever see the demand that high for any length of time, but The folks I asked said that they wouldn't recommend anything less than a good 1000 Watt PSU when using dual video cards.

The older 192SP is an nVidia while the newer 216SP is an EVGA.

Russ

 

Peak power fluctuations seem to be common with nvidia cards, which is a bit odd, I'll grant you. In any case, a 420-430W system should really have more than a 500W PSU, but even so I'd expect it to simply shut down, not fail completely, that was really the point I was trying to make.

 

I would agree except for the overclocking which adds an interesting variable. My rule of thumb has always been to have a power supply that is rated about 50% greater than the highest expected use to keep heat down and to insure stability over time. Right now for me that's a 750 watt unit. The coolermaster and the neo were both quite old and serviced our last folding efforts so I'm not surprised that they died.

 

It's interesting that Sam should mention shutting down, with my recent experience with the E6750. When trouble started, it would most times simply reset, maybe once or twice in 14-15 hours of use. No error messages and no change in the bios. It would also occasionally freeze (twice), requiring the main be shut off as it wouldn't reset or shut down with the power button. I lowered the OC to stock 2.66GHz and the PSU did it's usual on, off for 3 to 5 seconds and finally on again. The important thing here is it kept doing that, where normally it sets itself to match the settings in the bios, and then turns on without the off delay. It never stopped giving the delay! After I pulled the E6750 and replaced it with the D-940, it again did the on/off delay/on bit, but the next morning when I fired up the computer the delay had vanished and I haven't had any problems or glitches to contend with at all since! It's run flawless, even with a moderate overclock to 3.5GHz. The D-940 runs on auto voltage at 1.30v. The E6750 wouldn't even boot up stock at that voltage, and I know that's not right.

I just wish the Thermaltake TR-2 W0093RU 500W PSU I use would have included some sort of information about that in the manual that came with it. It would have saved me a week of problems that I was not fully understanding until I started getting Corrupt File errors with half my programs. Now I understand that the PSU was trying to tell me something, I just had no idea what! LOL!! The new E6750 should be here in about 7-10 days. No hassle like with the D-940 was, from Intel at all. And no, I won't be pushing it to 4.0GHz anytime soon! ROFLMAO!!

Russ

 

Of the two units that I've discussed the Coolermaster still powers up for a few seconds, and I can even see text from the beginning of a post and then it shuts down. Before it shuts down it buzzes and vibrates like a massage unit. I've been wondering if I can some how install it into my wife's favorite chair under very lite load and convince her that I got her a new massage unit for Christmas.LMAO