P4 NorthWood 1.6A

[uberlad]

I'm seeing some insane overclocks on these babies all over the net of late, and the old technolust is whispering to me that maybe it's time to upgrade.

Question is - Am I being blinded by some lucky SOB's. Has anyone bought one, tried it and had to have their jaw replaced? Motherboard / Memory combos?

I can prolly upgrade for less than £250 if I can find someone to buy my old Mboard / TBird / Mem. I'm soo tempted.

And of course, finally will I be able to live with myself if I abandon AMD?

Uberlad

[borat]

have no experience of o/c ing these chips but by all accounts they look really good.
they run a hell of a lot cooler than the amd's and the 1.6A is real cheap at the moment. if i was upgrading i'd definately go for a p4 ahead of an xp purely on stability terms

[uberlad]

Yeah, that's my thinking. It fits my upgrading pattern, if anything I've waited longer this time (almost a year and a half).

I suppose that the follow on question becomes - can anyone recommend a 845D (which people seem to be using for the insane overclocks) motherboard? I'd like the inbuilt 10 / 100 networking, but couldn't give a stuff atm for USB 2.0 unless it's 'free'.

I@ve been looking but I@ve been unable to find a decent number of reviews / roundups 8-(

Uberlad

[cbman]

My boss just put a home system together for himself on a MSI 645 Ultra Board and a 1.6A

2.2+ stable without effort... 2.35 causes a few programs to choke but we can't tell if its the generic DDR memory, Bus Speed, or Just the limit of the chip (Which from 1.6 to over 2.2 stays at 49c)

Definately something worth looking into.

[uberlad]

And that's the kinda report I need to tip me over the edge into full 'justification mode'.

Damn, I was going to have a lean few months after christmas 8-)

Uberlad

[borat]

cbman what kind of cooling did you use to acheive these speeds. was it with the stock intel cooler or something more elaborate?
have you seen any faster ones overclocked? ie 1.8a's or 2.0a's.
just interested in knowing if its worth paying more for these as if the overclock speeds are similar then the 1.6a looks like the way to go.

[cbman]

So far (Since it is a fairly small area.) We have only had a 1.6 and a 1.8 come in.. both easily hit 2.2+ with the stock intel cooler... No voltage mods... nothing extreme...



So... as far as my experiance goes... I say...

[borat]

how do you o/c a p4 as i have heard that the multiplier is unlockable. is this true

[Greebe]

You up the FSB to OC them, which has been the case for many years now for all Intel chips

[Wombat]

That can't be all. 1.6 -> 2.2 GHz is 38% overclock. Rambus has that kind of margin?

[EvilDonnyboy]

You can put the Rambus multiplier to 3 (default 4) on most decent mobo's. So at 133mhz the rambus memory will run at it's rated 800mhz instead of an unfeasable 1066mhz.

Or you can use a DDR motherboard. PC2100 is rated to 133mhz afterall, no problems there.

[cbman]

Of the boards we had the 1.8 went into a 845 with normal SDRAM and the Boss has the 1.6 on an MSI SIS 645 with DDR Memory.

[borat]

what about upping the voltage of the cpu. can this be done from new or does the cpu need a mod

[cbman]

The MSI Board had it built into the bios.... Not to sure about the other board.

[superfly]

Or do like i did and get a 2.2 northwood all the way up to 2.8 using nothing more than the stock intel cooler and default voltage(850 chipset/125 mhz FSB)...Full load temps stay at 55*C(45*c no load).


Btw the way,the rdram multiplier stays at 4x,so the memory is running at 500 mhz(pc 1000)....