Is the 100 to 133 OC almost guaranteed with the new Northwoods?

[DevilsAdvocate]

Is special cooling, higher voltage required? Does the 1.6a have a better shot at getting to 2.1 than the 1.8a has of getting to 2.4?

This will be my first OC experience sine 300a, and I really want to go with a pure 133 on a mobo with 133 support. Any motherboards with official support for P4 478 w/ a 133Mhz FSB. I heard the MSI 645's did.

Thanks!

 

[Athlon4all]

There is no board with offical 533fsb support yet. Pretty much, most Northwood's can hit around 2.5GHz with the Retail HSF, and with if anything a small voltage increase so the 1.6A and 1.8A can for the most part hit 533fsb. The 2A if you get lucky, may be able to hit 2.6Ghz, but the most common is definately 2.5Ghz

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

I am kind of torn - I have 1 GB each of RDRAM and DDR. I can't decide which to go with.

I am thinking I should just use the DDR on the new MSI Ultra 645 since it pretty much goes head to head with the i850 in most benchmarks. What do y'all think?

I know RDRAM O'C's pretty well. I know DDR O'C's pretty well. So many choices.

 

[Flatbroke]

You want a Malasia chip not a Costa Rica from early reports.
Edit: Early reports are that the CR chips can all do 133, some need 1.55v, more Malays out there so more reports of 2.4, but not many CR reported at 2.4gig.

 

[MadRat]

The trouble with overclocking the P4 family is that it reverts to slower performance when it overheats, therefore you can never be certain its pushed too hard. You may post at 3GHz, but run at 700MHz due to the thermal protection kicking into action. If you over-cool the processor then the thermal protection doesn't kick in and damage is probably being done at the microscopic level.

There have been a recent spat of posts telling of how the overclocks will post just fine but BSOD's start occuring under load. This is perfectly normal in this crowd, as people tend to push way beyond the safe zones. Your CPU may also post okay at the higher settings, but it doesn't mean it can work stable at that speed.

In general reports, though, the NorthWoods seem to overclock frequently to just under the 2.4GHz mark. Its the ones that post at odd front-side buses, especially above 140MHz, that have been reporting instability. It may be the chipset and memory more than the processor limiting stability.

 

[THUGSROOK]

obviously MadRat does not own a p4 northwood

my p4 1.8a @ 2.4ghz...
idle cpu temp 78*F
max cpu temp 100*F
room temp 76*F

using arctic silver and a thermaltake p4v.
care to rethink that supposed heat issue?

 

[BigJ]

<< There is no board with offical 533fsb support yet. Pretty much, most Northwood's can hit around 2.5GHz with the Retail HSF, and with if anything a small voltage increase so the 1.6A and 1.8A can for the most part hit 533fsb. The 2A if you get lucky, may be able to hit 2.6Ghz, but the most common is definately 2.5Ghz >>



Incorrect, the boards with the SiS 645 chipset do officially support the 533fsb. Also, the 1.8A and 1.6A usually do not hit 2.5ghz unless you were blessed with a good chip, while 2.4ghz is very common for both chips.

 

[jiffylube1024]

To answer your questions the best I can (I have a 1.8A with a P4B266):

Special cooling - nope, most people use the retail intel heatsink/fan ... its a pretty good design.

Higher voltage - yes, especially for 2.4 GHz it's necessary. The default is only 1.5 V after all, way lower than the default of the P4 willimette or even the P3. Usually 1.6 - 1.65 volts works best for 2.4 GHz.

The 1.6A should hit 133 MHz (using arctic silver and possibly the stock stuff, but AS is much better) more or less every single time. The yields appear to be quite good. The 1.8A takes some time to hit 2.4 GHz (or at least for me ... read on).

The 1.8A hits 2.4 (mine does) but it takes a few days to burn in (the thermal compound sets in over the first few days and you can O/C higher and it gets more stable). Mine didnt even post @ 2.4 GHz when I first installed it... 5 hours later it booted and ran stably (but I'm using 125 MHz FSB for 2.25 GHz right now for utmost stability (not a single crash)).

Personally I think the P4B266 is an incredible Motherboard, it seems to be as stable as my old CUSL2 and that's quite a feat (even @ 133 MHz FSB)!

Hope this helps!

PS I also have a 300A @ 450 and man, that defines stability! What an easy O/C !

 

[MadRat]

<<obviously MadRat does not own a p4 northwood
...
using arctic silver and a thermaltake p4v.
care to rethink that supposed heat issue?>>

Nope, because electron mitigation occurs whether you see the effects in excess heat, or not. Cooling the core only does so much to bleed off the excess energy. By the way, it seems like my 2.4GHz claim is pretty right on. If you use peltiers it doesn't garauntee a better overclock, the limit is still the switching speed at the microscopic level.

 

[mschell]

You have to take overclocking reports with a grain of salt. Northwoods will post and run Sandra benchmarks at very high overclock levels but crash or reset when multiple CPU intensive programs run at once. Some people are ok with this however and go on to post "running rock stable at 2.4GHz" etc. The real test is to run your RC5 or Seti client, priority level set to normal. Now open a rendering program, I use the POV "Pawns" render, but anything will work as long as it takes a few mins to render. Now open a CPU intensive game, preferably one with slow crappy code, MS Flt Sim2000 fit the bill perfectly. If you can run 3 programs like this for more than a few mins on a Northwood at 2.4GHz then my hats off to you, you actually have a stable setup.

My 1.6 Northwood/MSI 645 will run any one of the above programs all day at 2.4GHz, 150MHz FBS but will only do all 3 at once at 2.12 GHz 133MHz FBS. This means that I'm only truly stable at 2.1GHz. This speed is only marginaly faster than my 1.38GHz (+1600) Athlon system that runs the above programs all day long.
I'm not down on the Northwoods but if you can't do 2.4GHz then you are better off performance wise on a +1900 Athlon.

 

[WheelsCSM]

I'm at 133FSB (2133 MHz) on a Costa Rica 1.6A, P4S333, gonna try for more in a minute

 

[dbwillis]

mschell-

Do you have any links to rendering programs (or names?) Thanks!

 

[mschell]

Below is a link to POV - Ray. You download two programs, the Standard Pov Ray distribution and the newest optimized P3/P4 recompile or and older version if you wish. Follow the instructions to use the "Pawns" file for a benchmark to test system rendering performance. Athlons are very fast renderers with this program as my 1.38GHz XP renders "Pawns" as fast as my 2.1GHz Northwood.

Pov Ray

 

[kevman]

I think the northwood, especially the 1.6a is definatley OC'able to 133. I have had that running for a while rock solid stability. I did however run in to round errors in prime95 at 137 FSB. I think a minor voltage tweak should take care of that.

 

[dbwillis]

Thanks I DL the file just now..Ive been stressing my PC for a few hours real good.
Ripped a DVD (5.3gb)
converted the VOb to .avi and .wav
dubbed the .avi and .wav into an avi movie (2.4gb)

all at the same time...full 100% cpu for at least 3 hrs
Plus Outlook, VNC and Media Player and surfing with IE