Originally posted by: BonzaiDuck
Originally posted by: Ocguy31
Originally posted by: Zap
Originally posted by: jaredpace
drop the e8600 to the 8500's $183
Hey, that's a pretty nice price for a 10x multiplier. Probably just about any cheap motherboard will take it up to 4GHz.
This thing does 4ghz in its sleep.....:thumbsup:
Not entirely clear what OCguy31 refers to -- the E8600, or the E8700.
I'm actually stunned -- if the OP's news is true -- that they'll introduce another socket 775 processor this late in the game.
As to its over-clocking potential, anyone's guess is as good as mine. I thought I observed several years ago that the high-end entrants for the socket 478 and socket 775 Prescott's pushed the standard or speed-spec to the limit of the technology, versus pushing the technology higher -- so the OC'ing potential for the high-end product wasn't as great as for those farther down on the product-line ladder.
Maybe this will be different. I was going to post the following thoughts in a separate thread, but didn't think it would generate that much enthusiasm.
I've pushed my E8600 to 4.25 Ghz under stock-multiplier 10. In order to do this, I had to notch up the VCORE to 1.3625V. BIOS reports an actual value of 1.32V, and CPU_Z shows 1.34V -- for the idle voltage. Intel gives a "safe" range of 0.85 to 1.3625V in their spec, noting a different range with upper bound of 1.45V. In this latter regard, they caution that anything above 1.3625 may damage the processor, and even if the processor continues to run if reset to a lower voltage, it will be "degraded."
Now, here's a link to the fall, '07 article by Anandtech on the QX9650 and over-clocking -- specifically, the page that explains the relationship between vDroop, vOffset, and the idle voltage. More specifically, it shows how a 0.02V spike occurs when the processor returns from a lower load voltage to idle:
Load and idle voltage behavior and equilibriums for 45nm Penryns
So if my own voltage monitors are accurate, the voltage spike that would occur in my system upon termination of CPU load would push just to the edge of the "safe" limit.
Take a look at the E8700 spec -- the upper bound of the safe voltage range is lower than for the E8600.
Should we start a betting pool on the over-clocking performance of this E8700? I still might be inclined to grab one up when they become available. But I think there's some risk that it might not be as scalable as the E8600. Just my $0.02 worth, anyway.