P-4 506 results

I don't ever attempt to have the newest/greatest/most expensive gear available, leaving that luxury to those of means. But I have a weakness for Call of Duty, and made the mistake of trying the COD2 demo. Suffice it to say the 'ole FX5900 had to go.

This brings a bit of a quandry for those in AGP-land. I tried a 6800NU, and it just wasn't peppy enough to make the difference I sought. That leaves the 6800GT, but they cost nearly as much as the twice-as-powerful 7800GT. 7800GT is the value, but is of course available only in a PCI-Express version.

Since a good video card mandates PCI-Express, and PCI-E mandates LGA775 (on the Intel platform, at least), a new cpu was in order as well. Enter the P4-506. This little jewel is currently available from the egg for $111, and is a dynamite value. I think of it as the super-celeron, what you get when you don't disable 3/4's of the L2 cache. And it's only $30 more than a similiarly clocked celeron. Like the latest LGA775 celly, the 506 bring EM64T to the party.

I chose the Abit AG8-V board because, firstly, it is cheap, and secondly, it is not junk. The 915p chipset used is limited from an OC-standpoint, but we don't actually have to OC the chipset due to the 20X multiplier of the 506. At Intel's envisioned 200fsb we produce 4GHz, not a bad goal considering current core quality and power/cooling concerns.

915p also supports the use of DDR ram, allowing me to maintain the 2x512MB BH5 sticks from my i865pe setup. Like all the rest of this, this is not the sexy way to fly, but hey, this is indeed the coach section of the OCing world.

Taken as a whole, this thing is, um, cheap. And it's pretty darn fast as well, at least in the places where it really matters. Gaming is what brings machines to their knees, and the 7800GT is the current answer. The 506 setup holds the 7800GT in position to do your bidding, and does not obstruct it much in doing so.

This particular 506 is no great shakes. It is very stable at 4GHz, but required 1.51V to stabilze in all tests and apps tried. Its default VID is 1.4V, I've seen another 506 with a 1.2875V VID. I'm sure it would reach 4GHz with less voltage than this example, but this one works. I'm not going to cry over endangering a $111 cpu, even if I did tend to spare the Vcore (which I don't).

Here's the benchmark results, draw what conclusion you may. While they certainly aren't amazingly good, they aren't terrible, either. Amongst P4s w/single 7800GTs, the 3DMark01, 03, and 05 are all in the current top 10. Could they be faster? Surely. Need they be faster? You have to supply your own answer there. Can they be faster on a shoestring budget? If you figure out how be sure to share.

3DMark01 - 25,059
3Dmark03 - 16,641
3DMark05 - 7,685
AquaMark3 - 76,275
SuperPI 1M - 33.984s

Bear in mind that these are real-world results. By that I mean zero benchmark-specific optimization. No LOD tweaks, full quality settings, etc.

Here is the current state-of-the-cheap:

Abit AG8-V i915p m/b
Retail P4-506 @ 200fsb/4GHz
Retail Intel aluminum heatsink
2x512MB BH5 in 1:1 (400MHz) 2-2-2-4
EVGA 7800GT, 480/1170MHz (stock cooling)
Sound Bastid Live
Antec TPII-480
XP Pro SP1 - 78.01 driver

very very nice. I always thought about what it would be like to get one of those instead of my 630.

To be honest, I'd rather have the 630. But it comes at a price. 630 needs fsb to OC, and that fsb really raises the financial stakes. I would love to have your AL8 and DDR2 ram, but I simply couldn't afford them along with 630 and a 7800GT. PC system design is always the art of compromise, and this is a compromise that works for me.

Larva - that is great to hear of your success. I still can't believe Intel offers such a great 4ghz solution for only $111! Do you plan on upgrading the hsf? Maybe something along the lines of an xp-120 or xp-90c?

Either way, that is very exciting, and I am very jealous of your new 7800gt!

Have fun, game away!

I was wondering what happened when I tried the demo out, I thought it was corrupted. I was about to buy C0D 2 next Thursday. I'm a devout C0D player and this has thrown me for loop. Not the kinda news I wanted to hear this early in the morning, thanks for the heads up larva. I need a loophole quick like.

Killaapp said:

Do you plan on upgrading the hsf? Maybe something along the lines of an xp-120 or xp-90c?

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I'm going to try my Freezer 4 with a 92mm fan fitted as soon as my Thermalright LGA775 adaptor gets here. If that won't cut it I'll order a SI-120 for it. Hopefully better cooling will allow me to drop the Vcore a notch or two.

Very similar O/C when compared to the 506 I played with a while ago. With good case cooling, any of the Abit or Asus LGA775 mobos will have no problem handling 1.5v and the Prescotts sure don't seem to mind either as long as they have good cooling too. Like you said, the i915 is not a great O/C star, but if you are running 200 FSB, then all you really need is stability and those AG8 mobos are rock stable from 200 to about 220 FSB (seems like ATI cards could tolerate up to 230-240 FSB). A well thought out budget system.

Yeah, I'm not particularly worried from the safety aspect, but OTH this chip doesn't appear to have any more than 4GHz in it. I think a better chip would achieve 4GHz on less Vcore and probably do 4.4GHz at this Vcore. But there is always a better chip...

I do like the AG8 mb. As long as you can abide by the fsb limits, it is very nice. It has an enormously robust PWM section, four phase w/4 FETs per phase with large inductors and capacitors. It doesn't struggle nearly as much driving this chip at 4GHz and 1.5V as my AI7 did driving my 2.8c at 3.6GHz and 1.7V. And this chip will likely stand 1.5V for longer than the 2.8c would have stood 1.7, so it's a definite improvement aside from the small performance increase.

larva , very nice job
good luck man

I found this AL8-V and Mushkin combo for $185CDN + 7% tax. Brand new. I couldn't resist. If it was full price, I wouldn't have gone for it.

You are correct though, my setup requires much in the way of overclocking the FSB but I could sit pretty at 266FSB since the 945 chipset natively supports it.

Either way, you have a very fast system on the cheap. If I had to set one up again, I would probably go that route as well.

Yep 266fsb is specification for 945p, but it is an unrealistic OC for 915p. That was the point. Either way it drives you into a more expensive board, new ram to maximize what is in itself a more expensive cpu. I could not do those things and still afford the 7800GT, and the video need was what was driving the upgrade.

Looks like you got a great deal on your board/ram. I don't speak Canadian, but that seems like a deal, anyway If I could have afforded it I would have got the AL8, 2GB of DDR2, and a 630 and shot for 266fsb in 1:1 with the cheapest PC4200 1GB DDR2 sticks I could find.

Thanks for the kind words, all. This thread was intended to stress that there are many valid means for cat-skinning, even if this one doesn't fit the typical more-is-better approach to OCing. It's a compromise, but at some level anything is, and this compromise works.

big larva, how loud is that 7800gt on reboot? Seems like it was only yesterday that I did that Aerocool mod to my 5900. I think this is the loophole for me. I don't want to blow my entire load before Intel's 2nd quarter. I have to get C0D2 though.

Jame Gumb said:

big larva, how loud is that 7800gt on reboot? Seems like it was only yesterday that I did that Aerocool mod to my 5900. I think this is the loophole for me. I don't want to blow my entire load before Intel's 2nd quarter. I have to get C0D2 though.

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The fan used is very quiet, as far as I can tell. I still have the stock Intel CPU fan wailing away though, so until I get that puppy out of there it's hard to accurately assess the noise level of the video card's fan.

BTW, if it is the VM-101 AeroCool you refer to it will work on the 7800GT also. The 5900 makes more heat. I'm going to use mine on my 7800GT as soon as I can find a stock 6800GT or Ultra memory heatsink to use in conjunction with the VM-101. I don't like stick-on memory heatsinks, and I don't really want to epoxy a set on a card that carries a lifetime warranty.

Darn Intel & their new numbering system...I actually had to look this thing up!

Very nice "build to suit the purpose", Larva!

I've seen several peeps I know from another forum doing very well OCing the 256K cache Pressy Celerys to a 200MHz FSB, but I was not even aware of this 1MB cache chip existing. Nice find.

As for the 1.5Vcore, I wouldn't worry at all, if these chips are of the same ilk as other Pressys, 'cuz they'll seemingly take as much Vcore as you can give 'em, as long as you can cool 'em!

And speaking of which...Is the stock HSF holding it's own under 1.5Vcore?

I'd suspect it might be getting a bit on the warm side using the stock HSF.

My OCed Prescotts (C0/D0/E0) never could manage stress testing using the stock HSF. But being hyperthreaded, I stability tested using dual Priming, which always seemed to add another 5 - 6*C to the temps.

Strat

Temperature actually seems very well controlled, considering the heatsink doesn't even have a copper core. I'm using the PWM-scheme fan speed control in my Abit's bios, with the fan set to 65C 100% duty cycle. The fan spools up with virtually any cpu load, and with anything like full load runs WFO (3500rpm). Although fairly loud, this appears enough fan speed to halt the temperature rise in its tracks. Loaded temp barely exceeds 60C.

Honestly, I was worried that the legendary power consumption and heat production of the Prescott would seriously upset my system's balance. But it appears it will be no issue at all, with the motherboard's power supply fully up to the load, the TPII480 able to cope, and the heat production workable. I think when I get a real heatsink fitted the noise level will only be a bit higher than it was with my Northwood setup.

Larva im getting a 506 aswell, on stock cooling most likely, but with some crappy generic DDR2, and an AL8-V. YOu think i might get similar results? better, worse? not graphically though, ur 7800 will crap on my X700 pro.

From what I've seen my 506 is nearly as bad as they get, so I think 4GHz will be realized with nearly all examples. I would recommend a better heatsink than stock, but it doesn't seem necessary to stabilize my particular chip at 4GHz. I'm well over the noise, however. The use of DDR2 should improve your core performance slightly over the DDR I am using. I would expect ~1 second better superPi performance and slightly higher PCMark numbers with the use of DDR2. 3D performance will pick up a very slight bit, but of course will be masked by the X700.

yea i know, the X700, well lets just say its not the cream of the crop.. lol. Anyways i was just wondering what you meant by ur chip not being nearly as bad as they get. There's only one revision of this chip right? umm, one more thing, would it be necessary to get tighter timed, higher clocked DDR2? i mean it is a 533mhz FSB cpu, so getting it to 4ghz is still leaving headroom for the RAM. (at a 1:1 divider). THink i'd see better oc's with better RAM? or is it not really worth it with a 533mhz FSB CPU?

jokers_greg said:

Anyways i was just wondering what you meant by ur chip not being nearly as bad as they get. There's only one revision of this chip right?

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Yes, but keep in mind that no two chips are identical.

jokers_greg said:

yea i know, the X700, well lets just say its not the cream of the crop.. lol. Anyways i was just wondering what you meant by ur chip not being nearly as bad as they get. There's only one revision of this chip right? umm, one more thing, would it be necessary to get tighter timed, higher clocked DDR2? i mean it is a 533mhz FSB cpu, so getting it to 4ghz is still leaving headroom for the RAM. (at a 1:1 divider). THink i'd see better oc's with better RAM? or is it not really worth it with a 533mhz FSB CPU?

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As what said, cpus vary. It's hard to do much OCing without that fact being painfully obvious. As an example I've had P4-1.8s that could only run 2.25GHz, and ones that reached 3.42GHz.

As far as the ram goes, I don't have any experience with DDR2 to base an opinion on. You really need to ask somebody with DDR2 experience exactly where the smart money is spent. If you run 1:1 mode you can surely get by with about any DDR2, but I would try to run a multiplier at 200fsb to increase the ram speed beyond 400MHz. 1:1 is probably optimal for the DDR I am using, but likely would limit performance with DDR2. I would probably have bought some inexpensive PC4200 had I gone the DDR2 route, as the whole idea of a 506 system is to do things cheaply.