Why do people buy top of line chips to clock with?

[Captain Fizz]

Hello folks,

Now, since the T-Bred B's, I've always bought the slowest CPU of the current production and clocked it to over the highest available.
(All on air)

So getting an XP2100 T-Bred B up to over 2GHz IIRC.
XP2500-M to 2.38GHz
X2 2800 to 2.66GHz.

Yet I've noticed people buying XP3200's and getting nearly the same speeds. Or X2 4400's and getting the same or lower clocks.
There seems to be a tiny difference between the clockability of the bottom of the range and top of the range CPU's.
(Sorry - had very limited experience with intel)

So why is it people shell out much £££ for the top of the line CPU's that to me, clock exactly the same as the lowest end?
(Ignoring Cache sizes, you would then just buy the lowest end chip with the higher cache size)

I always recommend peeps get the lowest end and put a 'safe/easy' clock on it.
How much of a benefit is there (if any) in getting a top end CPU to clock with?

Thanks.

 

[Dureth]

With the x4400 the reasoning behind that over a 3800 was the extra cache. Wheather it made a difference or not is another matter. Same with the current 6600 over the 6300.

However higher spec' CPU's will also have a higher multiplier which means that with the same memory (say DDR800) you can get just as high a clock as a lower multiplier chip with more expensive memory (DDR1066). Obviously you can use dividers to get the same result with the lower memory on the lower multiplier chip but this is the easier root.

 

[Mud]

The low-end chips may be the high-end equivalents that failed their testing and were downclocked...they won't clock far in that case.

 

[Captain Fizz]

So basically there's less chance of getting a bad clocker, (I've been lucky) and cache sizes are the main reasons...

With the NF2 chipset - Multi's may have had a difference too.
(A64 doesn't have nearly as adverse an effect running out of sync)

It just puzzles me quite a bit when I see peeps spend up to £200 more for their CPU's (same cache size) and get the same clocks as me.
The reduced risk of a core which has been speed-binned makes a fair bit of sense tho.

 

[harris1986]

urm with the new breed of c2d's the lower clocked stock chips (6300/6400) are clocking just as high as the 6600's in most cases sometimes more and often on lower voltage!

 

[Captain Fizz]

urm with the new breed of c2d's the lower clocked stock chips (6300/6400) are clocking just as high as the 6600's in most cases sometimes more and often on lower voltage!

More cache = less likely to clock as high?
(More heat, more power consumption, more chance of irregularities on the chip due to increased number of transistors...)

I know one of the cores on my X2 will do 2.8 no problems. (Possibly more)
Just the 2nd core only does 2.666. So with dual core, you can only clock as high as the slowest CPU...

 

[Mattus]

Some people just don't have the time and/or inclination to do huge overclocks. They're happy with finding an extra 200Mhz from a high-end chip, and don't mind spending the money... which is fair enough if you have it to spend.

 

[ghgh]

More cache = less likely to clock as high?
(More heat, more power consumption, more chance of irregularities on the chip due to increased number of transistors...)

I know one of the cores on my X2 will do 2.8 no problems. (Possibly more)
Just the 2nd core only does 2.666. So with dual core, you can only clock as high as the slowest CPU...

I dont suppose you know if it is possible to disable either core when in windows with software? as I would like to see the highest screenshot I can get from my x2. Id like to be able to choose what core was being used...I suppose I could make the acpi back to uni processor instead of multi processor but I still wouldn't have an option to choose the single core I wanted the system to run using.

thanks
ghgh

 

[FreeStream]

I dont suppose you know if it is possible to disable either core when in windows with software? as I would like to see the highest screenshot I can get from my x2. Id like to be able to choose what core was being used...I suppose I could make the acpi back to uni processor instead of multi processor but I still wouldn't have an option to choose the single core I wanted the system to run using.

thanks
ghgh

IIRC if you do that it selects Core 0 as the single core, problem is most **** cores are the first ones

 

[Captain Fizz]

You can use Wintasks pro to assign all processes to a single core.
So I assumme there will be other programs to do it too.
(It's my first core that's groovy!)

 

[marscay]

some ppl assume buying a higher-end chip gives them a better chance for a higher overclock overall as the chip itself will be of higher quality, sometimes warranted.

Like the FX series for AMD which had SOI and was popular with the world record chasing benchers, they were expensive but they were of higher quality.

For the latest Intel i'm not so sure there's much of a difference, the little 6300's seem to be overclocking monsters.

 

[Defcon5]

Like the FX series for AMD which had SOI and was popular with the world record chasing benchers, they were expensive but they were of higher quality.
.

All cpus from skt 754 onwards have used SOI

 

[marscay]

SSOI

 

[gurusan]

I plan to always get the processor that has a good balance between price and overclocking potential. For me, it was the 4400x2 and I'm very happy.... stable at 3.2ghz but temps are too high and voltage is too high for my liking to I run 3.03ghz daily which isn't bad at all.

When I upgrade next it will be whatever gives the most performance for the money...right now I think it's the e6400 or e6600. The e6300 is great but it has a very low multiplier...and personally I prefer a higher multiplier when clocking