The wonder of Quad Core's :-)

[Zak33]

It's taken me a long time to really feel at home with all this power, but today I at last felt "one"with my rig

As lots of you know, I'm involved with Folding@Home and Team HEXUS are flying up the league tables.

I also play Lineage 2 online a lot.

I work from home too, and use 3 or 4 internet browser windows, with 2 spread sheets and a VPN and Word and Power Point

With music.
At lunch time I had a break from work for an hour:
I assigned 3 cores to folding, and it was nearly as fast as 4, much faster than just two.
I used the spare core for Lineage2, and worked while my mana replentished on my character online I carried on working on the data I was compiling off the screens.

Outlook Express was running. Media Player. Folding. Lineage 2. 2 Excel docs, Firefox with 4 tabs, Power Point....

And it was all faultless.

It's really reall nice being this productive. I think my PC with mutli core has come of age

I got loads done today, like lightning AND smoothly....

Love it

[Funkstar]

Outlook Express was running.

What on earth were you doing that for?

I mean, you have word and power point, so pesumably you have office. That means you have Outlook. Why not use that man? i mean, coooome oooooon!

[Zak33]

I mean, you have word and power point, so pesumably you have office. That means you have Outlook.

I do indeed....

but Outlook Express is fine thanks

[DataMatrix]

All I can say is Multi Core FTW.

[Funkstar]

but Outlook Express is fine thanks

weirdo...

[DeSean]

Haha glad you're using all your computing power.... I struggle to think of ways to do it - STALKER seems to only stress one core, and even the much vaunted SupCom uses two cores more than the other two. Plus I have no apps that use all my luverly RAM.

This system just sits here using electricity and heating my room, but it's still awesome

[Funkstar]

Have a go at Folding@Home DeSean, that definitely uses all four cores

[Clunk]

Zak, have you got one of those meter thingys that tells you how much current you are drawing from the wall?

I've been tinkering around with power saving and its still pulling 355w at idle

Is yours overclocked at all?

[Fraz]

Zak, have you got one of those meter thingys that tells you how much current you are drawing from the wall?

I've been tinkering around with power saving and its still pulling 355w at idle

So you are finally realising the downside of overclocking

Unless you actually need all that processing power, and are actually using it, then overclocking CPUs is just willy-waving at the cost of an increased electricity bill. I have my computer on nearly 16 hours a day, if not more, and I just don't see the point of overclocking my Q6600 past 3GHz. My CPU is using 120 Watts as it is, and that starts going up pretty quickly once you get past the 3GHz stage, as you have to start upping voltages.

I guess the best thing to do is just have a bios profile (or whatever) for stock/moderate overclock for general use with all the power saving enabled, and save your superclocked-zero-power-saving profile for when you really need it when playing games, etc.

[Clunk]

So you are finally realising the downside of overclocking

Unless you actually need all that processing power, and are actually using it, then overclocking CPUs is just willy-waving at the cost of an increased electricity bill. I have my computer on nearly 16 hours a day, if not more, and I just don't see the point of overclocking my Q6600 past 3GHz. My CPU is using 120 Watts as it is, and that starts going up pretty quickly once you get past the 3GHz stage, as you have to start upping voltages.

I guess the best thing to do is just have a bios profile (or whatever) for stock/moderate overclock for general use with all the power saving enabled, and save your superclocked-zero-power-saving profile for when you really need it when playing games, etc.

Nope.

I regularly use the welly that my system can provide, that isnt in dispute, and if I didnt need it, then I wouldnt have it on, simple as that. In fact, when I dont need it, I use my laptop.

Overclocking for me, is just a hobby/passtime, as it is for a lot of people.

I have been experimenting with C1E today, but there doesnt seem to be any benefit at all on my system, thats what I was asking about. I have always avoided it with C2D systems because of instability when overclocked, but this doesnt seem to be the case on the P5K, although I need to test further.


I have a question for you though....why overclock it to 3Ghz and not just leave it at 2.4Ghz?

[Agent]

This is one of the reasons I love uGuru

Idle at desktop? The CPU can be at stock (or underclocked), lowered voltage on it, the RAM and northbridge. Then you can set up the overclocked parameters for when an app that you define launches
Saves energy and less heat output

[Fraz]

I regularly use the welly that my system can provide, that isnt in dispute, and if I didnt need it, then I wouldnt have it on, simple as that. In fact, when I dont need it, I use my laptop.

Overclocking for me, is just a hobby/passtime, as it is for a lot of people.

I have been experimenting with C1E today, but there doesnt seem to be any benefit at all on my system, thats what I was asking about. I have always avoided it with C2D systems because of instability when overclocked, but this doesnt seem to be the case on the P5K, although I need to test further.

Fair enough

I have a question for you though....why overclock it to 3Ghz and not just leave it at 2.4Ghz?

I use my computer all day for work purposes and often have it on well into the evening for games/movies, etc, but in the background on all 4 cores at all times it's running World Community Grid jobs. After some tinkering and calculations, I saw the 3GHz point as a nice balance between CPU power (mainly so I can get more WCG points... ), CPU cooler noise, and power consumption.

Roughly speaking, to get from 2.4 GHz to 3 GHz has cost me less than 25 Watts in power for a 600 MHz increase. To do the same 600MHz increase again would cost somewhere in the 60-80 Watts region (because of the necesasry increase in VCore, etc), and my cooler would be running at 2000 RPM rather than 1000.

Simple cost/benefit analysis

[Fraz]

This is one of the reasons I love uGuru

Yup - it's pretty sweet for exactly this kind of thing

[Zak33]

Zak, have you got one of those meter thingys that tells you how much current you are drawing from the wall?

I've been tinkering around with power saving and its still pulling 355w at idle

Is yours overclocked at all?

nope I haven't

I have a QX6700, 4 gig or ram, a raptor, a WD AAKS, an X1900 XT and a SATA drive, all at stock speeds

All off a Silverstone 400w PSU

And it's solid

[DeSean]

nope I haven't

I have a QX6700, 4 gig or ram, a raptor, a WD AAKS, an X1900 XT and a SATA drive, all at stock speeds

All off a Silverstone 400w PSU

And it's solid

lol I have a very similar system on a 750W PSU (£110 ), although I would always be wondering on a 400W one whether any system problem was caused by the PSU... I'm also surprised your PSU doesn't make lots of noise with that load.

My C2Q is also at 3ghz, any higher and I start to get errors, although I have not done huge amounts of testing to see if it possible.... the temperatures also put me off (using Coretemp - Speedfan temps are amazing!).

I'm happy at the moment with 3ghz because the only faster desktop CPUs in existence are other overclocked ones, and the framerates on all of my games are fine on my 1440x900 screen. (HL2, CS:S, Stalker, SupCom, CoH).

[Zak33]

lol I have a very similar system on a 750W PSU (£110 ), ....... I'm also surprised your PSU doesn't make lots of noise with that load.
.

never be sad that you got a good PSU...it'll last you many PC's prolly the best money you soent...it'll be there long after you've changed cpu/mobo/graphics card

Mine came with my sugo.

It's not noisy, not in comparison to the graphics card.

And it's all very quiet compared to my last machine