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Cherry Picking...

Andy__C

Andy__C

Andy__C

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Joined
24 Mar 2011
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Cardiff
I see references to cherry picked CPU's occasionally in build logs etc...

Am just curious to how this is done.


Is it just a case of someone having access to a lot of CPU's, say in a store... popping them out of the boxes and testing them?...

Or is this something that comes from the manufacturer where they know certain batches can handle more of an o/c and pass that through to the retailer?
 
Some people buy a large amount of cpu's and test which gives the best overclock they keep and return the rest.
There use to be golden batches with Intel chips and people use to track them down.
 
Andy__C said:
I see references to cherry picked CPU's occasionally in build logs etc...

Am just curious to how this is done.


Is it just a case of someone having access to a lot of CPU's, say in a store... popping them out of the boxes and testing them?...

Or is this something that comes from the manufacturer where they know certain batches can handle more of an o/c and pass that through to the retailer?
Click to expand...

A retailer won't do this with retail chips as they come in a sealed box so they couldn't then be sold as retail.

They do it with OEM chips which just come in trays. They can be tested and just put back if they don't come up to the required standard.
 
Because of DSR it is possible to buy, say, 5 CPUs and return the 4 weakest ones without incurring any costs (other than the return delivery). Not sure how many people have time to test 5 CPUs for maximum stable overclocks in 7 days though, lol. 2 or 3 is more realistic I think.
 
haha im tooooo lazy to even try to test multiple cpus lol.

Still for those who want the best overclocks its the way to go.

I too only buy retail. Better chance of a good chip :D
 
yes even a retail boxed cpu could be returned under DSR but to be honest it's more hassle than it is worth.

especially with the current generation.

You can get to the point where you are GPU limited which is more often than not.

Unless you want to get in to the whole e-peen my cpu is faster than yours in synthetic benchmarks stuff.
 
Aurhinius said:
yes even a retail boxed cpu could be returned under DSR but to be honest it's more hassle than it is worth.
Click to expand...

But it couldn't then be sold as new once the box has been opened.

If you buy retail you're guaranteed a chip which hasn't been tested and rejected as a poor overclocker.

There's no guarantee you'll get a good chip but you can guarantee you won't get a reject.
 
that was my initial concern... i didn't think about the OEM side... I couldn't see retail boxes being opened, properly re-sealed and re-sold.
 
It's a lengthy and somewhat tedious process of either buying quite a few in bulk and then testing each individually or buying them one a pop and doing the same but with the caveat of it taking longer. Naturally you sell of those that don't meet the mark and so the story continues until there's that cherry.

Takes a lot of determination, even CPU's from the same batches can differ in quality due to coming from a different wafer series or from a separate location on a wafer itself.

The sad truth is that a lot of the better chips have a lower VID (even if Intel has stopped enabling this information via reading the appropriate register) which impacts heat production despite running on a lower VCore. Given that you really need to get into water cooling or above and so if you take this approach professionally you end up spending a lot of dough and time.

I was lucky back when I did with this the Q6600's as it only took me five chips to find that L737Bxxx series that did 3.6GHz at 1.272V.

The best way to do this is to probably sell CPU's for a living and have trays of OEM versions which you can test witout opening up the box.
 
Huh, never heard of this before. Never even crossed my mind! The gains from getting these cpu's would only be 2 or 3 mhz?
 
EggCustard said:
It's a lengthy and somewhat tedious process of either buying quite a few in bulk and then testing each individually or buying them one a pop and doing the same but with the caveat of it taking longer. Naturally you sell of those that don't meet the mark and so the story continues until there's that cherry.

Takes a lot of determination, even CPU's from the same batches can differ in quality due to coming from a different wafer series or from a separate location on a wafer itself.

The sad truth is that a lot of the better chips have a lower VID (even if Intel has stopped enabling this information via reading the appropriate register) which impacts heat production despite running on a lower VCore. Given that you really need to get into water cooling or above and so if you take this approach professionally you end up spending a lot of dough and time.

I was lucky back when I did with this the Q6600's as it only took me five chips to find that L737Bxxx series that did 3.6GHz at 1.272V.

The best way to do this is to probably sell CPU's for a living and have trays of OEM versions which you can test witout opening up the box.
Click to expand...

1.272V for 3.6 !!!!!!! OMG !!!!- mine needs 1.55 for 3.5 !!
 
Kobi said:
Huh, never heard of this before. Never even crossed my mind! The gains from getting these cpu's would only be 2 or 3 mhz?
Click to expand...

Typical range for the SB cpu's is more like 4.3-5.2GHz, so quite a bit more significant than 2-3MHz
 
I wonder why the max overclock band is so large on Intel? 4.3-5.2ghz is rather large.

With the C2 stepping AMD 965BEs like I've got, the range was 3.8-3.9ghz generally, very occasionally 4.0ghz (never saw a stable one though).
 
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