The "Dark Side" has stolen my heart - C2D E6750 in action!

[RPGW1ZaRD]

Well finally on Wednesday I was able to start the fun with the new hardware I had ordered:

Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz (8x333) 4MB L2 cache *Tray* - 163€
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 Intel P35 chipset based motherboard - 133€
Team Xtreem 2x1GB D9GMH PC5300/DDR2-667 3-4-4-8 2.0-2.2v - 100€
Thermaltake ThoughPower 750W *Modular* w/ silent 14cm fan - 115€
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU cooler w/ selectable range 1000-2000rpm - 52€

Being an AMD user for as long as I've used comps, I was a bit excited switching over to Intel, especially now when I've both seen and heard good stuff about G0 stepping CPUs that come at an attractive price point. As soon as the parts arrived (ordered from all over the world almost, Canada (thanks Eric for the nice Ram sticks ), Germany, Finland. As soon as I got all the hardware I started installing it right away. I was suprised how heavy this GA-P35-DS4 motherboard was but it doesn't suprise me with the monster heatpipe cooling on NB and mosfets. I was even too keen on seeing some results, I didn't care about installing it into the computer case of my old computer as that would require motherboard removal first and stuff, I decided now it's time to run my setup outside the case for the first time so I just put the mobo to rest onto the motherboard cardboardbox. The day I first ran it the room temp was quite low as it had rained, but obviously I had done a good job when mounting it or either these CPUs runs amazing cool or the temp sensor isn't showing correct value (which is the case for G0 stepping CPUs), anyways I turned up Tuniq Tower 120 to around 1800rpm and saw a fairly nice idle temp (comp had been on for over 30mins already).


(Note the temp is inexact )

Then I decided to do the usual "does it work fine on stock settings" and check load temps at same time.


(again add at least 10C to get somewhat plausible normal temps).

I decided to try out PCSX2 here and see what kinda performance I get with completely stock settings. I wasn't hoping to see any big difference here, maybe 10~15% advantage with this system at completely stock settings but to my suprise I found it be even 29~30% faster than the tweaked to death and overclocked AMD system. So that means even a ~35% IPC (instructions per clock) advantage for the E6750. Cool That was really unexpected I must say. Having fun seeing the games already ran 30% faster without even have done anything, I was tempted to move forward.

So what can this chip do on stock volts? Here's the answer:



So where does it max out then?

(sorry I forgot to save an Orthos screenshot but it's stable enough at this speed)

I've also tested the motherboard limit but it was fairly boring as this mobo had no probs running at 6x515 fsb, higher than that would be useless to try knowing my E6750 doesn't go much further than 3.7~3.75GHz anyways for stable usage. Unfortunately 7x515MHz just didn't wanna work for the CPU tho which was expected but still 501MHz worked perfectly fine for example and I had a rather nice config at this speed too:



But seems like due to FSB straps I wasn't having optimal performance. I also updated bios to F5F which seems to work even better and offer slightly better mem performance too. But since memory performance was still not where I wanted it to be and since I had 3 choises: 7x501 (3.5GHz) and run RAM synced at 1:1 with CL4-4-4-4 which I knew they already were capable of as that's what previous owner ran them at 500MHz 4-4-4-4 at only 2.2v. Then I could of course also run 8x463~469 as that's the max my cpu is able to do at reasonable voltage. Here I could go 2 paths, either running synced at a rather low 463~469MHz and apply some tight CL4 timing combination or perhaps try x1.2 divider to get the ram running at 555~563MHz with CL5. I tested first to run synced with the 8x463 setting and found it was showing rather good memory performance so I come to the conclusion it must change fsb strap at around 500MHz prolly. Well I decided to give the x1.2 divider a go and tightened down timings slowly as much as possible and resulted in this which for now seems to be my 24/7 config:



At this setting this setup really shines IMO. Well at least in PCSX2 if we let the emulator decide (I think I don't think it's necessary to tell which is AMD or Intel):









In average the E6750 at max clock 3.75GHz and DDR2 2x1GB @ DDR2-1126 5-5-5-10 was even 72~75% faster than max clocked and tweaked AMD system @ 2.8GHz with DDR1 @233MHz 2-2-2-5-1T. That means a whooping ~40% clock for clock advantage for Intel setup. That's more than I was expecting really. I must say I'm not missing my AMD setup anymore.

Basicly I've been only overclocking and tweaking the system since Wednesday now hehe. The result payed off though. If you want me to run some benchmark or game or whatever I can do so if you're curious.

[skoreanime]

Beautiful . Welcome to the C2D owners club !

[tuanming]

Hey RPGW1ZaRD, test out Final Fantasy X, X-2, XII and set your cpu @ 3.5Ghz or 501x7. You don't have to go too in depth or far into to game, the beginning of the game should be fine. Check out the screenshot with my latest post and you get the idea . I'll look forward to see the difference between your and mine.

The reason why i set a limit at 3.5Ghz is because i can't go faster than that on this motherboard... -.- Oh, and by the way, welcome to the Intel side Can't wait for Nehalem or Penryn goodness XD.

[Cheesus]

Amazing.... Truly amazing....

Congrats, and please do post more screenshots, especially the ones tuanming mentioned

[RPGW1ZaRD]

Originally Posted by tuanming

Hey RPGW1ZaRD, test out Final Fantasy X, X-2, XII and set your cpu @ 3.5Ghz or 501x7. You don't have to go too in depth or far into to game, the beginning of the game should be fine. Check out the screenshot with my latest post and you get the idea . I'll look forward to see the difference between your and mine.

The reason why i set a limit at 3.5Ghz is because i can't go faster than that on this motherboard... -.- Oh, and by the way, welcome to the Intel side Can't wait for Nehalem or Penryn goodness XD.

I already tested it out at the 7x501 config before and I can say checking some of the screens I think I had higher fps rates. At the fast spot you're getting 233 FPS for example I had 261-262 FPS I'm pretty sure of with that config (even more at 8x469 of course )

I can give it a try again if you want though. But first I'd like to know in order to get more exact comparision if you have "thread mode" enabled in sound settings as this speeds it up slightly (3~5%). Here let me show you examples (screenshots from same spots as yours but at 3.75GHz (8x469 and DDR2-1126) with thread mode on and AA4x as it didn't slow down anything. Haha, I really easily achieved my expectations and even more, before I tested this setup I said to myself, prolly around 260 - 270 FPS is what I will be reaching in the fast FFX spot, and now it's even 285 FPS with thread mode on and 275 fps with thread mode off.

Originally Posted by Cheesus

Congrats, and please do post more screenshots, especially the ones tuanming mentioned

Oh well I guess I could post a few if you insist.

[tuanming]

I didn't enable threaded mode in the sound config. I think the default is off for threaded mode. So is your cpu faster than mine at 501x7 or 505x7 (screenshot speed)? I believe ram will make a difference in this matter

[RPGW1ZaRD]

Originally Posted by tuanming

I didn't enable threaded mode in the sound config. I think the default is off for threaded mode. So is your cpu faster than mine at 501x7 or 505x7 (screenshot speed)? I believe ram will make a difference in this matter

Yes RAM but also L2 cache size will matter a bit probably. Also I immediatly from start disabled C1E, virtualization, EIST and "limit CPUID Max to 3" in BIOS which might have a slight performance impact too. I'm also running Windows 2k3 Server SP2 btw.

Well here you are, as you see the config is listed first, also thread mode is disabled in sound settings.

Gotta love the RAM sticks, only running them at 2.22v and still it lets me use this tight timings at 501MHz. Might be able to even further tighten the timings a bit but what the heck that is already good and has been tested for stability and I don't wanna start trying that out and make my comp freeze several times before I find the optimal stable values only to get perhaps 1-2 FPS more for this comparision.

Link to tuanming's shots: http://forums.ngemu.com/1180410-post602.html

As usual, compare FRAPS value only as the internal PCSX2 FPS meter just jumps around too much. Seems like my performance is really great clock for clock also with my new Intel setup. Clock for clock performance / Instructions per Clock (IPC) I get best performance at this config 7x501 with ram 1:1 and tightened ram timings, but it's like only 1~2% IPC advantage over 3.75GHz (8x469) with x1.2 mem divider to get 562.8 ie DDR2-1126 so I prefer using the higher clocks. I also was able to run at 504-505MHz stable enough so I guess I should have used that instead.

[firyace]

Sorry if I missed out on this info on the everest and cpu-z pictures, but how hot is your cpu right now? And what kind of coolers are you you using?

[RPGW1ZaRD]

About 21C idle and 54~55C full load in Orthos according to those sensors but then it's difficult to really tell what it is as G0 stepping CPUs have a bit weird temperatures especially idle temp is just lower than what it can be in theory for example, it's more than 21C in my room so the temp is definitely higher than that in reality. Cooler I'm using I already posted in the first post at top.

Tuniq Tower 120 120mm cpu cooler with a fancontroller of 1000~2000rpm. Mostly running around 1500 - 1650rpm. http://www.tuniq.com.tw/Cooler%20Info/Tower-120.htm

[firyace]

oh man, thats a really huge cooler

I really wanted to OC my C2D, but I can't really fit any 3rd party coolers in my uATX case (not that I think my 6420 is slow, but I just want to kinda unleash its full potential).

Also, do you have VF4 or like RE4 to try on your pcsx2? I really want to see those fps especially RE4 since I would want to see can the OCed e6750 be able to overcome games that are gpu dependent

[RPGW1ZaRD]

I got GPU limited again in RE4 with this new CPU as I also was when I had my 6800GT. Of course that doesn't mean it runs bad, in fact it seems to run at full speed and above perhaps 90%+ of the time. But still the speed increase in this game isn't nowhere in the 72~75% range as the others which means I'm getting GPU limited.

In v0.9.4 it might run better tho due to some tweaks for ZeroGS plugin that should lower the GPU load significantly.

[Silenus]

Whoah man, that's great Wiz.
Could you do super pi of 1m?
Wish I had that cooler.

[RPGW1ZaRD]

Sure.

BTW, talking about benchmarks, my 3DMark05 score alone went up ~650 due to my new CPU. So now I'm getting a not too shabby ~12350 score with a 7900GTO 512MB.

[tuanming]

Hey not fair, you get to use 2.2v for the memory and low/tight timming. My board suck it can on do 2.1v in the bios but i measure with a multimeter and it showv! 2.08!! instead of 2.1v. My ram timming is 5-5-5-15-4-42-3-11-7-13 I can't do 4-4-4-X with just 2.08v...

Edit: Oh by the way, see if you can push that cpu of your to 4Ghz or near it. If not, then it must be your cpu is limiting you?

[RPGW1ZaRD]

Well it won't go much further seeing how it needs a bump of 1.42v -> 1.52v only by going from 3.5 to 3.75GHz. So when it scales this bad it won't go much furter, maybe 3.8GHz at 1.55v or so but that would be stupid for only a 50MHz increase. It definitely won't have a chance reaching 4GHz I think even if it was just barely to boot to windows at even 1.6~1.65v It's CPU that is limiting, motherboard can handle at least 515MHz tho as I tested 6x515. On 7x multi however it only reaches something between 500 - 510MHz stable. I tried increasing mobo and cpu voltage but it wouldn't work. I wonder why 6x515 works and not 7x515 which is 3.7GHz if 3.75GHz for example works with 8x multi.

EDIT: Improved my SuperPi 1M score slightly tightening 1 or 2 timings.


sub 13.5 secs is quite good I think for a 24/7 3.75GHz DDR2-1126MHz config.

SuperPi 32M and Everest mem and cache benchmark.