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Ivy Bridge stepping?

DamoTourettes

DamoTourettes

DamoTourettes

Associate
Joined
14 Dec 2010
Posts
495
Hi all,

We run a ton of SB chips in business instances which are overclocked to 5.1Ghz and beyond, and whilst we'd really like to upgrade to an IB implementation across the board we're understandably waiting until there's perhaps an IB stepping that's going to have the integrated heat spreader potentially soldered onto the chip (thus eliminating some of the issues with IB temperatures when overclocking).

Big call I know, but does anyone know if this stepping is going to be forthcoming, and if so, what's the time frame for it?

Cheers!
 
Fixing the IB TIM only reduces temps by a few kelvin so it's not something you should hold off a big purchase on. Also if you're running SB at 5Ghz + You're only really going to match that performance with IB or slightly exceed it. Not worth the investment IMO. I don't know of any IB chips running constantly at 5Ghz speeds.
 
The use of crappy TIM has virtually no financial gain for Intel. It does however prevent people and OEMs from running 22nm chips at 1.4v and above. I wouldn't be surprised if many of those that have de-lidded start running into problems a year from now.
 
sadbuttrue said:
The use of crappy TIM has virtually no financial gain for Intel. It does however prevent people and OEMs from running 22nm chips at 1.4v and above. I wouldn't be surprised if many of those that have de-lidded start running into problems a year from now.
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That doesn't make sense to me. Why not just give guidelines for voltage and temp, rather than stopping the chip from dissipating heat properly? If people are going to blow up their chips, they're going to do it regardless, and I'd imagine that better heat management would stop chips from blowing.
 
HankScorpio said:
You're only really going to match that performance with IB or slightly exceed it. Not worth the investment IMO
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IIRC this guy needs minimal latency (presumably for some sort of automated trading) so even a slight improvement in single-threaded performance can lead to massive gains. So for example while a 1% performance improvement might be sniffed at by us consumers, to him that could warrant an outlay of thousands.
 
HangTime said:
IIRC this guy needs minimal latency (presumably for some sort of automated trading) so even a slight improvement in single-threaded performance can lead to massive gains. So for example while a 1% performance improvement might be sniffed at by us consumers, to him that could warrant an outlay of thousands.
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BINGO.

The 5-10% increase in work blocks per clock is also something that is very appealing also - 4.8Ghz IB beats 4.8Ghz SB which for us is an immediate win. I'm seriously considering phase change (if I can shoehorn it into a 19" rack mountable case), however am unsure if sub ambient temps are something that's going to be helpful - from all accounts most SB chips basically hit the wall at 5.4Ghz regardless of temps - anyone have any experience of IB and sub ambient temperatures?
 
How many are you buying? Have you considered De-lidding them yourself? If you can do one I'm sure you'd be able to do many. Just get yourself some liquid pro to use.
 
We'd be looking at about 40/50 in the wild - have considered de-lidding them ourselves, but phase change is looking increasingly like it might be the magic bullet - if we can get 6Ghz out of them we'll definitely look at getting them implemented - however rack space is at a premium - anyone know of a preconfigured 19" rack chassis that has phase change already built in?
 
de-lidding just allows you to swap the stock tim for some decent stuff, you put the lid back on afterwards
 
If you do it properly you'll see 10-15c drop in load temperatures, the only reason to put the IHS back on is to protect the core.
 
Jokester said:
If you do it properly you'll see 10-15c drop in load temperatures, the only reason to put the IHS back on is to protect the core.
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With you - however I've got it on good advice that 6Ghz is possible with phase change. Just sorting that out now.

Any suggestions for mobos for that kind of thing? I'm thinking the Asus ROG stuff - apparently their temp sensors go down to -30C, and the VRM's are supposedly heavy duty to support it... as these are going to be production systems they're going to be running around 12 hrs a day @ 100% CPU - an interesting project.
 
X79 is a potential, but from all accounts IB is able to hit 6Ghz+ under phase change (the units I'm looking at are 300W heat load at -30C so should work that easily.

From what I understand, X79 can't get anywhere near those speeds regardless of temps, so I'm thinking it's IB all the way...
 
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