- Jun 30, 2004
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Here's something somebody might find of interest -- if you have a Z68 mobo and an SB "K" chip.
I won't belabor this too much: The ASUS Z68 BIOS is quite a wonder and enough to make you worry about "wild horses running away." But I've figured out enough to get it to OC with EIST enabled, "mild power saving," "Turbo-mode" so that its idle state is about 1650 Mhz and -- if you just load it up enough -- the "turbo" state soars up to about 4.33 Ghz. The voltage features on the mobo keep it stable without fixing the VCORE at a constant, so under "Auto," the idle VCORE may be around 0.896V, and at the loaded 4.33 Ghz shows to top out at around 1.288V.
I've just done some preliminary stress-testing with PRIME-95's latest version -- the most recent release. Now that Intel has restored Hyper-Threading "HT," PRIME automatically chooses to run -- not four threads for the 2600K processor, but eight.
Under Small-FFTs with eight PRIME "workers," about 79F to 80F room ambient, three cores show temperatures around 62/63C with one core flipping 66/67C. OF course the throttling temperature threshold for the SB i7 cores is about 72+C as I recall. The other day, for maybe an hour of the same test, room ambient 85C and no "power-saving" enabled, that one Core #1 (of 0,1,2,3) hits about 71C.
So I decided to try just a short IntelBurnTest run.
Suddenly, IntelBurnTest seems to be a milk-toast. 78F room-ambient, and the cores are showing temps between the high 40s Celsius and upper-mid-50s.
IBT is the new pussy-cat.
If you want to say I'm a "johnny-come-lately" to this new Sandy Bridge ball-game, I'll say I'm sorry I wasted your time. But between the 2600K chip and these new Z68 boards with some significant tech-innovations like ISRT, somebody should re-examine the stress-test programs to see if they still mean anything.
Also, the latest CPU-Z doesn't report the "Turbo" loaded speed, and only shows the default value. I don't even think it shows the low EIST value -- check again . . . In fact -- I don't even trust the VID reading -- the mobo-maker's AI-Suite is suddenly more trustworthy. Same with CoreTemp: I'm quite sure the temperatures are spot on, the sensors are working correctly. But it reports a VID too high.
With this kind of product from ASUS, it's just too slick and refined to imagine that the AI-Suite monitor is reporting the wrong values. That's a first: It used to be I wouldn't trust the ASUS monitor over the other programs . . .
Oh. I stand corrected. IBT actually pushed the temperature on the hot core #1 to about 61C while I was typing this . . .
I won't belabor this too much: The ASUS Z68 BIOS is quite a wonder and enough to make you worry about "wild horses running away." But I've figured out enough to get it to OC with EIST enabled, "mild power saving," "Turbo-mode" so that its idle state is about 1650 Mhz and -- if you just load it up enough -- the "turbo" state soars up to about 4.33 Ghz. The voltage features on the mobo keep it stable without fixing the VCORE at a constant, so under "Auto," the idle VCORE may be around 0.896V, and at the loaded 4.33 Ghz shows to top out at around 1.288V.
I've just done some preliminary stress-testing with PRIME-95's latest version -- the most recent release. Now that Intel has restored Hyper-Threading "HT," PRIME automatically chooses to run -- not four threads for the 2600K processor, but eight.
Under Small-FFTs with eight PRIME "workers," about 79F to 80F room ambient, three cores show temperatures around 62/63C with one core flipping 66/67C. OF course the throttling temperature threshold for the SB i7 cores is about 72+C as I recall. The other day, for maybe an hour of the same test, room ambient 85C and no "power-saving" enabled, that one Core #1 (of 0,1,2,3) hits about 71C.
So I decided to try just a short IntelBurnTest run.
Suddenly, IntelBurnTest seems to be a milk-toast. 78F room-ambient, and the cores are showing temps between the high 40s Celsius and upper-mid-50s.
IBT is the new pussy-cat.
If you want to say I'm a "johnny-come-lately" to this new Sandy Bridge ball-game, I'll say I'm sorry I wasted your time. But between the 2600K chip and these new Z68 boards with some significant tech-innovations like ISRT, somebody should re-examine the stress-test programs to see if they still mean anything.
Also, the latest CPU-Z doesn't report the "Turbo" loaded speed, and only shows the default value. I don't even think it shows the low EIST value -- check again . . . In fact -- I don't even trust the VID reading -- the mobo-maker's AI-Suite is suddenly more trustworthy. Same with CoreTemp: I'm quite sure the temperatures are spot on, the sensors are working correctly. But it reports a VID too high.
With this kind of product from ASUS, it's just too slick and refined to imagine that the AI-Suite monitor is reporting the wrong values. That's a first: It used to be I wouldn't trust the ASUS monitor over the other programs . . .
Oh. I stand corrected. IBT actually pushed the temperature on the hot core #1 to about 61C while I was typing this . . .