Preparing for battle..

[Xpoc]

Originally posted by: DarkRogue
lol, that is very interesting.. Gigabyte allowing E8500 speeds with an E8400?!

Anyway, I thought people did go Prime/Orthos/Whatever else stable with stock voltage at 3.6..

There are a lot who do get prime stable at 3.6ghz on stock volts I guess, but there are more that don't. I can go 6-8hrs on blend test, but then will fail unless I bump vcore up.

 

[DarkRogue]

That sounds like a long time.. I thought it'd be done after 3 hours.
How long are we supposed to run those tests for? I don't want to sit around for 2 months waiting for the tests to finish before I can use my PC.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: DarkRogue
That sounds like a long time.. I thought it'd be done after 3 hours.
How long are we supposed to run those tests for? I don't want to sit around for 2 months waiting for the tests to finish before I can use my PC.

if you can run prime /orthos stable for 12+ hours you are generally good to go, just start it before you go to bed or before work, some say that you want to do 24hours prime stable, i normally go for like 16 and call it good

my 8400 is running 9x440 3.96GHz @1.35v ram @ 1:1, its prime and orthos stable for 18+ hours i figured that was fine and ive had no issues

 

[DarkRogue]

I was thinking of running them for 6-8 hours or so, just whatever time is available overnight when I head to sleep lol.
If it's "Prime/orthos" stable for 8 hours but not stable for 18 hours (because I don't try it) does that really have any impact on real world performance?

Edit:
OMG CPU is on FedEx Vehicle for delivery! 1 day early! lol.

 

[crimson117]

Originally posted by: DarkRogue
If it's "Prime/orthos" stable for 8 hours but not stable for 18 hours (because I don't try it) does that really have any impact on real world performance?

As your components age and your heatsinks get dusty, something that would have shown up at 18 hours in a brand new rig might start to show after 3 hours of use in a dusty used rig.

So try to be patient... if you can do 24 hours, all the better! 18 isn't so hard... 8 overnight, leave it on 8 more while you go to work or school the next day, and leave it on 2 more when you get home and have dinner. If you start this at midnight and go to sleep and work/school, 18 hours later would be only 6pm the next day.

 

[DarkRogue]

I understand that, it's just there are 3 different benchmarks people recommend and if I let each of them run for 24 hours.. that's a lot of waiting lol. Although I guess it's better than premature failure, I'd still like to be able to use my PC soonish. Is 18 hours the recommended minimum then? Or is 24 hours vastly better?

 

[Gillbot]

Originally posted by: Shortass
Heh, I´m STILL using my mobile barton 2500+, x850xl and 2x512 ddr1 and it´s getting painful. Please, do tell about the performance increase so I can fantisize until the summer when I upgrade to a similar system!

All I know is when I went to my Barton 2500+ to the A64 x23800+ it was a huge jump in performance. Then I stepped over to the C2D E6550@3.5GHz shortly after and I should have made the switch LONG ago. The C2D is waves ahead of my old A64x2 and Barton system.

 

[crimson117]

Originally posted by: DarkRogue
I understand that, it's just there are 3 different benchmarks people recommend and if I let each of them run for 24 hours.. that's a lot of waiting lol. Although I guess it's better than premature failure, I'd still like to be able to use my PC soonish. Is 18 hours the recommended minimum then? Or is 24 hours vastly better?

I know it's easy for me to say 24 hours is better than 6, because I'm not the one who has to sit there waiting to use the brand new toy

So alternatively... you could just stress test it overnight with whichever stress test is the most extreme, and then accept that it might not be 24-hour stable. If you start to get crashes or errors, only then you would do a really long stress test to see if you need higher voltage or a lower OC or something. But if you stress it a little, and it works, and then in all your activities it never crashes, then good for you and 24 hours would have been unneccesary!

 

[DarkRogue]

lol, I know the feeling.
I *know* 24 hours or even 7 days is better, but then you never get to use it.

Anyway, if I'm going to run only one test which should it be? I currently have Prime95 but I'm sure there are better ones out there.

Also, which benchmarks do you guys want me to run for the before and after shots? Only 3dmark and pcmark?

And one more thing, I bought the Thermalright LGA775 Bolt-Thru kit to use with my Ninja, but there's a little white piece of plastic on it, I don't know if I should leave it on or take it off to install it, the thermalright instructions don't say anything about it. The paper feels like it's one of those wax papers you have to keep stickers from sticking to anything. But I'm not sure if it's supposed to be peeled off or not.

Edit:
All right! CPU just arrived.
Q745A849 - what does it even mean lol

 

[crimson117]

I would probably say to peel it off.

Just do PCMark and 3DMark, it's just for fun anyway.

As for which stress test, use Stress Prime 2004 - dual core.

 

[DarkRogue]

So Orthos is the recommended "everything" tester?
How do you use it?

 

[crimson117]

Read this (it's all I know about it)

 

[Shortass]

Make sure to give both objective AND subjective comments! Let me live vicariously through you until the summer when I can build my own!

 

[DarkRogue]

lol I'll try my best, I don't have very much experience writing reviews or such though.
Anything specific you want me to talk about?

Some preliminary research seems to reveal that I got lucky in that my CPU is part of batch Q745A which appears to be one of the better batches for overclocking.

Currently dealing with UPS and a lost package but I'll get around to running those benches soonish so I can get started building my new rig.

 

[DarkRogue]

Okay, I think I'll attempt to put this together tomorrow.
Please tell me if I'm forgetting anything.

Battle Plan:
Install everything (duh)
Power on
Install Windows (XP SP2)
Install basic "info" apps (CoreTemp, Speedfan, etc)
Reboot, BIOS
Disable C1E, EIST, Manual vcore but don't touch, lock PCI-e/PCI frequency, push CPU FSB to 400, DRAM ratio 1:1, default timings/voltage
Reboot, Windows
Load info apps to doublecheck settings if it manages to boot
Reboot, Memtest86+
If pass, Reboot, else um.. I'm not sure what to do here.. bump NB voltage?
Again load Info apps, Load Orthos, begin stress testing for 12-18 hours
If pass, Install 3dmark/pcmark and bench, else ... don't know. bump vcore?
Reboot, BIOS
Re-enable EIST, C1E
Reboot, have fun (RMAA onboard sound vs audigy and other fun stuff)

Have I covered all my bases?