CPU Stepping

[Tempered81]

I must be a newb, but i dont understand "stepping" or "revision" in a processor. My guess is that it is similar to motherboard revisions.

i have an E4300 core2duo with "L2" stepping and revision "2". Is this good or bad, and also, what is the significance of M0 and G0 Stepping?

thanks.

 

[JAG87]

First of all, M0 and G0 are revisions not steppings, 2 is the stepping. People tend to mix these up and call G0 the stepping, when its really the revision.

Second, M0 is to L2 what G0 is to B2/B3. You have the L2 stepping, which is worse in terms of heat output and overclock.


edit
take your email out of your sig brother

 

[Tempered81]

thanks for the email suggestion. i took it out. so my "l2" stepping is worse than what other possibility for the e4300? so it runs hotter, requires more cpu voltage, and yields less overclocking headroom?

edit: nice sig rig. do you play crysis?

 

[JAG87]

Yes the earlier revisions L2//B2/B3 revisions run hotter than M0/G0. They also have a lower thermal specification around the low 60s, while M0/G0 are around the low 70s. That is the danger point for the processor, a higher thermal spec means more overclocking headroom before the processor craps out.

Voltage wise, they are about the same, it really comes down to each individual die and how much voltage it requires. There is no connection between revision and voltage, you can have a bad B3 die that needs 1.35v at stock, as well as a bad G0 die. But M0/G0 always runs cooler then L2/B2 at the same voltage, which is the nice thing.

To answer your final question, I have crysis installed but I dont play it. I don't do gaming below 45 fps. When nvidia brings out new high-end cards I'll play crysis.


edit:
you can find everything you need here: http://processorfinder.intel.com

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I heard that nVidia was releasing the new vid-card 9xxx series this week. Is that true?

 

[JAG87]

Originally posted by: BonzaiDuck
I heard that nVidia was releasing the new vid-card 9xxx series this week. Is that true?

fud. they are releasing a new G92 based GTS this week, which is probably the speed of a GTX or an Ultra. Probably not even that fast at high res, which is what I care about. the real high end will come next year.

 

[taltamir]

stepping is an arbitrarily assigned designation that indicates that a cpu is different then an older model, but not in a significant matter. Sometimes it is completely insiginficant, sometimes it is earth shattering. It depends on weather the company feels like they should change the name due to marketing reasons...

Take for example the 8800WTF (8800GTS that is)... nvidia is now releasing the THIRD version of the video card... the first one used a G80 processor with one disabled SP cluster. The second one used a fully functioning G80. The third one will use a full function G92. (the a G92 with one disabled cluster is called 8800GT)... This is an example when they feel due to marketing reasons that they should keep the old name. So they make changes under the hood and keep them...

Normally stepping are just slight modifications to the chip design to fix bugs that are not significant, it DOES give a little boost to the chips (so its better to get a newer stepping) but how much depends on the individual stepping.