First Look: PIII 800E Cc0 Stepping

SUMMARY: This CPU does about what other PIII 800s do on the high side – with aggressive cooling, I don’t doubt that 1100+ is achievable.

The good folks at Nata Computers sent us a retail PIII 800E to test out. This is a Cc0 stepping, Philippines CPU SL4MA, serial # 7039A734, version # A30423-001. CPU ID identifies it as Family 6, Model ID 8, Stepping 6. Philippine CPUs do not have a good reputation compared to Malaysian CPUs.

I ran it on an Iwill VD133 Pro with 128 MB HSDRAM, Leadtek GeForce 2 GTS, using water cooling.

As a side note, I warn all water cooling users not to neglect cooling components around the CPU’s socket. I set the Iwill up without a case and as I tested, I noticed that the capacitors and power transistors around the socket were hot. I dropped the CPU temp 10C by mounting an 80 mm fan next to the socket to cool these hot chips! Turns out they were heating up the copper water jacket! This should not be an issue in a well ventilated case.

I ran Prime95 at 800 MHz for about an hour to warm up the CPU, then proceeded to see how far it would go. The best stable speed was 1040 MHz (8 x 130) at 1.85 volts. I could run almost everything at 1066, 1.85 volts, except Quake – it would freeze every time about halfway into Demo 002.

I could post up to 1104 MHz, but it would not get very far. At 1080, it would freeze at the Windows splash screen.

In contrast to what we are seeing with AMD’s CPU, temps were downright frosty. At 1040 MHz, Prime 95 boosted the CPU temp to 28C/82F with ambient at 21C/70F. At 800 MHz, 1.7 volts, Prime95 temp was 25C/77F. At 1040 MHz, I achieved the following benchmarks:

This is our first pass with this CPU – We’ll do some more testing with it and see if it does better. A 50% overclock to 1200 would be superb.

Email Joe