Conroes arrive at OCF!

Conroe E6700 2.66GHz - Step 4 / B0



Motherboard: Intel "BadAxe" D975XBX Revision 304 BIOS 1181:



Rest of the system:
2GB Corsair XMS 6400C3
Sapphire x1900XT
Zeus 560W PSU
3 HDDs
1 Optical
...blah, blah, blah.

First boot:



The board takes a little getting "used to" for OCing. BIOS has totally different options and OC features are pretty different than any standard BIOS. There are no "1 FSB increments" and mem dividers are limited. I was still finding interesting "things" out today that appear to be board-related and doubt I've found them all. I really miss the ASUS "OC butt saver" though because resetting this board is a bit of a pain (power down/switching jumpers)...it requires me to actually get up, LOL. Luckily that only happens when there is a pretty serious setting problem.

I spent most of a day messing around just learning the board and OCing with, but had no problem kicking out big FSB with just standard BIOS options and a totally stock board. I didn't even need to use the max BIOS voltages for the NB or FSB....board is really strong:



All I had for cooling was a P4 stock HSF (POS), but still managed to do 3.33GHz @ 10x333 with relatively little Vc (1.40V). On water, it does 3.33GHz @ 1.350V. I have no idea what "default Vc" is. Depending on which BIOS I use, it defaults to 1.30V or 1.40V, so for stock clocks, I dropped down to BIOS minimum which is 1.275V on the latest one.

Since everyone and their mama is using "good air cooling", of which I have none (water->phase->DI->stock P4 sink? HAHA), I put water on it and will bring you some of those results to start since I haven't really seen any.

Good air cooling should go a good way on these, water slightly better. This 6700 isn't the best one out there, but if they are all like this or better, I don't think anyone will have trouble reaching the true XE speed of 3.33GHz (unless FSB-limited). Given that 425-450FSB looks like it will be a breeze on any Conroe-capable board with no mods, even the slightly lower default multi Conroes might not have a bunch of trouble getting >3GHz clocks.

These are just baselines while learning the board/CPU. Other than playing a bit with memory timings, they are not "tweaked up", go for broke benches, they are just benches...some not even on clean boots. I haven't clocked over 3.5GHz yet and the first time was on the stock P4 cooler. There will be plenty more benches coming, obviously. These are all 3.33GHz 10x333FSB clocked not even using what is necessarily the "best way". As weird as it sounds, how you clock on this board doesn't necessarily mean the results will be the same, even if the final clocks/FSB are identical. Like I said, the board is a bit strange, hehe.

The ubiquitous SPi 1M:



32M is *almost* bearable to sit through at these speeds, hehe.



x1900XT single @ a mild 730/800 clock. I ran a bunch with stock XTX speeds (650/775), but that's no fun to show, so I wanted to kick in some card clocks. I'd go higher on the card, but it's on air and already not very happy with the temps from the clocks/volts (~80C load).

Straight-through standard bench, no tweaks or ordered tests. OOPS, looks like the Crystal window was left behind the 3D01 window...it was late, I was tired.







This one is just for Gautam, LOL. Can't wait to crank the mem on this!





more Conroe results from El<(')>Maxi...

My first play with Intel and I have to say even though I don't really know my way around this setup the learning curve isn't quite the same challenge I had with some DFI setups. My first board was DOA from FRY's. I didn't notice it was open box until I got home. Here's their test bench, scary



However I did leave with a working board.



This board does take it's time to POST/boot but once your in the OS it's solid.

Setup:

E6700 BO stepping
Intel BadAxe rev. 304 BIOS 1181
Corsair 6400 C3's 2.2v
Custom PCP & C 510
ATI X1900 Master
OS Windows XP 32bit
Tuniq Tower 120

1.425v was used on the following tests

32M



Dual 32M



3DMark 01



Obviously I need to learn how to tweak this setup as the PI times are nothing special at this point. I did a few default bench tests, you can see them them with the links provided.

http://www.maxclocks.com/ghz/Conroe/PI-1M.jpg
http://www.maxclocks.com/ghz/Conroe/PIfast-.1.jpg
http://www.maxclocks.com/ghz/Conroe/SM-1.jpg
http://www.maxclocks.com/ghz/Conroe/CM-1.jpg
http://www.maxclocks.com/ghz/Conroe/Nuclearus-1.jpg
http://www.maxclocks.com/ghz/Conroe/CB-1.jpg
http://www.maxclocks.com/ghz/Conroe/WR-1.jpg

i nearly fainted when i seen the 15s superpi
get that thing under phase!

Leave it to OCF to do things right

Some nice work there

I was wondering when boosted EVO would bring this over here.
Is that your first Intel board?

Nice work guys.

James, yeah first Intel board. They've never had a rep for OCing...probably because they were never OCable before this thing I am liking how solid it is, but OCing it definitely has a bit of a learning curve. Nothing hard, just takes time to figure everything out and get the "right" combo to perform best.

I really don't see myself putting in on phase before the weekend at the earliest...I'll definitely max out water first which will *hopefully* be around 3.7-3.8GHz. It's 100F out here and my water is probably not any better than "good air" in a 20C room

@ Gautam: I didn't want to light up the mem in that 3.5GHz 32M for ya in case you had a 14.5 min. up your sleeve

Good job
Did you figure out the bio's tweak for the badaxe?

I keep looking in the ITK and thinking about hacking my own BIOS, but there almost doesn't seem like much of anything I could do that's not already in the stock one, so I am just messing around with the stock BIOS for now. I didn't even need to hack the board to get the OC options in BIOS...they unlock automatically on the Step 4 B0. The only real "problem" on all of these is that even when disabled in BIOS, EIST stays on.

You can forget seeing any LN2 benches from me...how ever good they get is how good they get mike probably has one that would stomp mine into the ground on air

I think your 32m as it is right now should be doable with Yonah...but beyond that, I can forget about it. Though for the record, you need to work with 3DMark2001 a bit.

All in good time though. I hope you follow my precedent and break the DI out tomorrow.

PS about Systool, thats the PLL that Crotale and Mike were using at XS.

Maxi, NICE 3D01, I can't wait to start playing with that. I might need to put the card on water or phase though to do any better on card clocks LOL, good ole Fry's.

Gautam, LOL, I think I'll wait at least a bit before DI and see what kind of clocks "normal people" can get Blasting out insane clocks and benches is nice for the drool factor, but gives people an unrealistic expectation. I certainly won't be shattering any Conroe records, so I might as well see what the average Joe can expect more or less....THEN it will be DI time

I'll check out that PLL, thanks. I never in a million years would've tried a one from another line. Clockgen is still a bit iffy and it definitely has something to do with something that loads on boot (either CCC or XP module). Something is accessing the HDD for quite a while after boot and if I try to set Clockgen before that stops, it locks immediately. If I wait til it stops, it's good to go.

Nice stuff. Thanks for the 32M Super Pi run. That's been the critics' last leg to stand on and I'd say a 16 min 32M is not too shabby at all.

hey ross have you run benches to see if conroe is like dothan in that 1:1 is better then haveing the ram at a higher speed?
Just as how much difference are we talking with the tightest timings at stock and looser timings at stock?

Nice job guys, I was going to buy a badaxe from newegg but im scared they might still have some 302's in stock.

Evilsizer, 1:1 is really strong, but it's the same old trade off. 1:1 at slower speed matches 4:5 at higher in B/W, but obviously the higher speed has a lot shorter latency. The trick will be running 1:1 with enough FSB to keep the speed on the mem, but with 400FSB easily doable on these boards, 400FSB 1:1 3-3-2-x should be real nice...haven't gotten that far yet

Conroe is definitely lower in overall bandwidth benches than Preslers for those that haven't seen it. I don't know if that has to do with the arch, big L2, if the benches aren't optimized for these procs or what. Whatever it is with the B/W benches, it obviously doesn't impact performance, just don't be shocked when you see B/W on these because even with huge FSB, I don't think they will touch a Presler in that dept, however, latencies are ridiculously faster than any P4-based anything

Epox, yeah, you can be pretty sure if they have any 302s left at all, they'll be shipping those first and foremost to unload them.

Tigerdirect has a killer price right now, http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1766877&Tab=0&NoMapp=0
but its probably a 302, or a refurb knowing tigerdirect.

Somewhere online (probably over at XS), there was a guide to updating the power circuitry on Bad Axe 302 boards to that of the 304s to make them Conroe capable, if not compatible.

thanks for bringing the beef to ocforums

I want one!

I just developed a fever in the last few minutes!!!

I gotta go now....... Sweet, keep it coming!