D0 Stepping = BEAST OF A CHIP

[StueyA]

Your right, but it is all relative. HT does increase performance and like the above user said it's not like your going to be at prime temps 24/7 and why would you bother overclocking when your not using one of the best features of the chip.

Well, I had a e6600 that i was steadily having to decrease in speed. At one time it clocked to 3.8, before i bought the i7 it would not run above stock.

It was time to upgrade, now i had a choice, stick with an ageing DS3 that would not accept 45 nm procs, and was possibly part of the problem with my reducing clock speeds, and buy a q6600.

Or, get a load of new kit while i could justify it to the wife. Which would you choose?

So, thats why i bought i7... Because i had to get a new mobo anyhow.

Now, why do i overclock? Hmmmm, why do any of us? Because we like to waste energy, believing we see performance increases. Because we like to pay £££s to leave our computers on overnight just to show the OC community that our latest clocks are prime stable.

But, to be fair, the i7 is the biggest performance leap i have seen since pentium replaced the 486.

Sure i could turn HT on to satisfy the bi-curious and the-octo curious,but i dont need it. I only do a bit of video editing, a little PS work, and some office work. The rest is just fun and gaming

 

[xiphrex]

Surely though the whole point of overclocking is to increase performance.

If for example you turn on HT but this means you have to put the overclock down a bit, but the end result is better performance than when you had HT off, then surely its logical to go with the first option?

In fact the least thing I would do is to benchmark both in some of my real applications and see if there is a difference. Who knows, you may find 3.8ghz with HT on is much better in the real world than 4.2ghz with HT off (the real world being your games, photoshop, etc).

 

[StueyA]

Just ignore the troll.

Did i become a troll somewhere between your reply and his (which followed) ?

Maybe you should engage cerabal hyperthreading to allow you to think and act a little more rationally.

 

[StueyA]

Surely though the whole point of overclocking is to increase performance.

If for example you turn on HT but this means you have to put the overclock down a bit, but the end result is better performance than when you had HT off, then surely its logical to go with the first option?

In fact the least thing I would do is to benchmark both in some of my real applications and see if there is a difference. Who knows, you may find 3.8ghz with HT on is much better in the real world than 4.2ghz with HT off (the real world being your games, photoshop, etc).

Finally rational thought processes emerge. I absolutely agree with you. But i know that at the moment, BF2 does not benefit from HT as it is not multithreaded. Photoshop will benefit a little but i only use it a little; MS office likewise.

I know i dont need quad cores, dual core would suffice. But, I had to build, so i built with the best.

 

[rjk]

Come on Rik, I await your wonderful piece of information that will bring silence to our PCs.

its RJK

look mate - im an ocuk employee so im obviously not here for a slanging match

my main point is that you are running a nehalem chip without hyper threading

which is like driving a lambo at 25mph

i doubt intel would offer a warranty on their parts if it was just going to burn out

a nehalem chip can run to stupid temperatures before it throttles

mine is currently at 4.3ghz and i dont see it go above 60'C with HT on
its hardly going to destroy my chip is it?

i have had it at 4.66GHz with HT on using the same voltage i used on my C0 chip for 4GHz!

my suggestion, in reply to your original post...
your OP states that you want help clocking to 4.5GHz?
why not just turn HT on and leave it at 4ghz - its well within the limits of the chip
plus you would get a bigger speed increase than just running 4 cores at 4.5GHz


posting that something is a 'beast' when you have half the features disabled makes no sense

if you want to disable HT - thats your call and im not slating you for it

but if you didnt want to run HT then why didnt you just get a core 2 quad rig and save yourself a bit of cash?

 

[D D Danneh]

Higher temps = shorter life. HT adds 12 deg. Simples.

Yes, it will shorten life. But by how much? 6 months, a year at most? Unless you plan on keeping your build for 10 years, that extra life is completely useless. In fact, I'd even go as far as to say the CPU would 'die' from not being able to run the future programs/OS's BEFORE it would 'die' literally.

I can understand turning HT off for the sake of benchmarking, to see how many e-peen MHz you can get, but for actual use, I would rather have HT on, just because the applications that do benefit from it will see a much larger boost in performance than more MHz would give.

Perhaps you'll want to enable hyperthreading in the future? As more programs become multi-threaded, the benefit from HT may outweigh the benefit from more MHz in even regular applications. Maybe when octo-cores hit we'll start seeing some more benefit to HT.

Even better would have been if i7 allowed a sort of 'speedstep' but for hyperthreading. If it detected when more threads were being used/needed, and it switched 'profile' to enable HT and cut down the MHz slightly, during use, that would've been awesome.

Whatever, personal choice and all that, if you want to disable HT, go for it Do whatever works best for you.

 

[Ninja Please!]

I think what ruffled the feathers was the implied claim was DO stepping had lower temps which by the way the post is titled and a few comments and I can totally see how that conclusion was drawn. The problem is that DO steppings do not run any cooler than previous stepping so the title of this thread should really say i7= Beast of a chip because turn HT on and temps are no different than CO steppings. I can totally see how that could ruffle a few feathers and get you labled a troll. However I do not think that was the OP's intentions.

Some people bought an xbox/playstation/iphone just to smash them in the parking lot. If you want to turn off your HT, it's your chip to use/not use how you want.

 

[Ninja Please!]

We have had the information on the DO steppings from intel for quite some time and even intel's site made it clear that there were no major changes that would allow any higher clocks or lower temps so why is it so hard for some to swallow that they don't have some sort of super i7?

 

[drak3]

Taking into consideration that the cheapest platform (the whole thing) 5 years from now will cost pennys and be 10 times faster than an i7, then no I do not care if it dies on its 5th aniversary sharp!

Why people care about CPU life? Just for the sake of argument?

 

[rjk]

We have had the information on the DO steppings from intel for quite some time and even intel's site made it clear that there were no major changes that would allow any higher clocks or lower temps so why is it so hard for some to swallow that they don't have some sort of super i7?

my old chip
i7 920 c0 - 4ghz - 1.45v
4.3ghz max if i pushed it

my new chip
i7 920 d0 - 4ghz - 1.18v
4.66ghz max when pushed

bit of a difference

every 920 i have seen with a d0 stepping has done a decent clock with minimal voltage increase [if any]

much better than the current batch of c0 chips that are needing 1.3+ vcore to run 3.4GHz

im guessing that the 950/975 will follow the trend and run on low volts too

when intel specced nehalem originally, their goal was to create a multi threaded platform that could handle intensive tasks such as virtualisation and number crunching requiring low power to do such things

granted - when overclocked, an i7 dumps some serious heat load

but tbh - if your cooler isnt up to the job then you shouldnt be overclocking the chip anyway

 

[rjk]

However I do not think that was the OP's intentions.

the op stated that he wanted 4.5 out of his chip

something not as easily obtainable as running at 4ghz with ht on which would perform similarly if not better than 4.5 & no HT

many members have tried to bring this point to his attention

but it is inevitably up to him weather or not he wants to turn ht on

 

[StueyA]

Well, I tried to avoid posting to this thread again.... I really didnt wanna be labelled a troll, or told i should have HT on blah blah blah.

Rik you seem to concede that to enable HT is my choice, thanks, it is, now if others can accept that then that would be great.

Now, if all those people who ranted about my purchasing an i7 when it is designed for HT, could now go tell everyone who owns an extreme edition chip that the lesser versions of there procs clock better, and that increases in multi are not as beneficial as increases in FSB, yada yada yada; then maybe i'll listen to em. I bet at least one of my critics bought an EE intel once...

Just to reitterate the point of my post, the D0 stepping is a great chip, I built my system and had it at 4ghz in an hour. This from a newbie (to i7) must go at least a little way to showing how damned good the chip is.

The fact that my negating to use HT has got on some peoples nerves is actually quite hilarious. I also own fast motorbikes, but i reserve hyper speeds for the track, does this also bug you ?

Now please, everyone that criticised me, tell me that you use every channel of your television subscription, or get off my back. For you truly are the hypocritical trolls here.

 

[Ninja Please!]

every 920 i have seen with a d0 stepping has done a decent clock with minimal voltage increase [if any]

much better than the current batch of c0 chips that are needing 1.3+ vcore to run 3.4GHz

I have CO stepping, 1.18vcore prime95 stable at the clock speed listed in spec. I can go to 4.0 with a vcore of 1.25.

 

[rjk]

I have CO stepping, 1.18vcore prime95 stable at the clock speed listed in spec. I can go to 4.0 with a vcore of 1.25.

good work - looks like you got one of the good ones

im leaving the thread now - thanks

 

[magicroundabout]

so when riding your bike at hyper speed on the track do you not take it past 3k rpm?
Because that's how your using your chip with HT turned off.

Once past 3k rpm it's a whole different ball game is it not?!

 

[JediFragger]

Ok peeps enough talk about HT on or off! It's upto the individual whether to use it or not. No more please

 

[Audigex]

You can always re-enable HT when it becomes more useful - for now it's like the old Dual v Quad argument, 4 higher clocked cores is better than 4 lower clocked cores and 4 lower clocked logical cores.

 

[JohnnyG]

If you have an issue with something that happens on the forum in future you must contact an admin or moderator about it, contact details are in the faq, the running of the forum generally has nothing to do with the shop and most of us don't work there.
I'm going to clean up the mess and hopefully you'll calm down and enjoy the forums

 

[spitzoid]

I agree with the people who say that HT off is a waste.

 

[Nelly]

I don't believe half what people say without solid proof i.e. full stable tests with Prime95 or LinX if you really want to push your temps/stability.

I'm going to post 2 screenshots, the 1st one with my "D0" the 2nd with my "C0/C1" revision, using the same motherboard, same overclock but using less voltage for the "D0".

Look at my load temps, they are 21°C LESS with the "D0" compared to the "C0/C1" this is with Hyperthreading ON using LinX.

If you don't want to use Hyperthreading, you may as well of bought a cheaper P45 Q9550 setup, get 4 x 2GB ram & you wont see any difference in real life.