The Quad Extreme 6850 vs The Quad 9450

[blazed]

Intel chipset board such as the Asus P5Q would be a much better choice, nVidia boards are underwhelming overclockers and have other problems, but are the only official SLI support, though SLI can be done with hack patches on other boards.

Crossfire 4850s or 4870s and a good X38/X48/P45 board would be recommended.

 

[Albuquerque]

For "uber" quad overclocking, I'd suggest the P45.

And I know Brolloks will too, and he's been through pretty much EVERY motheboard on his quest to find the best quad-overclocker. P45 was it And you still have the dual PCI-E 2.0 sockets for crossfire

 

[Brolloks]

For "uber" quad overclocking, I'd suggest the P45.

And I know Brolloks will too, and he's been through pretty much EVERY motheboard on his quest to find the best quad-overclocker. P45 was it And you still have the dual PCI-E 2.0 sockets for crossfire

You are so right my friend...soon (early next week) I'll be doing some CF goodness with dual 4870's on the P45 and a X38 and X48 to see what is the best of both worlds

 

[iBP_Rickochet]

What? EVGA 790i doesn't overclock well? really? I've hit 4.2 stable on liquid on that mobo with a Qx9770 (open air, test bench).

What I find ironic is that a lot of people are pushing the P45... but I've been having trouble overclocking a Qx9650 using a P45 mobo, lol. Granted, I didn't spend a whole lot of time with the P45, I'd expect the FSB to hit 400 EZ with a Qx9650, but the OC just didn't take. Memory was within spec 1600mhz DDR3, too, so it prolly wasn't the memory.

 

[Dapman02]

What? EVGA 790i doesn't overclock well? really? I've hit 4.2 stable on liquid on that mobo with a Qx9770 (open air, test bench).

What I find ironic is that a lot of people are pushing the P45... but I've been having trouble overclocking a Qx9650 using a P45 mobo, lol. Granted, I didn't spend a whole lot of time with the P45, I'd expect the FSB to hit 400 EZ with a Qx9650, but the OC just didn't take. Memory was within spec 1600mhz DDR3, too, so it prolly wasn't the memory.

How are you overclocking that QX, with the multi, or the FSB. Also was it the same chip/componants.

 

[Deanzo]

Another vote.....
1: Sell them all and get a Q9650 when they come out.
2: 790i can be a right PITA
3: P45 clock quads very easy.

 

[HDCHOPPER]

yes intel chipsets P35 and up & keep the 3rd qx6850

 

[Albuquerque]

What? EVGA 790i doesn't overclock well? really? I've hit 4.2 stable on liquid on that mobo with a Qx9770 (open air, test bench).

As has been suggested by others, I'm willing to wager that you never got past about 466FSB on that QX at best...

Since the P45's are doing 500FSB on the new Yorkfield quads, those of us who don't have an unlocked multiplier are at the mercy of whatever FSB our board can muster. Thus, at 9x multiplier, it's far better to have a board that can do 500FSB on the quad than a board that gets stuck somewhere between 440 and 466.

My X38 did 600FSB on an E6750 and did 585FSB on an E8400, both of which were prime and memtest stable

But my X38 on a Q9450? 463FSB was the absolute highest it would post, and that's pretty much all it would do... Forget trying to even get to where it would attempt to boot the operating system. To get it at least past POST, I had to run at 458FSB and to get it stable I had to be basically right at 450FSB if I didn't want to shove a mountain of voltage through the northbridge and CPUFSB.

 

[Gautam]

466 is peanuts. 495 is 3D stable in SLi. (500 almost is, but usually crashes after a few minutes)

However, making the board do this is not a task for the faint of heart. 790i will equal or even surpass P45, it's just that's very annoying and difficult to work with. I would never recommend anyone to try to run one 24/7 if they can help it, but don't confuse that with poor overclockability.

 

[failmexnow]

final question:

I was going to grab 4 gigs of ddr3 but most of the motherboards im looking at will support up to ddr2 1200. is it worth me getting the ddr3 board with all the problems im reading about in terms of configuring the memory or should i just stick with ddr2

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131327

 

[prime81]

466 is peanuts. 495 is 3D stable in SLi. (500 almost is, but usually crashes after a few minutes)

However, making the board do this is not a task for the faint of heart. 790i will equal or even surpass P45, it's just that's very annoying and difficult to work with. I would never recommend anyone to try to run one 24/7 if they can help it, but don't confuse that with poor overclockability.

Not bad.... we'll see how my p5q-e compares

 

[Albuquerque]

Yeah, I was thinking of the 780i rather than the 790. A simple Google yielded plenty of ~500FSB results on the 790i.

Good show

 

[Brolloks]

Bear in mind that a lot of people do not have the skillsand know how (no offense here to anyone intended) some of the experts here have to OC quads to 500FSB on a 790i hence my statement that the 790i should not be used to OC quads, it is a great SLI board and can OC like any nVidia chipset, but if you want an easy OC 24/7 board then it will be an Intel chipset.

 

[Albuquerque]

Hell, being able to attain 500FSB on any of the yorkfield processors is a feat in and of itself, so to anyone who gets it there in the first place!

 

[Brolloks]

Hell, being able to attain 500FSB on any of the yorkfield processors is a feat in and of itself, so to anyone who gets it there in the first place!

QFT

 

[Albuquerque]

How much beer does that make me indebted to you now anyhow? If you're only in Illinois, maybe I need to come up there and buy you a round or three. Then I can come drool on your supah secret 500fsb quad and get madly jealous.

<-- from Louisville, KY

 

[Gautam]

It took me about 3 hours of tweaking GTL settings to get that far. Without touching them 470 seemed okay. Every hour yielded 10MHz in FSB.

 

[Albuquerque]

GTLREF is what got my X38 to even post at 463, but talk about unstable. Without touching GTL, I can do 450FSB reliably -- GTLREF1 of +3% and GTLREF2 of -6% are the most stable for my highest clock of around 458, but you have to push so much FSB voltage that it's just not worth potentially killing the CPU over another 100mhz of clock.

The poor ol' X38 just can't do it. But I can't yet convince myself that a new P45 is worth it for just another ~400mhz worth of CPU speed either. I mean really, what am I playing right now that 3.6Ghz worth of quad-penryn goodness isn't gonna hulk-smash into tiny bits?

I really do miss the FSB though. Sigh... So many decisions Maybe when those Q9650's come out I can finally decide to just do the P45 / Q9650 upgrade all in one swipe.

 

[Brolloks]

It took me about 3 hours of tweaking GTL settings to get that far. Without touching them 470 seemed okay. Every hour yielded 10MHz in FSB.

See that is what makes you an uber OC'er and me just a rough and tough OC'er , I have little patience for stubborn hardware

 

[@crilicM@n]

watching

See that is what makes you an uber OC'er and me just a rough and tough OC'er , I have little patience for stubborn hardware

And I'm just sit down here watching and reading and reading... collecting your good info and expertise he he he Just taking note of the homework he he.... P45 + Q9650 (Or E8400/8500)...