Professional OC'ing

monkey_boy

monkey_boy

monkey_boy

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Joined
15 Aug 2006
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Leicester UK
Hi All,

I'm looking at some new high-ish spec PCs for work. I'll be looking to get 3 machines in total for upto £750 each, excluding all peripherals.

Looking around the website, I think the Titan Goliath is the closest to what I'm looking for but I would welcome any further advice. The machines will be used for video editing, video encoding, Photoshop, a little bit of 2D CAD and some fairly complex powerpoint presentations. Usually, more than one of these will be going on at the same time on the same machine. This has to all stay on 32 bit, Windows 7 Ultimate (Volume License).

My questions then are:

Am I looking at the right kind of spec for what I want to do?

Does the overclocked machine I posted above come with a warranty for the CPU even though it's overclocked?

Where can I find comparative benchmark scores for the OD'd i7 920 vs the Standard i7 920?

Do OcUK do any extended warranty?

Is there anything else I need to consider that I haven't mentioned?



Thanks,
 
Well for one, I would try to get 64bit Windows as 32bit will limit you in the things you are trying to do.
 
MCH said:
u might need 16GB of ram to handle those complex powerpoint presentations ...
Click to expand...

Although I'm sure sarcasm has the potential to be incredibly helpful, this is not the place for it.

monkey_boy, 32-bit limits the amount of RAM (memory) you can access, to 3gb, which will restrict how much multi-tasking you can do, and will slow down CAD stuff quite a lot. I recommend 64-bit. You won't need to worry about different hardware as the vast majority of modern CPUs (and ALL of the i7s and i5s) can handle either 32bit or 64bit.

OcUK supply a one year warranty, despite the overclock, but you'd have to send them a webnote to ask about an extended warranty. I'm fairly sure they'll be able to accomodate you.

You're unlikely to find any benchmarks specifically for "Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz D0 Overclocked to 3.40GHz" as a CPU can be overclocked to a huge array of different values, at the very least everything between 2.66GHz and 3.40GHz on this CPU, which is 74 different values.

I suspect, unless you are keen on Gaming as well (although I can see you didn't mention it) you would probably be better off choosing a slightly less powerful machine. I would recommend this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-210-OK&groupid=43&catid=1445&subcat=

It is Quad-core, so still powerful, with 4gb of RAM (plenty, and if you are insistant on 32-bit, only wastes 1gb rather than 3gb like the Goliath), and with a better graphics card as standard than the Goliath. Plus you'll save £900 in total, and I'm fairly sure you'll barely notice the difference in power!
 
MCH said:
u might need 16GB of ram to handle those complex powerpoint presentations ...
Click to expand...
Thanks for your input :)

Ease said:
Although I'm sure sarcasm has the potential to be incredibly helpful, this is not the place for it.

monkey_boy, 32-bit limits the amount of RAM (memory) you can access, to 3gb, which will restrict how much multi-tasking you can do, and will slow down CAD stuff quite a lot. I recommend 64-bit. You won't need to worry about different hardware as the vast majority of modern CPUs (and ALL of the i7s and i5s) can handle either 32bit or 64bit.

OcUK supply a one year warranty, despite the overclock, but you'd have to send them a webnote to ask about an extended warranty. I'm fairly sure they'll be able to accomodate you.

You're unlikely to find any benchmarks specifically for "Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz D0 Overclocked to 3.40GHz" as a CPU can be overclocked to a huge array of different values, at the very least everything between 2.66GHz and 3.40GHz on this CPU, which is 74 different values.

I suspect, unless you are keen on Gaming as well (although I can see you didn't mention it) you would probably be better off choosing a slightly less powerful machine. I would recommend this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-210-OK&groupid=43&catid=1445&subcat=

It is Quad-core, so still powerful, with 4gb of RAM (plenty, and if you are insistant on 32-bit, only wastes 1gb rather than 3gb like the Goliath), and with a better graphics card as standard than the Goliath. Plus you'll save £900 in total, and I'm fairly sure you'll barely notice the difference in power!
Click to expand...
Great post, thank you. The 64bit issue is one that I'm working around to. I know that the amount of addressable is reduced to 3Gb, so my thinking is that getting faster components should go some way to compensating for that shortfall?

All of the other workstations use 32-bit software, and we have volume licenses for most of the software we use and have already bought individual licenses for the less mainstream software, and making the change to 64-bit would more than double the cost of the upgrade. The choice at the moment is to either replace 3 machines and remain on 32-bit or replace one for now and move to 64-bit. Are the limitations of 32-bit worth scrapping the upgrade for the other two machines?

Gaming isn't an issue as these PCs are for a small dept at work.
 
MCH said:
u gotta admit complex powerpoint presentations made u laugh come onnnn
Click to expand...
As I'm sure you know, working with slow office apps is one of the most frustrating things known to man. It would be nice if I can replace these machines so that while they're encoding or rendering, the user can be doing something else that is still quite demanding at the same time.
 
You do know that you can run 32bit software just fine on a 64bit Operating System... right?

Just make sure you set up a test environment with Windows 7 64bit before hand and see if the programs you use actually work. You don't have to buy new software imo?

I'd make sure to get the following:
- Quad core
- 4GB of ram, 6 or 8 if possible.
- Windows 7 (64bit!!!)

Maybe:
- 2x 500GB / 1TB HD in raid-1
 
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I was aware of that. Is it the case that although windows will be able to see all of the RAM, none of the 32-bit apps will be able to use anything over the 3Gb limit?
 
No that's no problem. The OS takes care of the ram and how much can be given to a program(, as far as I'm aware).
 
monkey_boy said:
That changes things! How would 64-bit apps improve the performance then?
Click to expand...

Faster higher precision calculations running in native x64 plus more addressable memory means you'd probably see a little free boost depending on how memory hungry your apps(assuming they can run in native x64). The only pitfall is that 64 bit pointers are double the size of 32 bit pointers however the extra 1gb of addressable space would more then compensate for that.
 
take console evolution , 8bit 16 bit 32 bit 64 bit 128 bit etc etc higher is better its all u need to know

so it would be in your best interests to try and get hold of some windows 7 64 bit software if u can
 
MCH said:
take console evolution , 8bit 16 bit 32 bit 64 bit 128 bit etc etc higher is better its all u need to know

so it would be in your best interests to try and get hold of some windows 7 64 bit software if u can
Click to expand...
You obviously don't realise how patronising you are. I'm not messing around with my home PC to try and squeeze out a few extra fps for FarCry or whatever the latest is. I'm looking for a fast but stable system that is suitable for it's application. I need to understand what the pro's and con's are of each different setup and balance that against whatever increase in cost it might bring, so it is not just a case of 'higher is better it's all u need to know'.
 
Hey there again monkey_boy. It seems your (admittadly slightly amusing) comment about Powerpoint has dragged all the trolls out from their caves!

A 64-bit OS allows the OS to see all of your memory, up to 16gb. Each 32-bit program can only see 3gb, but not necessarily the same 3gb. So if you had 9gb of RAM, and three 32-bit programs, they'd still each get all they could need.

As this is for a department at work I'm even more convinced you don't need an i7 machine. You probably don't even need a Quad-core, though I would recommend one myself. The machine I linked is definitely the best option I can see on OcUK, but if you're against AMD (I know some people are) perhaps you should put together a machine yourself from Intel parts, as there doesn't seem to be a cheap Quad-core Intel available although I know they are easily enough put together!

As you don't even need a graphics card, maybe try ringing up OcUK and asking how much cheaper you could get the system without graphics cards. As you are buying three I'm sure OcUK will do everything within their power to help you.
 
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