1 X5660 and 12GB of Crucial 1600 8-8-8-20 Ram ordered.

Fingers crossed for full compatibility!

Completed Infinite on Hard. Still have a few bits to pick up, but got most of the main elements.

AWESOME.

Now need the 2 DLC’s!

EDIT – nom nom nom gotta stuff my face with it 🙂

Well, the CPU sure works at the stock speed alright!

I’ll do the overclock when I have finished the work I have just taken on.

What will you aim for?

Up to 4.8GHz. 4.4 as a minimum, I hope.

4.2 After one hour 🙂

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4996968
That’s a 41% boost to the physics score 🙂

Need to tighten a few timings, I think, but after my work and after I get that 12GB RAM set.

Goodnight!

Not bad how long will you run prime for?

When I think it’s dialed, in I need to run it for 24 hours on each test to be 100% sure it’s gonna be stable. And Memtest+ the same.

With the 920 at 4 it NEVER crashed. Took a lot of crashing and tinkering to get there though!

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5001380 [1600MHz RAM cpu locked at 3GHz]
vs
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5000813 [1066MHz RAM, CPU turbo enabled [1.6-3.2GHz]]

Forcing the ram to 1600 makes literally no difference.

Overclock in progress.

Have got BClock to 220 making Memory Controller/Caches run at 3520 [that +46%] using only 1.295VTT

Yep – those were a little too easy, eh?

The issue is the IMC – as other have found out.

that 4.2 ran fine for gaming – but show it Intel Burn Test and there was a lot of rebooting.

I’m currently running 4.0 with Uncore at 3200. VCore is now 1.312 [Might be able to reduce] and VTT is all the way up to 1.335 for that – which is scary-close to the “letting the magic smoke out” value of 1.35.

I am hoping that the VCC droop of about .035v is the same for the VTT! Oh well I do have that i7 in the box of spares.

Honestly, with this chip on this board, at safe voltages it looks like 4.4 would be the limit, at a guess.

A little disappointing, but 4.4*6[+HT] is still scary-fast and should sustain the twin 970GTX’s I’ll buy when I have passed my MPhil.

Link to the actual thread covering this process.

so how many gears has it got, mister ?

Funny you should ask that:

EX58-UD3R:
*Supports the newest Intel Core i7 processors in socket LGA1366 with QPI 6.4 GT/s
*Revolutionary energy saving design with DES Advanced
featuring hardware based Dynamic 4-Gear switching
*Unique hardware control IC to provide more precision voltage control
*Patented DualBIOS with dual hardware BIOS protection
Home theater quality 8-channel High Definition Audio

I’ve had a flick through the linked thread, it looks like you have had a lot more patience with it than I would have had 🙂

You might have lost on the silicon lottery with this one though. You also don’t know the history of the chip, I think you said your mobo o/c your i7 ok so it probably isn’t that but I suppose the 6 cores could be pulling enough to overheat the VRM’s or some other component?

My Z800 workstation is now sat spare for the minute, if you are not far away you are welcome to extract and test the X5650’s in there and swap if one is better.

?!

Duuude.

I’m in Bradford.

Email in profile.

Results from here

I can hold the following [HT ON IN ALL CASES]

190×21= 3990 [Uncore 16x =3040] /// Vcc About 1.30 under load [Vtt 1.315 in BIOS]
200×20= 4000 [Uncore 16x =3200] /// Vcc About 1.30 under load [Vtt 1.33v in BIOS]

Scores:
927: Cinebench R15 CPU at 4/3200
918: Cinebench R15 CPU at 4/2800

103.48: Cinebench R15 OpenGL at 4/3200
100.66: Cinebench R15 OpenGL at 4/2800

And a Firestrike Physics score of 13983

Temps stay about 71, max

I might be able to bench at 4.2, but I can’t pass IBT, even Standard. Well, it passed a few, then gave an error. Ramping core voltage up several steps won’t help at 4.2.

Also tried: CPU PLL to 1.5, Small bumps to IOH and QPI PLL and even a 50microsecond skew on the CPU clock. None allow me to reduce volts or go to higher frequencies on the Core.

I’m pretty happy at 4.0, but kinda disappointed/surprised with the clock speed, based on what others see with these chips. Maybe mine’s just not as good as some. I’m certainly concerned about the 13degreeC spread in temps I’m seeing at 4.2/IBT. Yes, the cooler is seated OK.

I’ll try Prime95 Blend for 8 hours tomorrow on the faster setting to ensure it’s really really stable

CPU is using about 150W, according to my UPS [load-idle=145W].

Oof.

What’s your cooling scheme for the entire system not just the CPU?

What fans are placed where and are they sucking air in or out, how are they controlled? Where’s the PSU placed and what is it’s fan doing? What CPU cooler with what fan(s) blowing in which direction also what paste are you using?

Me?

Hang on //////

Sorry mate – I’ll get back asap, just broke the spare fishtank setting it up.

Bum.

Maybe an hour or so.

Several things came up. I should be able to get back to you with useful info tomorrow.

I’m thinking that a bit of tweaking on fans might get you some improvement on your CPU temp and possibly the motherboard/RAM.

As an example to get the best airflow in mine I run it with a negative internal air pressure, more exhaust fans than input, which makes for a dustier machine but it runs quieter and cooler that way. All of the case and CPU fans are PWM controlled via the motherboard and during normal use only the rear fan and CPU fans need to run at 600RPM to keep everything cool, flat out all of the fans don’t need to run at more than 700RPM to keep everything in control. I’ve a 4770K running a 4.2Ghz which is 700Mhz over stock.

^^^^ SOMEWHAT WRONG – CBA to fix. They’re all 140mm apart from the REAR ONE=120mm

What’s your cooling scheme for the entire system not just the CPU?

What fans are placed where and are they sucking air in or out, how are they controlled? Where’s the PSU placed and what is it’s fan doing? What CPU cooler with what fan(s) blowing in which direction also what paste are you using?

Overall pressure is -ve. It was better with my 470GTX, which was a blower, the 7970 Vapour-X is a Recirc type, but it much much faster, so meh.

The only fan that is controlled is the CNPS-10X Extreme cooler fan, which is PWM with the 4-position fan controller built-in to the cooler. It can do something like 900-1200, 1000-1500 and 1200-2100 or Manual. With this Xeon I’m just using Low or High PWM modes.

Paste is Artic MX-4.

As you can see, the temps are OK. If I hit 72% of Intel’s max temp when running a power virus for 8 hours, running 30% overclocked and 30% over volts I’m not worried!

I think the Chip itself is not well bonded to it’s heat spreader, as I only used to have a 5C spread with the i7.

I’m considering buying another of these Zalman coolers, as my attempt at lapping it was a failure [ended up bowed, then fixed by hand but still about the same as before] But then, spending another £40 is a bit of a waste of time, as the hottest core is still cool enough. An unmolested cooler may help, or it may not. I guess I could always send it back if it made no difference.

The machine is really near silent unless it’s benching, or if the 7970 is working hard. Max temp for the 7970 is about 63 when 114% power limit, 1180MHz. It’s fans are quite annoying, but still less then the 470was! The massive floorstanding speakers tend to drown thee fans out, however.

The only things I’m thinking I should try are a new HSF and, perhaps turning it 90degrees, but I don’t think I need to do either really.

I do have to remove the rabbit fluff from the coolers and fans regurlary. The bit vents in the plexi-glass are liable to suck fluff in, and the mesh at the front has a foam sheet behind it, and a bit gap at the bottom of the front panel where fluff goes in, too. Design FAIL 😀

Any feedback then?

Good thermal paste, lapping heatsinks really does depend on the heatsink/manufacturer some do some don’t.

What might be worth a try is switching off that rear 120 as its competing/diverting the airflow from the heatsink fan and top fan. I found that I was getting a cooler overall setup with just the heatsink fans and rear on mine without using the top ones. Where I did find the top ones to be of use is when I’m hammering the CPU and GPU as a fair bit of air leaks around the GPU instead out of the back, so possibly switch on your rear fan in a similar scenario.

I found out all of this by using a FAN controller in one of the drive bays and trying various combinations and monitoring not only the CPU temp but all the other sensors on the motherboard. Also when I upgraded to a Asus Mobo it’s Fan Expert software came to a similar conclusion.

Your current heatsink fan is not really drawing any air over your RAM so your suggestion of turning it 90 degrees might be worth a try if so then the rear fan will be of more use.

frostytech.com and silentpcreview.com are worth a read.

I’m using a Noctua NH-D14 which works great but its a beast of a heatsink so it needs a deep case.

Alright mate, that’s certainly an easy one to test out. If turning that fan off helps, I’ll be chuffed, as that’s the one that blows a cold draft across my desk!

One other thing to do I notice you have your hard drives in the cages down at the bottom move them up out of the way of the fan, if they are SATA they are not likely to be needing a fan blowing on them all the time and will survive just fine in the other bays higher up. That way you can also remove the cages holding them and have a really good unimpeded cool air flow in to the bottom of the case from that fan.

Ay up.
When I built this, there were two drives, one at the top and one at the bottom of the cage, most of the air went past towards the 470, and then out the back.

What you can’t see in that pic, is there’s now 5 drives, two of them are bodged in the upper 5″ mounts, including the SSD. The three that are now in the lower are the three hotter ones [still very cool, as you suggest] and the top slot of the cage is written off due to hacksaw indecent [the 7970 is 1cm too long for the case!].

I’ll try your fan trick, and I think I can push my voltages up a few more notches to Intels’ max published .

Not that it’s going to make any difference in real life, but just because I don’t like being defeated, I’m going to bench this sucker at 4.4 or 4.6.

Just.

Because.

Oh, and just for the record, I only lit the fans up for this pic, I’m not a fan of that at all!

I’m kinda wishing I’d bought two 5650s not one 5660. I suspect that I’d have a cooler/more even chip then. Probably hit a higher clock too.

When I planned this, I missed the voltages that people were hammering the chips with. Although mine is a hot/hungry chip, to hit 4.4+ are using 1.4 and for 4.8 they’re using 1.5! Yikes.

I assumed more people were conservative with the voltages like I am.

What voltages are you running on the 4770K? Ram speeds and timings?

I´m curious…. try Cinebench R15 single and multithreaded on it 🙂

I think the performance of these Xeons is epic for the cash. I wish I had another few quid so I could bag another one and get a cooler chip. If I could run, say 4.4 or 4.6 at 1.2V like some of the others can It´d be utterly crushing performance, you can pick the 5650s up for 55 quid! Socket 1366 isn´t dead, oh no

Ram is DDR1600 8-8-8-24 1.5v CPU is 4.3 across all cores with two or less able to run at 4.4 using multiplier only with a max of 1.248v.

CB R15 single is 172, multi is 864 with a max temp of 55C OpenGL is 155.23fps on a R9-280X

I can see your logic, but stopping the rear fan adds 2-3 degrees to each core.

Luckily for me, turning the lights off doesn’t 🙂

I can have 2-3.55GHz with all turbo functions at 1.22VCC/VTT

Temps <65 with the fans on near enough silent. 🙂 🙂

Cinebench Single Processor score for this CPU is about 127 at 4GHz. Ratio 7.48. The newer chips are faster/thread, but when all cores working, this thing is a godsend for socket 1366.

As an aside – why the hell do you score 50FPS more in the OpenGL test?! We have the same GPU. There’s something very funny about that test, I’ve seen lots of odd results over the years.

What do you get in 3DMark Firestrike? That’s probably a more realistic indicator.

Ah but I bet your GPU isn’t running at an 1100 Core 1150 boost with memory at 6.4Ghz with a beast of a heatsink and three fans on it, that’s the out of the box settings.

Funny how we always check this thread the the exact same time.

You’re right – it’s clocked higher! What’s goin’ on?

[It hold these clocks 100% of the time, BTW]

Something’s up. Maybe the screen res?

Mines the R9-280X Toxic Edition which will hold that 1150 boost all the time plus its got 2×8 Pin PCI power connectors to fuel it. No need to play with the powertune settings at all.

1920×1080 for screen res and the latest Catalyst drivers (non beta) off AMD earlier this week.

http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?cid=1&gid=3&sgid=1227&pid=2023&psn=&lid=1&leg=0

Are you sure its at that clock all the time and not throttling in some way as mine needs a hell of a lot more power to support those clocks.

I’ll do some 3D Mark runs tomorrow and see what I get. I can also get the PSU software to do a pile of logging in the background on temps and power draws so I’ll set that up too.

That’ll be a fun comparison. Do close all your background tasks, internet connection/antivirus and end explorer.exe to get a Firestrike score, though, that’s what I do and it’d only be fair!

WRT Speeds – Afterburner reports 1180, or whatever I set it to. The graph does not fall or vary, apart from when starting/exiting gaming when it returns to 300MHz as the idle speed; so I’m, assuming the clocks hold. You can’t be scoring 50% higher because of differences in the cards, surely? If mine’s at stock clocks, that’s circa 25% more computing power/RAM speed on yours. Something’s fishy. I’m guessing we’ll score pretty much the same for Firestrike, though it’s the first time I’ve tested this card against another 7970. My geekbud down in Cornwall has a 970GTX on a 4GHz i7. That scores a bit over 10,000 combined, though his Physics score is about 40% less than for this Xeon at 4. Which makes sense, as it’s much the same just I have 2 more cores 🙂 His card, however is a 2 year newer arch than this one, so it’s to be expected. I’m going to get dual 970s as the last upgrade for this machine. Maybe next year.

I just joined BOINC?SETI@home again for the first time in years.

I have figures here for the throughput of 1GHz Apple G4/Intel Atom [old one]/I7 at 2.7 and the Xeon.

The Xeon is 9.4 times faster per core than the 1GHz G4!

I want to bench the 7970 at SETI, but there’s not work units coming through for it yet. These cards are about the fastest thing to hit a SETI WU, ever. Later models had their FP thoughput cut back – booooo.

CB R15 OpenGL stock is 132

Firestrike stock 8055 overall with graphics at 9242 physics at 10588
with the CPU overclock its 8200, 9259 and 12299

Haha, did you see my score? Literally the same! Well, that at least means nothing’s broken etc, both machines are performing normally, ish.

Your card gets more points, the R9 respin of the 7970 seems a little tiny bit faster.

I shall investigate the clocks, I don’t know how else to watch them apart from with something like Afterburner. I should be good for power, the PSU is 50A on the 12V rail and the voltges are always spot on when I look in Speedfan.

Tell you what, though, you have to agree, sticking a £90 CPU in this 4 year old machine has done wonders for it! It’s toe to toe with a new machine again, and an overclocked one at that. I just wish I’d bough the X5650 for £60 as the extra multiplier didn’t come in useful.

I never did manage >4.2 by the way. I 4.2 is stable, but the power required is too high. 4.4 will boot, but I can’t pass a burn test, so seeing as it puts me over the volts allowed, I’ll settle for 4. In the real world, it would make no difference.

And the OpenGL test is bullox, it would seem.

Maybe its an architecture thing. I wonder if a high-end CAD application would see that difference?

Here is the result of a little experimentation:
[total/GPU score – CPU = 14k]
4GHz – stock clocks [1050 I think] 7366/8228
4GHz – GPU/VRAM overclock [14%] 7996/9016
4GHz – GPU/VRAM overclock PLUS +20% powertune [14%] 7944/9019

[the 8200 score I posted is with a little extra GPU/VRAM clocks, but I haven’t dialled it in and saved it. I think it was about + 17% clocks]

I think I’ll leave the power setting at +0% from now on?!

Unclear what’s going on. My card is 6+8pin with 75W PCIE – available power 300 W total (2×75 W + 1×150 W). Does it really need more?!

With the i7 at 4.1 I just hit 7200 in the past.