northwood 1.6 or 1.8?

[Hellraiser]

if i´d choose between the two of these cpu´s , which one should i take as in your opinion? ne1 help me please. i would have the money for both and a very good self made watercooling solution but also want to get the best bang for my buck.

and i would like to know if i should really chase these mhz scores...i would use ddr rams....
i heared an issue about this. i might have 3 ghrz out of a 2 ghrz cpu but would really gain so much performance as i think it would.
is there an artikle about this topic or can ne1 help me on this?

thx

[batboy]

Given the choice between the 1.6 gig and 1.8 gig Northwood, I'd choose the 1.8 gig. Running it at 133 FSB would put it at 2.4 gig which seems to be an average and relatively obtainable overclocking goal. Obviously, with water cooling you'd expect to go higher than "typically expected". This would be a safe investment and you'd expect to reach at least 133 FSB fairly easily.

Most currently available P-4 memory, DDR and RDRAM alike, seem to start wimping out above the 133 FSB range. So the disadvantage of the 1.6 gig Northwood would be that 133 FSB puts it at only 2.13 gig. Chances are you'll have to throttle back your memory settings in order to reach higher CPU speeds which will hurt bandwidth and performance.

However, I personally decided to order the 2.0 gig for a couple reasons. At the magical 133 FSB, it would be running at a faster 2.66 gig, which is still doable if you have excellent cooling and an exceptional CPU. The risk is slightly higher of not reaching 133 FSB though because the average for 2.0 on air seems to be about 2.5 to 2.6 gig.

The other thing to consider is the persistant tales that the 1.6 gig and 1.8 gig Northwoods are binned CPUs. This means they might have been assigned to lower speeds because they didn't have as high of yields as the higher speed CPUs. Think of it this way, Intel spent a lot of money producing a number of cores, then discovered that some aren't quite as good as they hoped, but they are good enough to run at lower speeds. What does Intel do? Throw them away or set the multiplier at a lower speed and sell them? It's a no brainer, Intel would rather make a profit than to discard them.

[maxleo]

i choosed the 1.8, because there have been made good oc tests already (1.6 I not know), and it costs not much more than 1.6 but price-jump to 2.0 (not to think about 2.2) is very big!

Maybe you get something out of my 'history' crimes here evaluating my 1.8 + cooler

http://forums.overclockers.ws/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61219
http://forums.overclockers.ws/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59749
http://forums.overclockers.ws/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61748

Have Fun! MAx

[TC]

I bought a 1.8 just to try it out, and it hit 2400 with relative ease - just bumped the voltage to 1.6. I think the 1.8 makes for a nice overclock at 133fsb. If you want a benchmark or two I'll post them for you.

[batboy]

That's no fair, TC has got his second Northwood and I'm still waiting on my first one. I have been notified my 2.0a is in route and might get here by Friday (Feb 1st).

[Yodums]

You guys are complaining while I'm sitting here with no money for anything :D

From their comments I'd take the 1.8 since they are saying it is relatively easy to get into the 133fsb club with a little vcore.

[TC]

Originally posted by batboy
That's no fair, TC has got his second Northwood and I'm still waiting on my first one. I have been notified my 2.0a is in route and might get here by Friday (Feb 1st). Where did you buy it from? I got my 2.2 off Ebay and had it within a week of paying for it. I ordered the 1.8 from Googlegear and had it over night.

[batboy]

It's a long sad story that sounds like will finally have a happy ending, eventually. First I had to wait until payday to get the money order. Unfortunately, it didn't get sent out immediately because of the weekend and holiday (Martin Luther King's birthday). Then it went by snail mail from Kansas to the east coast. I think the mailman that was pedaling the bicycle stopped a lot because he was old and tired. Might of been in a union and had to take his coffee breaks every 2 hours too. Then, the letter spent a couple days laying unnoticed in a pile of mail at it's destination. Now it's being shipped, but I think it's on a slow boat that made a detour to China.

[Turbo]

Well guys, I got my 1.8A a couple of days ago, and it's running nicely at 2.4 Ghz with standard cooling and a modest Vcore increase. I'm going to put my Swiftech MCX478 on it sometime this weekend, and see just how far I can push it. I'm pretty happy with the performance at 2.4 Ghz though. Cost/performance wise this is a great chip indeed.

[Cooler666]

I also have a 1.8a chip and its overclocked to 2.4 ghz with the retail Intel heat sink and fan, i have two extra case fans though.

I must say this is a very fast chip. :cool:

[Burning Phoenix]

DO any of you guys have Sisoft sandra scores on those 2.4 g 's. I'd like to see them.

[batboy]

I checked the mail tonight after work and I have a notice that my CPU is at the post office and ready to be picked up. I'll have my new P-4 Northwood 2.0a in my hot sweaty hands first thing tomorrow morning (Saturday). Hopefully I'll be posting initial results later on this weekend...yippee!

[Yodums]

Hehe Batboy. Aren't you anxious to go to work so late just to get the chip? Hehe!

Best of luck to you.

[Turbo]

Originally posted by Burning Phoenix
DO any of you guys have Sisoft sandra scores on those 2.4 g 's. I'd like to see them.

Here ya' go :)

http://fp.worldonline.dk/fpelarskrag/images/SiSandra_cpu_bench_2400.jpg
http://fp.worldonline.dk/fpelarskrag/images/SiSandra_cpu_mm_bench_2400.jpg
http://fp.worldonline.dk/fpelarskrag/images/SiSandra_memory_bench_2400.jpg

[Cooler666]

hey Turbo do you have the latest bios update for the TH7II-Raid motherboard (TH7H38.EXE) - i need this to support my northwood processor. their ftp at abit has been down for at least a week.
thanks

[Turbo]

Actually, I do. But personally I'm using a not yet released beta (don't ask, I won't tell) that allows Vcore up to 1.85V. The 0.38 will only allow up to 1.625V for the Northwood. Drop me a mail (larskrag@hotmail.com) and let me know if you would like me to mail you something ;)

[Cooler666]

thanks a lot, you made my day :cool:

[batboy]

I got my new Northwood 2.0 gig system up and running today. I haven't done too much playing or tweaking with it yet. First I had to debug a few things, flash the BIOS with the latest upgrade, then install the new motherboard .inf files and updated drivers, plus take care of some hardware conflicts, etc. etc.

I did crank it up to 2.2 gig and it ran just fine, but I then started running into Windows protection errors at 2.3 gig. I'm using an old Maxtor 13 gig harddrive with Win98 already previously installed for the time being, so that might be the problem. Either that or I need more core voltage.

When I get some more time to play with it, we'll see how it does with the new 40 gig IBM GXP 60 drives setup in RAID and a fresh Windows install. Also, I'm still learning about the BIOS settings. There are some different settings than I'm used to seeing. That Swifty CPU cooler is a little noisy, but seems to work great. So far, the highest CPU load temp I've seen is 42 degrees.

[batboy]

Still working on making my new signature prettier.