PLEASE tell me if my P5WDH is well O/C

davroch

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Nov 22, 2006
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Hi,
I am david from jerusalem.
I am really new in O/C and before i fry my new PC I want to ask you guys what do you think of my settings ;)
My purpose is not to get scores in 3Dmark, I use my PC essentially for Flight simming and the new Microsoft FSX simulator needs some strong O/C as you probably know.
I just would like you to tell me if I didn't forget something or didn't do anything wrong.
All kind of help, advises or warnings are welcome.
Thanks in advance
David :cool:

My rig:
E6700 -2.66 GHz
Asus P5WDH
2 Gig Corsair PC5400C4 (yes I know PC800 could be better but I got them from my previous config)
XFX 7950 GX2

and here are my settings:


 

monkeybite

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Oct 24, 2006
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Looks good, you could try lowering ICH voltage a notch. Also, you should disable Hyper Path 3 and DRAM throttling for better stability and ram speed.
 

qw3r7yju4n

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Nov 30, 2005
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well rite now the ICH is your southbridge, unless your ocing your PCI-E then you dont need to buff that, uping your MCH is where the FSB sits, an extra notch there wont hurt, but you got it man
 

RichardJSampson

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Aug 23, 2001
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Hi David,

You and I have similar hardware and goals. My primary justification for OCing, beyond molecular modeling, is also FSX. I have an e6700, P5W DH, and I currently have an XFX GeForce 7950 GX2 -- but on Monday I'll have an 8800 GTX. Also, I do have 4gb of DDR 800 RAM, but I'm more interested success with speeding up the CPU

I just started OCing yesterday as the holidays have afforded me some extra time. I'm right where you are right now, at 300 x 11 = 3300. I'd be very interested in seeing how high you can get and what sort of performance improvements in FSX you'll see. There's no doubt that this is THE most demanding game on the planet so it would be interesting to see how someone with a similar rig is doing.

What sort of case do you have, and what is your cooling situation?
 

davroch

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Nov 22, 2006
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Hi Richard
I will share with you my experience with pleasure.
I see a real improvement in fSX since the OC ( a quantum leap in fps, in particular in heavy airports) 8)

My case is a Chenbro Gaming Boy II with nice air cooling (1x12" front, 1x 12" back and 1x 9" in the top)
 

RichardJSampson

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Are you using the stock heatsink fan on the CPU?

Today I'm up to 3,424 Mhz. 3,500 did not pass the Prime95 test. How fast are you running right now?
 

CompuTronix

Intel Master
Moderator
Over the past many years, the primary purpose of keeping my rig upgraded is to run Flight Simulators. The newest release, FSX, will bring the most powerfull C2D gaming rig down to it's knees; even more so than Oblivion. Owners of gaming rigs, which are built with the primary emphasis on GPU performance, and secondary emphasis on CPU performance, (especially those not overclocked), are in for a humiliating and humbling experience, and will be very sorely disappionted with the lack of FSX performance on their rigs.

Flight Simulators, unlike most games, are very heavily CPU bound, perhaps 80% CPU / 20% GPU. Therefore, it's imperative to apply as much raw processing horsepower as possible to achieve the best frame rate, since FPS scales directly with CPU clock speed. Further, as FSX does not use Shader 2.0 or 3.0, or DX10, a midrange GPU such as an 850 or 7600 will run either FS04 or FSX as well as a 1950 or 7950. Hence, high end GPU's whether single, or in Crossfire or SLI, will yield no perceptible increase in FPS.

As you can see, the prefered FSX hardware platform is a heavily overclocked C2D rig. The following link contains a wealth of information regarding FSX and FS04, and provides valuable insights concerning optimum hardware architectures and configurations, including the latest software patches and hacks, to obtain the best balance of performance, image quality, and FPS.

http://flyawaysimulation.com/forum24.html

I hope this helps everyone. Good luck, and enjoy!

Edit: May I suggest that game developers include a simple "CPU / GPU Binding Ratio" on the retail box, so that enthusiasts can determine which hardware configurations will yield the best FPS, thereby allowing for more informed purchasing decisions regarding upgrade paths.
 

RichardJSampson

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Flight Simulators, unlike most games, are very heavily CPU bound, perhaps 80% CPU / 20% GPU. Therefore, it's imperative to apply as much raw processing horsepower as possible to achieve the best frame rate, since FPS scales directly with CPU clock speed. Further, as FSX does not use Shader 2.0 or 3.0, or DX10, a midrange GPU such as an 850 or 7600 will run either FS04 or FSX as well as a 1950 or 7950. Hence, high end GPU's whether single, or in Crossfire or SLI, will yield no perceptible increase in FPS.

It's nice to see that all of us Flight Sim people have similar hardware, and that can certainly make helping one another more straightforward. Now, I could be wrong but I understand that FSX is supposed to be more GPU intensive than FS9 or previous releases (but hey, this could simply mean 70/30 instead of 80/20). Furthermore, I have read (on www.flightsim.com -- I'll try to find the source later) that FSX is indeed optimized for DirectX10. In any case, we won't know practically for quite awhile.

Anyway, you have a less expensive processor than I do, the same mobo, and basically the same cooler. And it would appear you are getting a better OC than I am. I can certainly boot up at 3.7 GHz, but I won't be able to do a Prime95 stress test for more than 30 minutes. Did you stress test your system at that speed? If you passed, what are your current voltage settings?

Thanks so much for your input :)
 

CompuTronix

Intel Master
Moderator
Since Flight Simulators are not as popular as bang-bang-shot-em-up-murder-death-kill games, ferreting out specific information from reviews and forums is much more diificult than one might think, so I'm always glad to see a thread like this one. I read someone's suggestion that it would be very interesting to see Tom's include FSX in their benchmarks, due to the extremely heavy load it places on the CPU.

To answer your questions, the core has tested stable for 8 hours, and also runs all benchmarks, as well as FSX without crashing, (no pun intended). She max's out at an FSB of 414.

Settings @ 3.7 (411 x 9) are as follows:

vCore 1.5125 BIOS - actual 1.480 to 1.504 - nominal fluctuation 24mV.
vMCH 1.65
vFSB 1.3
vMem 2.00

I started a thread a few weeks ago regarding the OC potential of the Xeon 3070, but only recieved one reply pointing to a 3060 thread, which I had previously read. I'm interested in the 3070 as a possible vehicle to reach 4.0Ghz, obviously because of the increase in FPS it would bring to FSX.

Your thoughts?