Intel X38 Tango - Is High FSB Overclocking Worth It?
by Rajinder Gill on February 26, 2008 3:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Two-Stepping with the Test Bed…
| ASUS Maximus Extreme Dual-Core Overclocking / Benchmark Testbed |
|
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Intel Core 2 Duo - E8500 |
| CPU Voltage | Various |
| Cooling | Swiftech Apogee GTX, Thermochill PA120.3 radiator, dual Laing DDC Ultra pumps in series, 1/2" ID (3/4" OD) Tygon tubing, 3x Panaflo 120x38mm fans @ 7-12v in push configuration for CPU, 1x Panaflo 120x25mm fan for cooling the MCH |
| Power Supply | OCZ Pro Xstream 1000w |
| Memory | OCZ DDR3 PC3-14400 (DDR-1800) Platinum Edition (2G/4GB) |
| Memory Settings | Various |
| Video Cards | MSI 8800GTS-512 |
| Video Drivers | NVIDIA 169.28 |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital 7200RPM 250GB - WD2500KS |
| Optical Drives | Plextor PX-755A |
| Case | Lian Li 75 |
| BIOS | 0803 |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional SP2, Vista 64-Ultimate |
| . | |
[Ed:While I'm here, let me apologize for all the ballroom dance references; I strike a pretty impressive pose in a tail suit, but even I wouldn't go so far as to do ballroom and overclocking analogies. ;-)]
Our review of the ASUS Maximus Extreme is located here, while jumping here will provide details about the P5E3 Premium for those needing further details on these boards.
We started our testing using a 65nm E6850 - a processor that is capable of reaching high FSB speeds with relative ease. Once the groundwork for testing was in place, we moved over to Intel's latest and greatest dual-core, the E8500 based on Penryn technology. Although many users are using or considering quad-core processors currently, we have already covered much of their overclocking ability by using them as the basis for our recent performance motherboard reviews. Dual-core processors allow higher FSB overclocking potential, and as we are concentrating on FSB related performance and VMCH scaling today, using these processors is the logical choice.
The dual-core processors are far easier to overclock and provide a lower overall thermal output when overvolted - not to mention that the dual-core processors are far kinder to PWM voltage supply circuits when overclocked. Although we are using a DDR3-based motherboard here, we should begin to see availability of additional DDR2-based X48 boards in the coming weeks. We may venture into similar testing on the DDR2 boards and quad-core processors in the coming weeks if our readers deem this type of article interesting.
We used a Lian Li 75 case for these particular tests. Northbridge cooling comes from a 120mm fan, which also provides additional airflow to the PWM MOSFETs and memory modules. Passive cooling of the X38 chipset results in system instability with as little as 1.29VMCH (9X400FSB) when its temperature reaches 48C during stress testing, pretty much ruling out any kind of serious overclocking without airflow over the components.
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AndyKH - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link
When reading the article, I didn't find any info on how you adjusted tRD. I thought such adjustments weren't available in the BIOS except for certain X48 boards from ASUS (unless you resorted to FSB strap settings that might limit memory ratios). Is this setting beginning to show up on X38 boards as well?Rajinder Gill - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link
There is a full BIOS guide for this board here (part of the full review).. 'Transaction Booster' is the function.http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3172&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3172&am...
regards
Raja
Aurhinius - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link
I'd be interested to see something like this done with a Max formula board. Takes the X38 and pairs it with DDR2 rather than DDR3 which is still out of sensible reach for most people due to price.Then you can compare memory performance and settings on the same chipset with the two types of memory. Throw a quad in to the mix as well.
It's also going to illuminate any benefits (if there are any) of moving to an X48 platform from an X38.
Keep up the great work. These articles are a world apart from anything else I have seen and has people thinking how they evaluate their systems at all levels of experience.
Well done!
Rajinder Gill - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link
A DDR2 version will be incoming, as well as X48 asap. We have a few reviews to get done first, but will try to incorporate this form of testing into them..regards
Raja
Zak - Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - link
Nicely written indeed but I gave up on overclocking, the real life benefits are not worth the effort. My 3GHz C2D runs at 3.6GHz easily with Tuniq Tower. Do I notice any difference in games? Photoshop? Nope. I used to get more excited about o/clocking I guess it passed with age:) Good luck to everyone though:)Z.
Nickel020 - Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - link
I quite like the recent articles, that kind of quality infos & analysis is very rare.I also liked the inclusion of some real world benchmarks, although the tRD article was great, I was missing some benchmarks demonstrating the real world effects.
Only thing is that DDR3 is still not an issue for most people, but the article is still well worth reading since since it explains underlying factors that affect performance.
menting - Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - link
the author questions why some memory manufacturers sell CAS9 DDR3-1900 as "performance memory" even though it means it has pitiful cas latency. The reason is that "performance" cannot be judged by cas latency alone. Sure with a low latency you can get a burst of data quicker, but with back to back reads on a memory, a higher clock speed is better. So it all depends how you want to look at it and how applications make use of the memory.Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - link
Hi,I would still rather buy performance parts that scale to Cas 7 at ddr 1800 than Cas 9 at DDR 1900+. The FSB/tRD and VMCH requirements just don't make intelligent sense. Then we have the 2N command rate to play with when we begin to scale much past DR-1900. I would call it a lose-lose situation.
regards
Raja
Griswold - Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - link
Disco Stu likes the style of this article!Samus - Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - link
An unusually written article if I've ever seen one ;)