E8400 Vs E8500

[Vimes]

OK had a quick check and its not looking good - though that could be my cack handed oc ability.

First I wound down the multiplier to 6 and loosened memory timings to 5,5,5,18 and went with a 1:1 divider. I then tweaked the FSB up and hit a wall of 371 . However, isn't the wall a combination of mobo and CPU, ie it would be higher with a faster CPU?

For me I can run at 8x400 with a mem of x2. Or 10x320 with a mem of x2.5. Both of those give 800mhz speed for the memory. Both are stable (with enough vcore). The 400mhz FSB is no problem for the motherboard, nor would I have expected it to be. I am a little surprised that you have problem of getting more than 371mhz FSB.

Second, I wound down the FSB to my normal stable 333Mhz and upped the Memory multiplier. On this board you get set multipliers eg 2x, 2.4x, 2.5x then a jump to 3x. It was fine on 2.5x (833Mhz), but wouldn't post on 3x. So with 833 translating to 416 on a 1:1 divider, that's not much cop is it?

Think about what you have written. Your memory is rated at 800mhz. It 'seems' ok at 833mhz so then you go to 933mhz and find that it has a problem. Well that is a big jump isn't it..? You could have tried a small increase in the FSB but left the memory divider at 2.5x. I believe that the voltage for the memory is 2.1v but I'm not sure if their is a higher maximum, although the timings could also be slackened a little.

My challenge, and yours if you have 1GB sticks, is a little difficult, as I have four sticks and they seem to be harder, from what I have read, to overclock compared to two 1GB ones.

 

[PCZ]

At the end of the day, you can spend your money any way you choose
Glad we can agree on that.

I concede that it is not correct to state categorically the 8500 is better silicon, but rather to say it is believed to be higher binned.

BTW
I think we all benefit from the genorous amount of headroom Intel allows

 

[Kirth Gersen]

Thanks Vimes, useful. Given me one or 2 more options to play with.

Are you going to dive into the E8xxx series? If so what would be your other upgrades or do you think the chip change will be sufficient?

 

[wellibob]

The 8500 has a higher multi than a 8400, thus higher price, better possible acheivable clocks. Obivous post but none the less truth.

 

[Vimes]

Thanks Vimes, useful. Given me one or 2 more options to play with.

Are you going to dive into the E8xxx series? If so what would be your other upgrades or do you think the chip change will be sufficient?

I would doubt that I can be bothered to spend that much money on a 8x00 CPU and then justify it as an upgrade to my E2180. I wouldn't be buying a CPU, as such, I would be paying for the difference between the 2180 and the 8x00. Also with the memory that I have got, which does not overclock to allow the 9x multi on the 8400 to get to 4ghz (which is not guaranteed anyway) it could be more expensive than just buying a CPU. The 8500 is something that I could not buy just for the extra 0.5x multi.

Initially I did toy with the idea but due to the above factors, and my E2180 coping very well with everything that I use it for, the purchase would, to me, be a waste of money.

The next CPU that I would buy would have to offer a real difference to me and not just be a small incremental change as the above would offer, imo.

 

[Kirth Gersen]

I had another look at my settings. 371 FSB is definitely max whatever - including vcore raised to 1.5 . I'm putting that down to my L2 revision E2160.

Some success with memory. I realised that when I tested earlier I had not reduced the CPU multi. When I reduced to 6, I managed to get 371*2.4 (5:4 divider) = 890 so top whack for the Geil in this combination is 445 Mhz.

So to conclude, if I get lucky and the board is up to it, I might max out on 4Ghz with an E8400 and 4.2Ghz on an E8500.

4 is a bit of magic number. I guess my best chance of achieving it would be with the E8500. That's a 33% improvement on my current setup. With this rationale:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=10951109&postcount=32

I guess I'll go for it. Thanks for your help Vimes - really clarified my thinking.

 

[Vimes]

The very best of luck to you Kirth and I really hope that you can achieve 4Ghz. Remember, not wanting to put a dampener on it, that the percentage increase achieved from clock speed will not equate to the same performance increase, but I guess that you know that already.

You have done really well with your memory clocking and I'm pleased that it looks to be good enough to support your 8500. Hopefully your board should not be the problem of not being able to get above 371mhz. I had not realised that the limitation could be the CPU itself, that seems strange to me.

Keep us posted on how you go on

EDIT: BTW I run FSX at 1680x1050 with the acceleration pack (includes SP2) and with lots of eyecandy and it seems to run fine for me. I am not sure if it is just pure mhz from dual core that would best suit your needs or the power of a 6600 quad that would be better with the game FSX, but then again FSX has not really been designed for making use of multi core CPU's...?

 

[Kirth Gersen]

I am not sure if it is just pure mhz from dual core that would best suit your needs or the power of a 6600 quad that would be better with the game FSX, but then again FSX has not really been designed for making use of multi core CPU's...?

Off topic - but check this out.

http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=197&topic_id=31320

Its a long thread, but in summary FSX makes full use of Duals. If you have specialist add-on systems (not planes and scenery), then an extra core is handy, the fourth is superfluous.

I firmly believe the extra grunt (c500Mhz) of a dual is worth more than the 2 extra cores for FSX.

Back to thread!

 

[helmutcheese]

That's a gross assumption with no evidence whatsoever to back it up.

The only way the E8500 would be predictably "better silicon" than the E8400 is if Intel were testing and speed-binning them, in which case none of the E8400s would be clocking passed 3Ghz as they'd have been binned as E8500s.

At the end of the day, you can spend your money any way you choose but it's still 45% more money for only 6% more speed and no guarantee that the chip will overclock any better. Just not VFM in my book.

Go and read over on XS and you will see for yourself, dont mean some E8400 wont be great but IMO they are Binning better samples for E8500, makes sence too, same as Nvidia do for GPU's then laser lock to lower if not clock as high.