Which P4 for OC'ing?

[Mike360000]

Hello All,
Haven't been in here since my last upgrade this past March, and it's getting about time again.

I had originally hoped the Tualatins would have been more affordable, and was waiting for it. Well they're too high so I thought I would wait for the DDR ram Intel mobos, which it looks like that keeps getting delayed. And I can't consider anything but Intel chipsets because I think they are better than 3td party ones, concerning all chipsets.) So I've decided to go with a BL6 Raid, at least for the time being, and later, move up to DDR from there. And it does appear I can save a lot of money in the short term.

Anyhow my first question is, what is the best P4 for oc'ing right now, along with oc'ing the ram to the fullest? I have Corsair 133 CAS2 ram, so that ain't a problem. From my reading it looks like the choices for oc'ing is between the P4 1.5 and 1.7 ghz cpus. Both have shown to reasonably averages about 350 mhz above stock. But what I am really wanting to know is personal experiences and what would the group prefer as a whole, of the two? And it would count some if the 1.7 ghz did, or would oc higher, or as high as the difference between it and the 1.5.

I think it looks like one needs EVERY bit of oc'ing out the ram as possible to help it along, since it is limited to begin with. So I would be hoping to oc the ram to around 160 to 170 mhz. My question is here; Will this be fairly practicable with the BL7 from your experiences? And which cpu would you prefer to to take the risk with, trying to acheive that high an oc, and considering the absolute highest oc of either one?

Oh yeah, it will be air cooled, and with stock cooling if possible, or in consideration of 3td party after market air cooling, if absolutely necessary. (It's been my experience that 3td party after market air cooling isn't a whole lot better than stock, concerning Intel cpu's and heatsink/fans...)

I got another set of questions about OS changeover later on, but first things first.

Thanx,
Mike Lamb

[Yodums]

What Tualatins were you looking at?

The Celeron Tualatin's are only 115 USD..

The P3 are fairly expensive but the Abit ST6 or Asus TUSL2 and the Celeron Tualatin chip are like the price of the P4 mobo..

I would highly recommend you don't go with P4 unless you got those bucks to blow but with those bucks to blow I would recommend Athlon XP

[BigRed]

i used to have an athlon, the fan failed and now its a nice black keychain.
i am not buying another amd product until they fix their heat problem.
and i looked and the 1.9ghz p4 is the same price as the xp1900 :p
are the northwoods good for overclocking?

[Mike360000]

What Tualatins were you looking at?

The Celeron Tualatin's are only 115 USD..
------------

P3 Tualatin. they are more expensive. I had hoped they would have worked in my BX133 RAID, but it seems it would take another new device to make it work. (I forget the name of it, but I'm sure you may have already heard of it.) Anyway I have two of these boards, one in use and one as a tester and backup.
------------


The P3 are fairly expensive but the Abit ST6 or Asus TUSL2 and the Celeron Tualatin chip are like the price of the P4 mobo..
------------

I can get a P4 1.5 and BL7 RAID for 274 bux($144 cpu/130 mobo). and a RAMBUS mobo would cost me 200 bux alone, plus RAMBUS memory. So 270 bux ain't bad if I can get the speed out of a 1.5 or 1.7. I need to get about 1.83 out of the 1.5 P4 and at least 2 ghz out of the 1.7 to make either of them acceptable to me as a possible upgrade. Plus it would seem the 1.7 would be the better choice when the Intel DDR chipsets finally does come out. I could realize more of the potential of the P4 this way. Particularly by not being constrained by SDRAM, which a 1.5 P4 wouldn't show off the limited bandwith as bad.
--------------


I would highly recommend you don't go with P4 unless you got those bucks to blow but with those bucks to blow I would recommend Athlon XP

---------------------
I don't care for the AMD offerings. Done tried the Athlons twice, not to mention several K6-2 and a couple of K6-3's earlier. It's actually the chipsets and motherboards for the AMD processors that I don't like, and I believe Intel has the much better ones in this regard.

Matter of fact I have an almost new AMD 1.2 ghz AXIA, Volcano5 heatsink/fan, and 512 meg of Crucial DDR ram, that was in the same system for about a week that I would like to sell! No more AMD's for me!

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[Mike360000]

First I gotta agree, those Athlons are toaster ovens aren't they? phew.........! But I could live with it if it weren't for the chipsets/mobos.

Just thought I would throw another question to you guys, although I've got my own opinion on the matter.

About all this hype about the P4's memory bandwith with DDR and RAMBUS ram. I fully know and accept it has more bandwith. But honestly can you tell me how many programs, or how large of a program, or how many program you would have to run at the same time, to actually need that much bandwith from DDR and RAMBUS? I don't know of any games that will significantly benefit from that much bandwith at this time. And about the only programs I know of that would benefit would be video editing or high demanding audio sound programs. My point is; Are we really currently seeing all the benefits from RAMBUS and DDR ram to begin with?

Also looking over my Sandra Benchmarks and reviews of SDARM that is highly overclocked, as well as my own calculations, while the calculations shows a lot of difference between SDRAM, going to DDR ram, and even more diff. going to RAMBUS, Sandra doesn't show that large of a gain, especially with DDR ram, both 1600 and 2100. I am seeing Sandra SDRAM benchmarks of around 600 in both fpu and alu, with highly oc'ed SDRAM. While only showing benchmarks of 600 to 800 flu and alu for DDR 2100. (Calculations would show the SDRAM at around 1.36 gig bandwith. 170x8)

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[batboy]

If you do get a P-4, I'd recommend one of the 478 pin CPUs. Personally I would not get a SDRAM mobo, they suck for performance and will be a waste of money in my opinion. Either get a RDRAM i850 mobo (like Asus or Abit) or hold out for the DDR boards. You will never get either the 1.5 gig or the 1.7 gig P-4 running at 160 to 170 MHz FSB, sorry. All of the P-4's max out at about 2.1, so I'd go with a 1.5 gig. Certain not with the retail HSF. The Northwood will overclock good, but they won't be out for another couple months.

[Mike360000]

"If you do get a P-4, I'd recommend one of the 478 pin CPUs."

Done thought of that, but I took it for granted and didn't post it. sorry for not mentioning it.
--------------------
"Personally I would not get a SDRAM mobo, they suck for performance and will be a waste of money in my opinion."

Read my article above this one.
----------------------
"Either get a RDRAM i850 mobo (like Asus or Abit) or hold out for the DDR boards."

RAMBUS is too high, plus I don't like the company. And I don't prefer the Via or SiS DDR chipsets. I think this is one of the problems concerning AMD. And it seems Intel DDR soultions keep getting delayed.
------------------------
"You will never get either the 1.5 gig or the 1.7 gig P-4 running at 160 to 170 MHz FSB, sorry."

I had thought of that, the problems or realistically getting that high, but: Well I had good luck with several P3 systems. I got 250 mhz out of several 650E's. Had only one 800E that didn't oc well.

And the P4's suppose to oc better than the P3's. I also read in several reviews that the P4 1.5s in reviews oc'ed to 1.8 and one to about 1.9. And it was with a BL7 Raid. Most was with stock cooling to, as was most of the P3's I built. I've found that Intel stock cooling is about as good as the after market stuff, but AMD is a different story, needing good after market cooling.
--------------------------
"All of the P-4's max out at about 2.1, so I'd go with a 1.5 gig."

I noticed that to. Still it would appear that I could get closer to 2.1 with the 1.7 than with the 1.5, cause the ram would hamper me as it reached 170 mhz, and it would reach that limit sooner on a 1.5, before reaching 2. ghz than with the 1.7. But I am really wondering if the 1.7 would oc as much as the 1.5. Say, would the 1.7 be just as easy to oc 300 mhz, as would the 1.5 or vice versa?
----------------------------
"Certain not with the retail HSF."

Dunno, some of them reviews said they used stock cooling. And I've read the same here, at the oc'ing table/list. Still I would like some first hand knowledge, from real people instead of just reviewers. But I have no problem in going after market air cooling.
----------------------------
"The Northwood will overclock good, but they won't be out for another couple months."

I was waiting for that to, but it seems to continueally get delayed, along with everything else. Can't continueally put off waiting. By the time all this stuff arrives, there will more new stuff, and we will be saying, if we can only hold out a couple more months for that! kind'of frustrating ain't it? lol

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[Yodums]

So what do you plan for the memory I mean if RAMBUS is too high then your just not getting what you want out of it..

The 1.5 and 1.7 seem to have a big price gap .. So I'd think it'd be wiser to buy the 1.5 and most likely people had great sucess overclocking it to 1.9 ... That is with proper cooling.

[funnyperson1]

for right now, you should get that BL6 and a P4 1.4 and oc it, then upgrade to I845 DDR chipset and northwood when they come out (should be january-february 2002, or just wait, im sure whatever you have will last you till then, also the 1.7 goes to 2.1 a lot....

[Mike360000]

"for right now, you should get that BL6 and a P4 1.4 and oc it,"

A P4 1.4 ? Really what I was thinking, was get 1.5, but also consider a 1.7 if would oc as well as the 1.5. Then I could transfer the 1.7 to a DDR mobo, at my convience, when the mobo price drops a bit. New intros usually carry a steep price tag, plus possible bugs/faults. But I more than likely wouldn't keep the 1.5 if I upgraded to DDR. It would depend on how long I waited before I upped to the DDR.
------------------------------


"then upgrade to I845 DDR chipset and northwood when they come out (should be january-february 2002,"

Well that's what I was thinking, but then I got to figuring, and as I said above; Can you imagine the price of Northwood when it first comes in say Feburary? Not to mention a new DDR Intel chipset, say from Abit at about the same time? High high, high as a Georgia pine. Maybe even a California Redwood! Actually I could see saving money this, and even possibly getting a fair resale, all of next year, out of a P4 1.5 and SDRAM mobo. Just thinkingof the possibilities though, and throwing around some questions for debate to test how my thinking on the matter is going.
------------------------------------

"or just wait, im sure whatever you have will last you till then, also the 1.7 goes to 2.1 a lot...."

Well it ain't like I am hurting, since I already have a P3 1gig oc'ed to 1.08. Did have it to 1.14, but that didn't work with the R8500, when I put that in a few weeks ago. But my main game NASCAR is certainly very demanding. It is both a cpu and v card hog! And my main reason for considering this, is because my brother put in a R7500 at the same time, (computer I biult for him) and he can't oc his computer as much either with the R7500 as before. And this whole thing is hurting him worse than me, cuz he was running a 650E that was up to 866mhz, but because of the R7500, he is now having to run at about 733-750. NASCAR 4 has really impacted hi computer/cpu when he lost that much oc! So he's wanting to upgrade, and well there is a big computer show in Knoxville Tennessee in a couple of weeks. And he's going to put up a little cash. So I guess it's as good a time as any for me to!


Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[funnyperson1]

from your needs it looks like you should get yourself a p$1.7 and an SDR mobo to keep yourself occupied until the northwoods and the i845 chipset mobos become cheap....

[Mike360000]

"So what do you plan for the memory I mean if RAMBUS is too high then your just not getting what you want out of it.."

Well it would depend on what I'm wanting to get out of it in the first place. But seriously, I don't see the ram bandwith gap as a killer at this point, at least untill new apps. begin to more and more take advantage of that extra bandwith. Like I said, no one will notice any bandwith gap playing any game today. Of maybe a couple or 3 fps at best, in a vary few games. So is that alone, worth that much extra money? I don't think so at this point, nor for the next 6 months to year, I think.
-------------------------------

"The 1.5 and 1.7 seem to have a big price gap .. So I'd think it'd be wiser to buy the 1.5 and most likely people had great sucess overclocking it to 1.9 ... That is with proper cooling."

Actually the price is only about 20 to 25 bux, depending. Not bad for a 200 mhz difference!

Now your statement about the 1.5 to 1.9 is the comments like I am looking for. So my question is; Couldn't I expect about the same amount of oc'ing from the 1.7, as from the 1.5, with the 1.7s going to about 2.1? I'd even settle for an even 2 ghz with the 1.7. So is it reasonable to expect that from most, or the average P4 1.7 on the market today? With stock or after market cooling?

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[funnyperson1]

definately with after-market cooling...

[batboy]

Personally I believe there's more of a difference with the RAM performance than you think. I've read numerous articles that have compared SDRAM, RDRAM, and DDR. The SDRAM is way on the bottom. Lots of games benefit from faster memory. But, I can understand not wanting to spend a lot of cash, especially if you already have the SDRAM. RDRAM is coming down a little in price lately. Additionally, even with the 1.5 gig P-4 with it's 15X multiplier, you have almost no chance hitting anything close to 160 FSB like you want. Maybe 140 FSB or a bit more, if you're lucky, and I doubt even that can be reached with the retail cooler. With a 1.7 gig P-4, you have a good chance of failing to even reach 133 FSB. The 1.5 and 1.7 are the same exact CPU with the same core, just different multipliers. It's your choice. You are right about the Northwoods going to be super expensive at first though.

[Mike360000]

Actually batboy, I may be speaking without due consideration here. When I refer to 160 and 170 mhz oc'ing of ram I am referring to actually oc'ing the cpu to about 125 to 133 mhz, concerning ram AND cpu. However the BL7 also has a seperate ram overclock that will give an extra 33 mhz to whatever your ram would be running at, in conjunction with the cpu.

So for instance, if I had my P4 1.5 oc'ed to 133, I'd be running the P4 at an actual speed of 1.95 ghz. and while at 133 fsb. Now if I add the extra 33 mhx for the ram oc, I'd be running my ram at 166 mhz. The BL7 will allow this while still holding your AGP and PCI slots to their normal default speeds of 33 and 66 mhz! How's that?

The thing is, if I apply this to a 1.7 P4 I'd be running at 2.261 ghz, and I don't think that practical. Although I really don't see 1.995 as being realistic either, for the 1.5. Still I'd be happy with a 125 fsb for the P4 1.5 and 120 for the P4 1.7. Adding 33 mhz of ram boost on top of that would give me 155 and 150 respectively. That's about as low as I would consider acceptable, giving me any incentive to upgrade.

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

"Personally I believe there's more of a difference with the RAM performance than you think. I've read numerous articles that have compared SDRAM, RDRAM, and DDR. The SDRAM is way on the bottom. Lots of games benefit from faster memory. But, I can understand not wanting to spend a lot of cash, especially if you already have the SDRAM. RDRAM is coming down a little in price lately. Additionally, even with the 1.5 gig P-4 with it's 15X multiplier, you have almost no chance hitting anything close to 160 FSB like you want. Maybe 140 FSB or a bit more, if you're lucky, and I doubt even that can be reached with the retail cooler. With a 1.7 gig P-4, you have a good chance of failing to even reach 133 FSB. The 1.5 and 1.7 are the same exact CPU with the same core, just different multipliers. It's your choice. You are right about the Northwoods going to be super expensive at first though."

[Mike360000]

""Personally I believe there's more of a difference with the RAM performance than you think. I've read numerous articles that have compared SDRAM, RDRAM, and DDR. The SDRAM is way on the bottom. Lots of games benefit from faster memory."

I won't disagree that there is a lot of difference in the performance of the ram, but again, I have yet to read in any forum I frequent, of anyone showing any great or even substancial performance boosts by using RAMBUS in any games or general apps. Ask for yourself. Test for yourself. A reason I am here is because I don't trust all the hype the reviewers are pushing, just for the sake of more power without merit and biggier sales. These reviewers, a lot of times almost seems like they are pimps for the big computer companies.

Any game, any app. out there, will only use the bandwith that it is programed to run with in the first place. Of course you can push your system beyond that thresh-hold if you open too many apps. or load too large or many files into your app.

Take a game for instance, say UT or Quake III. While both games uses entirely engines, both games are optimized to run within certain defined areas. One area being ram available, and another is consideration of the bandwith that is applied to that ram. When the games were developed, the developers knew the limitations of the components of the computer systems they were designing the games for. They also had to take an averge of computer performance, to be sure the games could be played on a large majority of the computers available. Typically computers then, ran best off 133 SDRAM, so developers knew that as an upper limitation concerning ram. They knew, considered and applied those bandwith rates, in order to help streamline the game, making it more applicable to other less powerful computers. These developers couldn't just go and code a game that would take 2 ghz of bandwith and expect people to run it. Nor could they code the game to scale depending upon bandwith, simply because it ain't practical, nor even useful to do so. In short the games were coded to use up to about 1 ghz of bandwith, and any extra, may or may not be used. (This would depend more on video than anything, but still any extra bandwith used would amount to a very small amount, due to the fact that a certain limit was imposed to begin with.

I distinctly remember when the P4's first cam out, there was much talk about this, and it was stated several times in several articles I read, that the P4 with RAMBUS would see little benefit from the extra bandwith provided by RAMBUS until apps came out to take advantage of it! I haven't really seen any yet; Have you?

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[Mike360000]

"definately with after-market cooling..."

OK I'll bite; What's a good after market fan/sink combo for the P4? Don't won't an overly loud one either. My puter now has a great big AMK on it, and it is loud. My next puter has got to have a little quieter fan on it.

Tell me from your personal experiences, not from what you read, please.. I value your personal experiences much more than what I may read.....

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[Turbo]

I've replaced my 1.7 Ghz P4 @ 2.1 Ghz, with a 1.5 Ghz @ 2.0 Ghz. I haven't gotten a better HS yet, so it's with the stock Intel cooler. It does get warm, but remains stable (and doesn't throttle). You may not like Rambus, but I'm very happy with my Samsung PC800 running at PC1066 specs (533/133 Mhz fsb). My 1.5@2.0 benches 10-15%+ higher than a regular 2.0 Ghz cpu, and equals or surpasses my 1.7@2.1 in just about every test I made. Mine is a C1 stepping, if you could get your hands on a D0 stepping, you could be in for a real treat ;)

[Mike360000]

Well that would seem to me to be real good oc'ing on both your processors. I'd settle for either one at those speeds, but probably slightly favor the 1.5, but that is a close call. Would you say you got lucky, getting two good oc'ing processors, or would you say that is more the norm?

When you referred to the C1 stepping, which processor was you referring to, that you had, the 1.5 or 1.7? And finally any good ideas as to where would be the most likely place to find the D0 stepped cpus? How long they been available?

And I gotta say, GEE, if the C1 gives oc'ing results like you described, what in the world could one expect with the D0 stepping?!!!-- phew----- I think a treat would be an understatement! (shaking my head wondering how in the world a 500 mhz oc could be improved on?)

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

"I've replaced my 1.7 Ghz P4 @ 2.1 Ghz, with a 1.5 Ghz @ 2.0 Ghz. I haven't gotten a better HS yet, so it's with the stock Intel cooler. It does get warm, but remains stable (and doesn't throttle). You may not like Rambus, but I'm very happy with my Samsung PC800 running at PC1066 specs (533/133 Mhz fsb). My 1.5@2.0 benches 10-15%+ higher than a regular 2.0 Ghz cpu, and equals or surpasses my 1.7@2.1 in just about every test I made. Mine is a C1 stepping, if you could get your hands on a D0 stepping, you could be in for a real treat "

[Turbo]

Originally posted by Mike360000
When you referred to the C1 stepping, which processor was you referring to, that you had, the 1.5 or 1.7? And finally any good ideas as to where would be the most likely place to find the D0 stepped cpus? How long they been available?

And I gotta say, GEE, if the C1 gives oc'ing results like you described, what in the world could one expect with the D0 stepping?!!!-- phew----- I think a treat would be an understatement! (shaking my head wondering how in the world a 500 mhz oc could be improved on?)

They are both C1 stepping. The 1.5 is a SL5N8 Malaysia and the 1.7 is a SL5N9 Costa Rica. I favored the 1.5 for a number of reasons. They offered equal overclocked performance, and I'd get more dough from selling the 1.7 :D (important as I'm getting a Northwood next year). On my MB (Abit TH7-II raid I had trouble with cold boots on the overclocked 1.7, never had ANY with the overclocked 1.5. The agp/pci dividers wouldn't work properly with the 1.7@2.1, which left me with 83 Mhz agp and 41 Mhz pci. Wasn't good for my nerves, I use 2x raid0 setups. Benchmarks were the same. Quake 3 at 640x480x16 normal 265.0 fps vs 265.7 fps, 3dmark2001 default test 8546 vs 8521. Besides, not to many guys have RDRAM running at PC1066 specs. Has a better "coolness factor" :D :D :cool:

[batboy]

Hey Mike, that's pretty cool that the BL7 will allow you to boost the RAM speed. I did not know that. That might level the RAM playing field a little. But you have to remember that RDRAM runs on a quad pumped bus (four times what the processor runs at). That's hard to beat. You are also right that not many applications can utilize the full capability of the P-4 yet. For gaming, a good video card nowadays is almost more important than raw processor speed. Either way, you probably can't go wrong with either a i845 or i850 motherboard.

There is a guy here on the forum named TC who has a couple P-4 CPUs running in the 2 gig to 2.1 gig range. Since he has some experience and actually works in the computer field, maybe it would be wise to chat wuth him too before making any final decisions. I'm glad Turbo posted his results too. The more input you get, the more informed you will be. Good luck. May the overclocking force be with you.

[Mike360000]

"Hey Mike, that's pretty cool that the BL7 will allow you to boost the RAM speed. I did not know that. That might level the RAM playing field a little. But you have to remember that RDRAM runs on a quad pumped bus (four times what the processor runs at). That's hard to beat. You are also right that not many applications can utilize the full capability of the P-4 yet. For gaming, a good video card nowadays is almost more important than raw processor speed. Either way, you probably can't go wrong with either a i845 or i850 motherboard."



Glad you learned a trick about the motherboard. Out of curisoty I wonder how many others do this? I know my Abit BE6 has something like a 25% oc on the ram. One big difference though is the BL7 can also underclock the ram by 33 mhz as well as oc it. I'm running my ram on my BE6-2 right now at 142 mhz while my cpu is at 1.07 ghz. And this is with a 100 mhz slot 1 1 ghz P3.

I know what you are saying about the SDRAM compared to the RDRAM. I have been giving it a lot of thought concerning my whole purchase. But every which way I look at it, I can't justify the RDRAM, especially considering its' price differential. And every way I look at it, the SDRAM I already, when oc'ed as much as it will go, shouldn't give much different every day app performance than RDRAM or DDR ram. I think it is the thoughts that gets to us and gets us to upgrade higher than we really need to sometimes.

Anyhow the worst case secenario I can see is losing a 125 bux for the motherboard if it doesn't work out. And still I can upgrade my motherboard in the future, at a more reasonable time, when the DDR ram appears and maybe some other new things. I'm really just hoping this setup would last me a year anyways, at worst.

A question all of you might like to ask yourselves is; Is your RAMBUS solutions, right now, today, actually improving all your applications over DDR or SDRAM? Not counting your processor, but your ram only.
------------------------------


"There is a guy here on the forum named TC who has a couple P-4 CPUs running in the 2 gig to 2.1 gig range. Since he has some experience and actually works in the computer field, maybe it would be wise to chat wuth him too before making any final decisions. I'm glad Turbo posted his results too. The more input you get, the more informed you will be. Good luck. May the overclocking force be with you."

Yeah I need to talk to that guy! EXACTLY!

I am going the Knoxville, Tennessee computer show the 8th and 9th of December, and that's where I am going to look for my cpu, as well as my brothers. We can at least give an eyeball look at the specific processors before we buy, and maybe that will get a good one.

Turbo really was helpful with his posts, and I appreciate that Turbo. Might have another question for you as well as everyone else. I'm going to start another thread in a minute titled, Swapping Mobo Without Re-installing OS. Maybe everyone can give that one a shot?

Anyway thanks Batboy for you input and help. Maybe I can return the favor.

Cheers,
Mike Lamb