Overclocking Intel's New 45nm QX9650: The Rules Have Changed
by Kris Boughton on December 19, 2007 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Thoughts
Although we cannot possibly go over everything there is to know about overclocking, we have definitely covered a lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time. We've looked at the QX9650's real power consumption figures, noting that the values published by Intel and AMD are not meant to exactly represent typical high-load scenarios. Studying just how the processor responds to more voltage shows us why we seem to reach a rather abrupt stop on the way up when overclocking.
We've also learned how rather than pushing a CPU to the ragged edge, sometimes it is better to find that point where performance and efficiency can co-exist in a delicate balance. A good overclock is not always about maximum speed. Instead, we would like to advocate what we call the "intelligent overclock" - find that point where going higher just doesn't make any sense…then simply stop and tune from there. We have provided many of the tools for doing so in this article; now it's up to you to make it happen.
With respect to the throttling issues we discovered during testing, we will not rest in our search for answers. It is unfortunate that we were able to find concern so early in such an impressive product. To some degree, this one has us scratching our heads; if our suspicions are correct, we may be looking at some rather drastic shifts in the cooling industry. As soon as we know more, so will you. In the meantime, we have seen nothing that would discourage us from recommending the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 to anyone that wants to experience the most that overclocking has to offer.
Intel's QX9650 is just the beginning - breakthroughs happen every day and design improvements will occur. After experiencing just how good 45nm is already, we cannot help but to be excited about what lies in store for us next. Cheaper 45nm processors like the Q9450 are at the top of our list, naturally, but we also eagerly await AMD's response to Intel's latest challenge. Can AMD reach 45nm and gain some similarly startling improvements? We can only hope!
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Aivas47a - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
Great article. You guys have really been distinguishing yourselves with in-depth work on overclocking the last few months: exploring obscure bios settings, tinkering with "extreme" cooling -- keep it up!My experience with a qx9650 so far is very similar to yours: easy scaling to 4 ghz, difficult scaling after that with 4.2 ghz being the practical max for regular operation (folding, etc.).
One issue I will be interested to see you address in the future is fsb overclocking on yorkfield. So far I am seeing yorkfield top out at lower fsb (450-460) than was possible for kentsfield on a comparable P35 or X38 platform. That is not so significant for the unlocked Extreme Edition chips, but could make it difficult to achieve the magic 4 ghz with the q9550 and especially the q9450.
Aivas47a - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
Great article. You guys have really been distinguishing yourselves with in-depth work on overclocking the last few months: exploring obscure bios settings, tinkering with "extreme" cooling -- keep it up!My experience with a qx9650 so far is very similar to yours: easy scaling to 4 ghz, difficult scaling after that with 4.2 ghz being the practical max for regular operation (folding, etc.).
One issue I will be interested to see you address in the future is fsb overclocking on yorkfield. So far I am seeing yorkfield top out at lower fsb (450-460) than was possible for kentsfield on a comparable P35 or X38 platform. That is not so significant for the unlocked Extreme Edition chips, but could make it difficult to achieve the magic 4 ghz with the q9550 and especially the q9450.
Doormat - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
Though its somewhat disappointing on the rumors that Intel has postponed the launch of their QuadCore desktop chips from January to March.Sunrise089 - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
I agree with everyone else - really top notch stuff here.1 glaring typo though, from the first page: "Moving to a smaller node process technology allows for the potential of one or two things to happen. " - the "or" should be an "of"
ChronoReverse - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
It seems that ATI cards have less of a drop going from XP to Vista (down to zero and even negative sometimes). It might be instructive to use that for the charts that compare Vista to XP for 3D (e.g., the 3Dmark06 benchmark).melgross - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
Capacitors have their capacitance turned into reactance at higher frequencies. Anything that qualifies, in a circuit, as a capacitor, such as two wires riding in parallel, will have, to a greater or lesser extent, the same problem in the design.Reactance rolls off high frequencies. More power is required to offset that.
This is the same problem whether dealing with low frequencies in an audio circuit (where it may be less of a problem), or a high performing computer. It's almost impossible to eliminate all stray capacitance from a circuit, and more circuitry becomes capacitive at higher frequencies. This will only increase as a problem as we get to smaller processes, such as 32nm.
andyleung - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
I am very interested in the performance of these new CPUs. They are Quad-Core and they are good enough to perform some heavy duty business tasks. Wondering how they work with JEE performance.BLHealthy4life - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
This article is a perfect example of what makes Anandtech so great. Anandtech has the most brilliant and most technically savvy guys on the internet.Very rarely will you fine any other website review pieces of hardware with such intricate detail for hardware specs and the technology behind it.
Great work guys!
BL
kkak52 - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
really an informative article.... good work!Bozo Galora - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
A 10+ article, especially the vdroop section.Its nice to see something on AT like the old days thats cuts through the BS and actually gives real usable info.
Quite a tour de force.
Nice work.