Gomeler.com

I’ve been a bit busy the last couple of days and I haven’t had enough time to post but the pressure is finally off. About two weeks ago I was informed of an overclocking contest sponsored by Gigabyte. The contest was based around the 3DMark 2006 CPU test score and limited to Gigabyte motherboards utilizing the P35 and X38 chipsets. Ten days ago I ordered a Gigabyte X38-DS4 in hopes of using my Q6600 and my cascade to secure a prize in the contest. Three days ago the board still hadn’t arrived and the top X38 position was taken by a QX9650. I knew I was out gunned with my Q6600, even though I was benching at 4850MHz. To make matters worse, I was informed yesterday that my motherboard’s box had multiple labels and was being returned to Newegg to be re-shipped. Going from competitive to dead on the starting line wasn’t a happy feeling so after a little bit of pacing I formulated a plan. It would require a lot of driving, a lot of patience, and a bucket load of luck.

To Fry’s!

I had never been to Fry’s before but I’d been told it was a mecca for computer components. Considering how I had approximately 48 hours to come up with a way to beat these QX9650’s, Fry’s seemed like a good place to start. With my X38 motherboard back on a truck heading to California, I had to scrounge for an alternative. Rather than trace down a Gigabyte X38 motherboard, I settled for the only Gigabyte P35 motherboard Fry’s had in stock, a P35C-DS3R. If only I knew the amount of trouble this board would give me, I might have simply chucked the thing into a dumpster. Next stop was the processor section in Fry’s. I needed a massive increase in clockspeed capability and I knew what would provide that, a QX9650. I had in the past sworn myself off of over-priced processors as I felt there was no challenge to simply raising a multiplier but after this experience I was sorely mistaken in that previous judgment. The first issue was tracking down a QX9650. I myself see results with them constantly, so I figured I could simply walk over to the processor counter and ask for one. Wrong! The Fry’s I was at didn’t have a single QX9650 or QX6850 in stock, and to make matters worse none of the Fry’s within the Southeast has a QX processor in stock. So, what to do? Make some phone calls!

Microcenter? What?

I knew of Microcenter in the way that you might know of ethane. It sounded like it should be a computer store, but I had no idea what would be there when I arrived. A friend of mine said, “Go to Microcenter, they might have what you need”. So Paul and I hopped in the Mustang and started searching for the nearest Microcenter, apparently it was within a mile of Fry’s. After twenty minutes of driving in circles, we got directions and arrived at our destination. I was so nervous that I had trouble walking straight but I walked/ran to the processor counter and looked over their selection until my eyes settled on my goal. It was like coming to the end of an epic quest, there lie my goal, separate from me by a thick sheet of glass. After pacing back and forth for a few minutes until the Microcenter employee was free, I pointed at the processor and grunted “I NEED IT” while pointing excitedly at the processor. After having another employee come with the special key to unlock the case, the processor was finally in my hands. Walking to the register, I cringed as I swiped my credit card. I have never dropped $1272 in a single purchase in my life. Sure, I’ve probably purchased a few thousand dollars in computer parts over my life, but I typically built an entire computer for this price! The best part of this, the cashier asked naively “Is this for a game?”. Yes, the best game in the world, 3DMark.

To the Bat Cave!

With all my components safely tucked into the backseat, we turned the car around and drove the 20 miles to get back to our house and my bench. Once we got home I tore into the boxes and liberated my ungodly expensive piece of plastic, silicon, and copper and set it on my desk. After poking it a few times with my finger to verify it was real, I popped it into my P35 Neo2-FR and fired it up. After struggling a little bit with a BIOS flash, I finally had the chip running at 4650MHz.. on air. To put this in perspective, my Q6600 requires my 1200 watt cascade to keep it cool enough to operate at this speed and this QX9650 was sipping 1.5v and churning through 3DMark 2006 like Danish maid on a dairy farm. Completely shocked at my good fortune of getting what looked to be another “god” chip, I headed to the garage with my P35C-DS3R and QX9650 in hand. After inspecting the cascade for any leaks or insulation tears I fired up the first stage and began insulating the motherboard. Five minutes later the board was ready, the chip was in the socket, and a dab of Artic Silver Ceramique was applied to the IHS. A few more minutes of strapping the evaporator to the board itself and it was time to fire up the second stage and mash the motherboard power button. After flicking on the second stage and giving it a minute to pull down to -25C I hit the motherboard power button and heard the whine of my 7900GTO. Not good. Whenever a motherboard fails to POST and begin properly functioning, everything will lock up and all the fans will go haywire, typically operating at full speed, which for the 7900GTO is somewhere between a car turbocharger and blower. What.. the.. hell?

Remove Evap, remove QX, Insert Q, Replace Evap, Trick BIOS.

That title is what I did about forty times over the next twenty four hours. From five PM on Thursday to five PM on Friday I dealt with the issue of fighting a non-cooperative board along with a cold-bugging processor. To clarify on these two, with the motherboard, anytime I pushed the memory past 840MHz no matter that timings/voltage or if I pushed the initial FSB past 401MHz the board would hard crash and require a BIOS wipe, and with the cold-bug, it was impossible to boot below -55C, the system would hang. Now this all wouldn’t be an issue if this P35C-DS3R was a normal board however as luck would have it, the P35C-DS3R was a most finicky board. My Crucial 10th Anniversary sticks, which are handpicked, high-bin D9GMH would not boot in the board after a wipe and my Buffalo Firestix, which are high-bin D9GKX, Micron’s highest bin, would also refuse to boot. I figured out it was the 1333FSB on the QX9650 that was screwing up the board so I would have to insert my Q6600 and the $5 Wintec PC2-4300 back-up memory just to get the board to boot and shift the VDIMM to 1.9v(the maximum available..) from the default 1.6v to get my higher clocking sticks to boot. Once this was done I replaced the Q6600 with the QX9650, inserted my Firestix, and then I had to slowly raise the FSB, manually retard the timings and carefully pump the voltages until I was around 4GHz. For some reason the board would completely flip out if I set the CPU to 12×333 immediately rather than slowly increment the FSB from 266×6 to 12×333, nevermind the fact that it was doing 12×387.5 on air earlier.. Eventually I found out the issue, for some reason the board would read the SPD settings on my high-bin ram and then try to clock it like DDR3 but the low-bin ram would work correctly.

Alas! Success!

After about six hours of trying to get the board working and into Windows, I managed to boot up at 4800MHz and successfully got into Windows. I started benching 3DMark at 4800MHz and after each run I’d submit the score and then increment the clocks with setFSB. By using the 12x multiplier I was able to leave the ram alone as each jump in FSB resulted in an additional 12MHz of CPU speed so going from 400FSB to the 417FSB used for my final result was within the tolerances of my ram. Around 4950MHz I passed the reigning P35’s score but not happy with such a close margin I gave it another 50MHz and secured 8134 points at 5004MHz. After uploading the score and taking a screenshot for the contest, I continued to push the clocks and ended up with a run at 5196MHz, 12×433. Unfortunately I didn’t submit the result but tried for 5220MHz, 435×12, and the system crashed. Stunned, I stood there staring at the board for a few minutes until the whine of the fans reminded me to shut everything down. By now it was roughly 7 AM on Friday and my body was dragging so I decided to call it quits and grab some sleep.

Wake Me When It’s Over

Rather than sleep in my bed, in which I knew I’d sleep till 4-5PM, I opted to sleep on the couch in hopes that as Paul headed to class I’d wake up. Naturally I slept through even that and woke up around noon. Gasping like a fish out of water, I ran downstairs to check and make sure I could still submit my score. Upon loading the contest’s website, I noticed Gigabyte had very nicely created a clock that counted down the time until the end of the competition. It read “15:12:34: so I took a deep breath and began my morning routine, at noon. Rather than just settle with my slim margin on first place, I decided after brunch that I’d give it another go and try to reclaim that 5196MHz run. Sadly from 1PM to 5 PM I wasn’t able to ever get into Windows as the board would constantly crash at random moments. At 5 PM I decided to call it quits, I was exhausted and tired of standing in my garage which had averaged a temperature of 37F the previous night and 52F through the day. Slightly downcast that I had been unable to make a solid run that would safely secure first place, I began tearing down the benching station and taking a tally of my gear.

Success?

Right now with a little under six hours remaining, I have first place with a 79 point margin. Frankly this is way too close for me, if I had secured that 5196MHz run I’d have nearly 300 points over the competition. I don’t mind not being first but I’m very worried that someone will edge me out of the top three. Considering how I sunk nearly $1500 into this competition, if I don’t place in the top three then this would have been a very expensive gamble for some entertainment and five seconds of fame. Either way it’s been fun and I’ve sort of grown attached to this QX9650, don’t know if I can sell it like I had planned on doing. This has been a lot of fun and I hope it will pay some dividends down the road. Figure any money I will will be split between products to review and paying for some bills, a pair of HD3870’s would be really nice right now. Cross your fingers and toes for me and those HD3870’s!