Rally Sept. 5th-7th

[mdettweiler]

Well, my new quad has finally been put together! Although I don't have an OS on it yet, I was able to get it running with a Linux LiveCD and crunching on LLRnet C443. Hopefully it will be on for most, if not all, of the remainder of the rally.

In fact, I'm writing this post from my new quad (a Q6600 2.4Ghz)!

[em99010pepe]

Congratulations on the new machine. Primes will happen more often...lol

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by em99010pepe

Congratulations on the new machine. Primes will happen more often...lol

Lol! Thanks--I'm hoping to get Windows installed on it within the next few days (I would put Linux on it if it was my own machine, but actually it's for someone else in my household, I'm just helping to build it); within a few days after that, to copy over all the data from the ancient dinosaur it's replacing, and then it should be ready to be put into active use--which will mean that it will be on for an average of 12-24 hours a day (based on the uptimes of the computer it's replacing). And from that point on, I've got all sorts of grand plans as to what to do with it.

[em99010pepe]

Next step is to buy a new cooler and get into the world of overclocking...hehe

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by em99010pepe

Next step is to buy a new cooler and get into the world of overclocking...hehe

Well, actually, I bought a big honking cooler right from the start--hopefully it will perform as well as I'm guessing it will. And a quick check through the BIOS reveals that this is a very overclocking-friendly motherboard--I found a whole panel with various overclock options on it right off the bat. (This is a first for me--the mobo on my primary machine (Intel E4500) doesn't seem to have any such options in the BIOS, presumably I'd have to overclock it with other methods.)

I was wondering, how much have you, in your personal experience, been able to overclock a Q6600, while still remaining at a tolerable heat level for the summertime? I don't want to push it too high, since this is a machine that will be doing all sorts of important work and I want it to still remain quite stable throughout the year.

[em99010pepe]

I managed to overclock the Q6600 up to 2968.5 MHz (9.0 x 329.8 MHz) with a Rated Bus speed of 1319.3 MHz without touching the Vcore. I can't go much higher because my Asus P5B motherboard has a bug (found it on Anandtech forum) so I can't pass the 3 GHz mark. About the temps in Summer, like 34 ºC room temperature, I always had the cores at 63, 60, 60 and 60 ºC with the Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7. Every two weeks I clean the dust. On Winter it goes like 57, 54, 54 and 54 full load with 4 instances of LLR or even lower. If you run sieve the temps will go down by 4-5 ºC.

The overclock depends very much on the quality of the motherboard.

Carlos

[em99010pepe]

Here's a good overclock to beginners:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...ds-duals-guide

There's also a bunch of settings to turn off on BIOS and I suppose they are mentioned there on the guide. I also advice you to look at the Anandtech forum for someone who has the same motherboard as you and therefore wanted to overclock a quad-core like you. It will minimize your learning process.

Don't push too hard on FSB, small steps at the time...

Carlos

[gd_barnes]

I was just looking at the distribution of cores on the servers. It is excellent! I think we could double the load on every server and still be OK because we still wouldn't have over 52 cores on any one server.

Thanks everyone for reporting in your machines ahead of time.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by em99010pepe

I managed to overclock the Q6600 up to 2968.5 MHz (9.0 x 329.8 MHz) with a Rated Bus speed of 1319.3 MHz without touching the Vcore. I can't go much higher because my Asus P5B motherboard has a bug (found it on Anandtech forum) so I can't pass the 3 GHz mark. About the temps in Summer, like 34 ºC room temperature, I always had the cores at 63, 60, 60 and 60 ºC with the Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7. Every two weeks I clean the dust. On Winter it goes like 57, 54, 54 and 54 full load with 4 instances of LLR or even lower. If you run sieve the temps will go down by 4-5 ºC.

The overclock depends very much on the quality of the motherboard.

Carlos

Originally Posted by em99010pepe

Here's a good overclock to beginners:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...ds-duals-guide

There's also a bunch of settings to turn off on BIOS and I suppose they are mentioned there on the guide. I also advice you to look at the Anandtech forum for someone who has the same motherboard as you and therefore wanted to overclock a quad-core like you. It will minimize your learning process.

Don't push too hard on FSB, small steps at the time...

Carlos

Okay, cool! Thanks!

In other news: I ended up being able to install Windows Vista on the new quad today, so now that's all set. I've got the computer on and crunching right now on C443 as mentioned before--now all I've got to do is figure out how to get LLRnet to start at bootup. I tried using a scheduled task, but it kept refusing to work--I think it has something to do with the fact that all the usernames on the machine contain spaces in their names. (You'd think that with spaces being "allowed" in usernames, they'd have the whole system be cool with that, across the board--but no, there's still a couple holdout things, like Task Scheduler, that don't like it!) I would just run LLRnet as a service, except that due to a known bug in LLRnet when running on Vista, all the entries on the pop-up menu that you get when you right-click on the system tray icon, are blank. The menu choices still "work", technically--if you click on one it will still do what it's supposed to do. However, that's a little hard since I don't have the order of the menu choices memorized! Maybe someone who uses the Windows LLRnet client on a more regular basis could refresh me on the order that the menu choices are in? Thanks.

Anon

[gd_barnes]

Originally Posted by Anonymous

Okay, cool! Thanks!

In other news: I ended up being able to install Windows Vista on the new quad today, so now that's all set. I've got the computer on and crunching right now on C443 as mentioned before--now all I've got to do is figure out how to get LLRnet to start at bootup. I tried using a scheduled task, but it kept refusing to work--I think it has something to do with the fact that all the usernames on the machine contain spaces in their names. (You'd think that with spaces being "allowed" in usernames, they'd have the whole system be cool with that, across the board--but no, there's still a couple holdout things, like Task Scheduler, that don't like it!) I would just run LLRnet as a service, except that due to a known bug in LLRnet when running on Vista, all the entries on the pop-up menu that you get when you right-click on the system tray icon, are blank. The menu choices still "work", technically--if you click on one it will still do what it's supposed to do. However, that's a little hard since I don't have the order of the menu choices memorized! Maybe someone who uses the Windows LLRnet client on a more regular basis could refresh me on the order that the menu choices are in? Thanks.

Anon

I've had the same issue on my only machine that runs Vista. The 2nd choice down from the top is the one that you want most of the time. It will bring up the GUI window that shows what k/n pair that you're searching and the status of your past k/n pairs.

Oddly, I've grown so accustomed to the bug that I right click the tray icon and go right to that 2nd choice almost without even looking at the little teeny incomprehensible window that pops up. You just get used to it after a while.


Gary

[em99010pepe]

Jokern3000 has at least 6 cores on C443, just letting you guys know.