Yea I want to hear some OverClock stats too. For any other geeks out there who care...
I dropped out of folding for a day while I tried my hand at overclocking for the first time. Spent half the day at ExtremeOverclockers forums learning about it. Then another half day trouble shooting. Turns out my Albatron 865PE ProII MB has a bug (confirmed while googling the topic) that prevents you from Overclocking while using SATA drives (I have 2 SATA, 2 IDE). The BIOS’s AGP//PCI/SRC frequency lock does not work correctly. Grrr...! The rig would hanging at POST screen when I went over FSB of 202Mhz. I had to rearrange my 4 drives which included moving my c: (XP home) from the SATA to one of the IDE’s. Thanks to Norton Ghost, that was not a big deal. So when overclocking, I can’t use my SATA drives…have to unplug them or it hangs at POST screen even with the XP system on the IDE drive. Have to save up for a new MB!
Since it’s my first try, I am overclocking the 3.0Ghz at a conservative 3.495Ghz. Just enough to fully utilize my DDR466 Corsair 1Gig ram. I’ll let it run like this for a week before seeing how close I can get to 4Ghz! Doubt I can get there with my current fan since I already run at at 58-deg with the below settings.
- CPU is an old P4 Northwood 3.0C. (3.0Ghz).
- FSB=233Mhz. 33Mhz over default 200Mhz FSB. That's 233Mhz*2=466 to utilize the DDR466 PC3700 RAM.
- Memory timing at 3-4-4-8 (don’t fully understand this part, but that's what the mem specs say it can do and many at the forums run this setting)
- Bumped vcore voltage up 1 notch from default (I think it is 1.52??)
- Per a freeware utility (SpeedFan), CPU seems stay at 58-deg while folding. The unloaded CPU temp is 46-47. - Aftermarket CPU Sync/Fan is a Zalman NPS7000B
I stopped the fold that was running before overclocking. It was taking about 20min/frame. This should be a big point Fold, as most only take 3-6min/frame. Anyway, after Overclocking to 3.4+Ghz, that same fold is taking 13min/frame..woohoo! I learned a lot yesterday thanks to this Folding project. I probably would not have messed with overclocking if not for this project and my new found need for speed.
I had brought up the other day that my dualcore amd/Intel boxes were running neck-and-neck. They are back that way again right now at 27 and 28 with the Intel box ahead by 100 pts.
Specs:
AMD BOX
========
Proc AMD64 X2 4400
Asus A8N-SLI
Memory
Phys 1GB
Virt 2.41GB
Avail Virtual 1.47
Video:
Single GPU NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6800 Ultra
pci-x
Bus Type AGP
Memory 256MB GDDR3
Core Clock 425MHz (vs. 400MHZ standrd)
Memory Clock 1100MHz (effective)
RAMDAC Dual 400MHz
Storage:
Maxtor 6B250S0
250GB 16mb buffer
===========
Intel
CPU EM64T P4D 3Ghz
Memory 2GB
Tot Vir Mem 3.85GB
Avail Vir Mem 3.51GB
Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA-I955X Royal
Video
BFG GeForceT 6600 GT OC
pci-x
Memory 128MB GDDR3
Core Clock 525MHz
Memory Clock 1050MHz
RAMDAC Dual 400MHz
Storage:
Maxtor 200GB IDE
Both nodes share a Cheetah 36GB x 4 External Scsi array
At this point, I think that processor speed matters probably more than anything. I have a few other machines on there (including one named "MyMacMini" that got a late start but still has only finished 2 WU) but another named Veni has four machines behind it. Two are single cpu P4s, one running at 2.4Ghz and the other at 3.0Ghz. Another one is a PIII two-proc Xeon running at 550Mhz, 2GB of ram and a console assigned to each, with the last machine is a PIII 4-way 500Mhz with 4GB of ram and a console assigned to each processor.
The old Xeon's appear to be processing this painfully slow. However, the 4-way was only added a week ago and, last I looked, still had yet to complete its assigned projects. BUT it will still finish them before the deadline.