When comparing these Two PC builds, which would you recommend?

[yh125d]

You don't do any damage by doing all your overclocking in one fell swoop. The reason it's sometimes recommended to inch it up 100mhz at a time is so that when it stops booting or crashes you just go down 100mhz to the last successful setting.


A 930 could probably do 3.6 or more on stock voltage, definitely 3.3-3.4, and without sacrificing reliability

And really, you ahve some misconceptions about overclocking. If you had a modest OC to 3.5 on stock voltage or +.05v, and it died for whatever reason, you'd still get a warranty replacement. They'd have no way of telling that it was overclocked. Also, modest OCs like that don't harm the processor or shorten its lifespan in any significant way. It's only in the realm of 4gHz+ OCs with lots of extra voltage that you have to worry about that.

Although I still recommend you get an i5 750 instead. OC it to at least 3.0-3.2. Free performance without damage or difficulty. It can be done in under an hour

 

[Reincus]

The increase in speeds do not HAVE to be incremental, it's just wise to do so. For example, if I know for sure my CPU is stable at 3.6Ghz from 2.8Ghz, I can simply overclock it and be done. But what if it's not stable? At what point is your overclock stable?

So you why go all the way from point A to point D when you find that D doesn't work and you have revisit B and C anyways?

So, you do like you said. You overclock in incrementals and check stability. Then you have a new point that you can know is SAFE. If you know the max voltage you will use (from research or the manufacturer) then you can start off at that voltage and increase speed until you are unstable.

The I7 series and the P2 9XX are mature chips. The community has already done a lot of testing. If you were picking up a P2 955 or 965, you could safely set your core voltage to 1.45-1.5V, and bump up speed to 3.6 or 3.8 Ghz to start with.

How long does it take? Depends what your goal is. Are you trying to wring out the maximum speed out of the chip? Will you settle for anything less than 100% stability? What is your personal threshold for max temp, or max noise from your fans? Is power consumption a concern?

If you are a moderate overclocker with reasonable expectitations and goals, then the whole process can be done in a couple hours. Some people continuously tweak settings for weeks. For those, it's a passion. For me, it's just more bang for my buck. But my time is valuable to and I'd rather spend it gaming instead of tweaking, so I take my big gains up front in the way of CPU overclocking and I don't sweat the rest. I don't mess with memory timings and speeds (because they make a very small difference to games) though I might bump up my PCIE speed a little to try to eek more out of my video card (along with GPU overclocking).

I was happy taking my P2 x3 720 and unlocking the 4th core and overclocking to 3.4Ghz. Basically, I turned it into a P2 x4 965 for nearly half the cost (at the time).

 

[Monkey_Business]

So I can take an i7 930 to 3.0 or 3.2 GHz 100% stable without increasing the voltages?

I heard that the i7 extreme editions have higher cache sizes. If you compared the i7 930 and i7 975 EE side by side, both at 3.33 GHz, the 975 would be faster?

The i7 EE is over $1,000. While the 930 is around $300.

 

[Reincus]

Faster? Yes. 4 times the cost, but you won't get a 400% increase. Maybe 20-30% in most instances. Probably 10-20% in games at very high resolutions with everything cranked up. Just read a couple I7 975 reviews.

 

[yh125d]

So I can take an i7 930 to 3.0 or 3.2 GHz 100% stable without increasing the voltages?

More likely like 3.8 on stock voltage apparently.



But are you ignoring me when I say I still think i5 750 is the better option?

 

[Monkey_Business]

Faster? Yes. 4 times the cost, but you won't get a 400% increase. Maybe 20-30% in most instances. Probably 10-20% in games at very high resolutions with everything cranked up. Just read a couple I7 975 reviews.

I thought that the ONLY difference between the Core i7 975 EE and the rest of the Ci7 models was an unlocked multiplier. If you ran a Core i7 and the EE side by side, both at the exact same clock speeds (3.33 GHz) they would perform identically.

After checking, the Core i7 EE has the same size cache as the rest of the Core i7 processors.

The Ci7 975 is now obsolete, it has been replaced by the Ci7 980X 6-core "gulftown".

The extreme edition is for extreme overclocking. Usually well past 4.0 GHz. The multiplier goes up to 35x (I think) but unless you have a pot of liquid nitrogen sitting around, and trying to attempt some world record, I would not suggest running the multiplier at 35x, not unless you wanted a fire.

This goes the same with the AMD "black edition" processors.

 

[Reincus]

I thought that the ONLY difference between the Core i7 975 EE and the rest of the Ci7 models was an unlocked multiplier. If you ran a Core i7 and the EE side by side, both at the exact same clock speeds (3.33 GHz) they would perform identically.

After checking, the Core i7 EE has the same size cache as the rest of the Core i7 processors.

The Ci7 975 is now obsolete, it has been replaced by the Ci7 980X 6-core "gulftown".

The extreme edition is for extreme overclocking. Usually well past 4.0 GHz. The multiplier goes up to 35x (I think) but unless you have a pot of liquid nitrogen sitting around, and trying to attempt some world record, I would not suggest running the multiplier at 35x, not unless you wanted a fire.

This goes the same with the AMD "black edition" processors.

You are right about the I7 975. I mistook the 975 for the 980X, since I just read the Tom's review on it last week. Here is the benchmarks for the 975.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-975,2318-9.html
Note that they are GPU limited, so the results will be pretty much the same for games.
http://pclab.pl/art39718-9.html

And the performance difference between the 980X and 975, which translates into the difference between the 730 and the 980X (which I mistook the original question for)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-980x-efficiency,2575-4.html
and
http://pclab.pl/art39718-9.html for real world difference between Gulftown and Bloomfield.

 

[Monkey_Business]

You are right about the I7 975. I mistook the 975 for the 980X, since I just read the Tom's review on it last week. Here is the benchmarks for the 975.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-975,2318-9.html
Note that they are GPU limited, so the results will be pretty much the same for games.


And the performance difference between the 980X and 975, which translates into the difference between the 730 and the 980X (which I mistook the original question for)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-980x-efficiency,2575-4.html
and
http://pclab.pl/art39718-9.html for real world difference between Gulftown and Bloomfield.

There are NO games which multi-threaded for six-cores.