I got my new P4 going!

[Mike360000]

Hi everybod, funnyperson, batboy, Turbo, ol'man!

Well I've got system up and going. Handpicked my P4 at the Knoxville computer show Saturday after a week of troubles. Got it put in on Monday, on the new system. Only problem I had was the Creative Audigy card. (Don't ask about the problems but I tried two of'em and I ended up reinstalling Windows 3 times!)

My P4 was a 1.7 ghz model. I put a Sunflower H/F on it and it is absolutely stable at 2142 ghz right now. I haven't even tried to go higher than that yet! Temp is excellent at 42c, but the case cover is off.

BTW anyone know how to read the date, week of manufacture from the cpu? I forgot, and as soon as I get a chance and find out that info, I will post my system information in the overclocker's database.

My brother also got the same cpu, but his was a Porto Rico cpu where mine was Mylasian. He has managed to get his to about 1.95 ghz, but he is using a stock fan and CAS3 ram.

Thanks all, for all your help!

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[Turbo]

Hey, congrats man :D Sounds like you've got a killer cpu there. My 1.7 was from Costa Rica too, and maxed out at 2125 Mhz, but that was with the Intel retail cooler, and I'm sure the Sunflower is MUCH better.

I can appreciate your problems with the Audigy card. I just put in an Audigy Platinum card today, and I cannot count the number of times I had to reboot :( I got 3 BSOD's (haven't had one for months) and I had to reinstall drivers, the mixer software and soundfonts a few times too :mad: Not to mention the "joystick emulation" :mad: Hmm, however the sound is really great :D Now that it finally works, that is....

[Yodums]

Originally posted by Mike360000
Hi everybod, funnyperson, batboy, Turbo, ol'man!

Well I've got system up and going. Handpicked my P4 at the Knoxville computer show Saturday after a week of troubles. Got it put in on Monday, on the new system. Only problem I had was the Creative Audigy card. (Don't ask about the problems but I tried two of'em and I ended up reinstalling Windows 3 times!)

My P4 was a 1.7 ghz model. I put a Sunflower H/F on it and it is absolutely stable at 2142 ghz right now. I haven't even tried to go higher than that yet! Temp is excellent at 42c, but the case cover is off.

BTW anyone know how to read the date, week of manufacture from the cpu? I forgot, and as soon as I get a chance and find out that info, I will post my system information in the overclocker's database.

My brother also got the same cpu, but his was a Porto Rico cpu where mine was Mylasian. He has managed to get his to about 1.95 ghz, but he is using a stock fan and CAS3 ram.

Thanks all, for all your help!

Cheers,
Mike Lamb


Whoa, what a sweet oc... good job man and have fun.

[batboy]

Oh sure....rub it in...yes I'm jealous. I keep waiting and waiting, hoping the P-4 prices will drop just a little bit more. I'm convinced the prices will drop a lot AFTER I buy one. Congrats on the nice overclock and welcome to the 2 gig club. By the way, what mobo did you go with?

[Mike360000]

Hey there Turbo!
Hey there batboy. I got the Abit BL7 Raid motherboard. (Me too cheap for RDRAM....) :o

My first Audigy was a Platinum. The front control unit was completely dead on it. The sound card itself seemed ok though.

The reason I say sound card is because, I had read that the Audigy cards were terrible for losing volumn control, and my first one worked ok as far as sound adjustments went. My second wasn't, however! At the same time I experienced severe problems with both sound cards concerning hibernation and standby modes. Both would royally do a crash and burn number on my computer. This, I found out has been discussed in several forums also. You may want to check that out on your computer.

I mean it crashed my computer so hard, it wouldn't boot back into Windows normal mode. And since I was already installing Windows at the time anyway, I just decided to start over, three times total. My last time, here now, I have went back to my Live 5.1 X-Gamer.

I had thought about the Hercules Fotissimo II sound card also, but from what I had read, it is worse than the Audigy. Plus I wanted Firewire on the Audigy, which I have now read, Creative is having problems with it to. Oh'well, be careful with that thing!

My latest on my cpu. I am now running at 2159, 127 fsb. Although I haven't run 3Dmark2001 on it yet. I'll probably wait till I bump it up another notch to check it with it.

Got my case cover back on and my temp is now all of 46.5C, idling! One note of how well this cpu is doing, is I am only running my cpu core voltage at 1.78v! At this rate my memory will run out of oc'ing before my processor! hehe :D

As for a couple benchmarks:
3DMark2001 gave me a score of 69(something) at 1024x768x32. this was with a Radeon 8500.

Sandra gives me scores of CPU ALU of 4111 and FPU/SSE2 of 1291/2649.

Sandra memory benchmark, for all of you worried about SDRAM:
Sandra gives me a score of ALU of 608, and FPU of 610. Not as high as RDRAM, but definitely close to DDR ram.

The Abit BL7 Raid mobo has been the most stable mobo I have evr dealt with so far! Even better so far than the famed BX440 that I was so fond of....

About the Sunflower H/F. It has gotten extremely good reviews and they seemed right on the money. It is an easy fan to work with except if you ever want to remove the H/F from the frame on the mobo. Also as one review stated, you gotta be careful with the BL7 and Abit boards with it because the Sunflower goes right up to the capacitors. I hit one of mine, slightly, trying to atttach my H/F to the frame I attached to the mobo.

Will write more soon.

Thanks again!

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[Turbo]

Great news on that cpu :) What stepping is it? It almost sounds like it's a D0, and if it is I bet you'll be able to get close to 2.4 Ghz if your ram can keep up :D Keep us posted.

SB Audigy still working 3 hours without a crash, panel seems to work, headphones do at least. Return To Castle Wolfenstein sound cool with the Audigy, the positional audio setup for headphones is 'purdy' good :p I finished the game (singleplayer part) and I just started again just to look for all the secrets and treasures hidden. Used to do that in wolf-3d way back when.... Sorry I'm rambling on, I'm tired

[Burning Phoenix]

It seems to me those socket 478's clock higher and easier than the 423's which i have. I can't get over 1958 with my 1.7 socket 423 and haven't tried overclocking my 1.8 yet which is a spare on a spare intel d580 board. I'm going to have to upgrade after christmas with one of those ABIT TH7-II raid boards and a 2.0 chip to see what fun you guys are having. If you guys can i'd like to see some 3dmark2001 scores with those systems.

[Turbo]

Originally posted by Burning Phoenix
It seems to me those socket 478's clock higher and easier than the 423's which i have. I can't get over 1958 with my 1.7 socket 423 and haven't tried overclocking my 1.8 yet which is a spare on a spare intel d580 board. I'm going to have to upgrade after christmas with one of those ABIT TH7-II raid boards and a 2.0 chip to see what fun you guys are having. If you guys can i'd like to see some 3dmark2001 scores with those systems.

If you're going to wait until January anyway, then get a Northwood. I'm getting one, as soon as I find out what the overclocking prospects are with the different models, steppings, manufactoring plants etc. If you use the Madonion ORB you can compare your results to mine here: 3dmark2001 default test Score:8519 (http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare2k1.shtml?2126751)

[funnyperson1]

nice man....

[Burning Phoenix]

I would rather have a Northwood but what about the prices of them. Does anyone know of a good estimate that they may of heard of for these chips. I mean i am willing to pay maybe $400 for a chip but not anymore. The P4 2.0 socket 423's i've seen on ebay are averaging $400+ and am currently following 2 now to see where they go to. The 478's are a little more.

[Mike360000]

"I would rather have a Northwood but what about the prices of them. Does anyone know of a good estimate that they may of heard of for these chips. I mean i am willing to pay maybe $400 for a chip but not anymore. The P4 2.0 socket 423's i've seen on ebay are averaging $400+ and am currently following 2 now to see where they go to. The 478's are a little more."

Originally I was thinking about waiting to. But my brother was wanting a new system and since I had to help him with it, and he was promising me a little help if I went with him to the computer show in Knoxville, and since I had already figured the Northwoods would be too high for me, and the DDR chipsets from intel for the P4 kept getting delayed, well I just decided now was as good a time as any.

As for the Northwood pricing, we had mentioned this in a couple of other threads here. I think it was generally agreed on that when they first come out, they will definitely be 500 bux or more. And i expect the price to hold or hover at about the 500 buck mark for about the next six months after they come out. Which is way way too much for me. Maybe when they are around 300 bux, is when I would start to consider a processor.

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[Mike360000]

Turbo,
"Great news on that cpu What stepping is it? It almost sounds like it's a D0, and if it is I bet you'll be able to get close to 2.4 Ghz if your ram can keep up Keep us posted."

Yep it was a D0 stepped model. Hey man, I listened to you now!
:D

That's the reason I was posting, to learn what exactly to get.
Funny thing about the cpus, what plant they come from. I had my choice of cpus, either from Costa Rica or Maylasia. I didn't choose fast enuff so my brother got the one from Costa Rica. And I thought, gee what if I got the slow one? And from looking at the database of cpus here, i can't tell that one is really much better than the other, concerning which country/plant it came from. Anyhow I got lucky!

I dunno about getting anywhere near 2.4 ghz though. From what I understand, the D0 models will usually max out at about 2.2 to 2.3 ghz. The original P4 1.9's and 2's have always been D0 models, and from what I've read, air cooled systems with them can only expect to oc by about 200 to 300 mhz. Although I know it is quite possible to get an exceptional cpu that will do more. Maybe I got one? hehe

As for my ram, I have read several times of Corsair PC133 CAS2 ram going as high as 175 mhz, and even once of it going over 180 mhz. However I doubt I would be so lucky, especially three times, considering I have three sticks of 256 meg Corsair PC133 CAS 2 ram. That's why I said in my posts to you and the rest, last week, that I would settle for 166 mhz as minimum.

Also a question about figuring this ram. I know that I am running at 127 fsb right now, but according to the way the P4 is oc'ed, ain't I really supposed to be running more than this? There is some kind of formula for figuring it out, but I don't have it handy at the moment.

Funny thing, now I have noticed my old X-Gamer 5.1 won't go into suspend mode or sleep mode,...etc.. without crashing my system! Gee it worked fine before! I have no idea why this happens now either. BTW does your Audigy work with suspend, standby modes,...etc...? And does your volumn keep its' settings?

Cheers,
Mike Lamb

[Turbo]

Originally posted by Mike360000
Turbo,
"Great news on that cpu What stepping is it? It almost sounds like it's a D0, and if it is I bet you'll be able to get close to 2.4 Ghz if your ram can keep up Keep us posted."

Yep it was a D0 stepped model. Hey man, I listened to you now!
:D


Funny thing, now I have noticed my old X-Gamer 5.1 won't go into suspend mode or sleep mode,...etc.. without crashing my system! Gee it worked fine before! I have no idea why this happens now either. BTW does your Audigy work with suspend, standby modes,...etc...? And does your volumn keep its' settings?


Don't know about standby and suspend, I never use them. But the volume seems to stay where it should be. I'm also using a Logitech cordless keyboard, and all the controls work great, including volume. Even works with the headphones which is nice. So far I'm very happy with the Audigy, and IMO the improvement in sound quality over the Live card was bigger than I expected.