Dual core harder to overclock?

lemonkettaz · 31 Jan 2006 at 15:41

Is it harder to overclock than a single core.. or is it just the same

Devious · 31 Jan 2006 at 16:41

lemonkettaz said:
Is it harder to overclock than a single core.. or is it just the same

Its procedure is pretty much the same as a siingle core. There is usually a bit more heat generated though and also with 2 cores there is more chance of one of them being a poor clocker and holding you back.

Agent WD40 · 31 Jan 2006 at 18:30

Dual-core certainly throws out more heat!!

I've just got my opty 170 and clocked it to 2.5ghz and look at this!!!

Phemo · 31 Jan 2006 at 18:38

Not surprising that it kicks out more heat really

What cooler is that with? My XP-120 keeps my X2 @ 2.66GHz at between 50 and 55 degrees C after having been loaded with 24 hours of two Prime95 instances - that's with 1.45 volts too. Still, 51 isn't too much to worry about.

Agent WD40 · 31 Jan 2006 at 18:51

Phemo said:
Not surprising that it kicks out more heat really What cooler is that with? My XP-120 keeps my X2 @ 2.66GHz at between 50 and 55 degrees C after having been loaded with 24 hours of two Prime95 instances - that's with 1.45 volts too. Still, 51 isn't too much to worry about.

I'm using a ThermalTake Silent Tower but am considering water cooling with this kind of themps!!

I'm just impressed that its doing 2.5ghz on 1.35V and it stable as you like. This CPU feels like it can go miles further but the heat is going to be the limiting factor.

What temps should I be worried about?

Tute · 31 Jan 2006 at 20:28

I think OC'ing a Dual Core would be similar to running two hard drives in RAID-0. There are considerable performance gains to be had, yet the RAID (or CPU in this case) would only be as fast as it's slowest part.

Having said that, the X2's all seem to be stonking overclockers.

Phemo · 1 Feb 2006 at 06:44

Agent WD40 said:
What temps should I be worried about?

Hard to say really. I'd personally be uncomfortable with 60 degrees C and over but to be honest, as long as it's stable, it's not a big problem

SpudMaster · 2 Feb 2006 at 17:14

with my 170, im not having problems with cpu heat (using water) but the PWMIC area on my dfi ultra-d gets hotter n hotter the more i push the cpu. at 2.7ghz with 1.39v it not really a problem but for 2.8ghz it needs 1.48v on the core and the PWMIC is hitting 67-70 degrees. The cpu seems stable till the PWMIC hits these temps

IzaLearnin · 2 Feb 2006 at 19:16

SpudMaster said:
with my 170, im not having problems with cpu heat (using water) but the PWMIC area on my dfi ultra-d gets hotter n hotter the more i push the cpu. at 2.7ghz with 1.39v it not really a problem but for 2.8ghz it needs 1.48v on the core and the PWMIC is hitting 67-70 degrees. The cpu seems stable till the PWMIC hits these temps

I was having a similar issue after changing from the xp120 (which cooled the pwmic area) to the Evo 120 which doesn't! I fixed a low power Papst 120mm fan to blow over both my ram and pwmic heatsinks and used a 4-3 pin connector to use the m/board pwmic fan header and Smartguardian to control the fanspeed according to temperature. When browsing etc fans are quiet, when gaming they are probably noisy but with the sound up who care's! Temps are no longer a problem.

Havana_UK · 3 Feb 2006 at 17:25

X2s are good clockers, however, I have some observations:
1. They don't go as far as the single cores
2. One core is normally better than the other, i.e. one core will be stable at a given speed but the other core needs more volts to get stable

Hav

Legless · 3 Feb 2006 at 21:30

When you overclock a dual core system, do you overclock each core seperately, or both at the same time/speed... :confused:

Agent WD40 · 3 Feb 2006 at 21:39

Legless said:
When you overclock a dual core system, do you overclock each core seperately, or both at the same time/speed...

both cores at the same time, they are controlled by the same factors

Legless · 3 Feb 2006 at 22:48

Agent WD40 said:
both cores at the same time, they are controlled by the same factors

Ah, thanks for clearing that up, i was a bit confused as to how you overclock dual core in the bios, now i understand...

Ping · 4 Feb 2006 at 02:41

Havana_UK said:
X2s are good clockers, however, I have some observations:
1. They don't go as far as the single cores
2. One core is normally better than the other, i.e. one core will be stable at a given speed but the other core needs more volts to get stable

Hav

is there a way to tell if 1 core is better the other ?

kbc · 4 Feb 2006 at 02:50

Ping said:
is there a way to tell if 1 core is better the other ?

Yes run an instance of Prime on each core or some other stress testing program, if one fails the test prematurely or earlier than the other core, you have your answer.

Havana_UK · 4 Feb 2006 at 15:13

Ping said:
is there a way to tell if 1 core is better the other ?

they way I did it was to run one instance of Prime95, and change affinity from one core to the next while the test was running.

It failed quite quickly on Core 0 until I up'd the volts.

Core 1 ran nicely at stock volts at 2.6GHz, but Core 0 needed 1.45V to get it stable.

Hav

Ping · 9 Feb 2006 at 02:23

Ah thats cleared that up for me. Keepin all these little bits in my head for the next upgrade

Big.Wayne · 9 Feb 2006 at 03:51

IzaLearnin said:
I was having a similar issue after changing from the xp120 (which cooled the pwmic area) to the Evo 120 which doesn't! I fixed a low power Papst 120mm fan to blow over both my ram and pwmic heatsinks and used a 4-3 pin connector to use the m/board pwmic fan header and Smartguardian to control the fanspeed according to temperature.

I have always thought that its better to have a large fan blowing air down onto the CPU and surrounding circuitry, but it seems a lot of people place the cooling emphasis on their CPU alone.

From what I have read and some personal experience it seems to help keep things running smooth. Also the power regulators don't function as well when they start to boil, the effect of this can be a fluctuating vCore which doesn't help an overclock at all.

The PWM area of my old overclocked P4 would hit 70°C no problem when I was using the stock fan, but when I changed to the SP-94 + 92mm YS-Tech the temps in this area dropped to about 36°C

Super-PI times were the same though!

Ping · 9 Feb 2006 at 16:26

cooling all components has got to be good their is no downside to it.