We have a comprehensive review on OCAU also:
http://www.overclockers.com.au/article.php?id=4895 87
We compare the new high-end 2.93GHz X6800 and the 2.67GHz E6700, with the current Pentium D 955XE and AMD's A64 FX-62. Lots of info, loads of benchmarks and of course, some overclocking.
you're welcome to email them to me. I don't have plans for a followup article, but I could always put them on our news page. credited to you of course, if you like.
Thanks for the server stress-test! We've tweaked the config a fair bit and things look happier now. If you had trouble reading the article earlier, sorry about that. Should be good to go now, touch wood.:)
Well, we've sent out more traffic than this in the past, in terms of bytes/sec. So large images aren't too much of a concern for us. I figured it was the usual servers-dying slashdot effect, but they're both coping fine. Current theory is that we're being capped on a router or something. Anyhoo, site is working, but slow.
No, it's a P4 3GHz doing the webserving with a dual AthlonMP 2800+ doing the database back-end. S'funny, the servers are both coping fine, so I'm wondering if we're being capped on a router somewhere..
The funny thing (to me) is that I wasn't actually quoted, I was paraphrased. What's that Slashdot creed about not reading the source article?:)
My original newspost on OCAU:
---
From Dark_Greg: A rather interesting astronomical phenomenon can be observed over the next month, with Mars being closer to earth then it has been in at least 5,000 years, with some estimates putting it at 60,000 years. Needless to say you wont get another chance to see this again in your lifetime. Details can be found here. That explains all the Mars probes being launched over the last few months.
---
Hopefully you can appreciate the difference in meaning between my use of "that explains" and the mis-quoted "this is probably the reason for".
But hey, I'm happy to be credited like some kind of expert on interplanetary travel. All that time watching Star Trek wasn't just slacking off, it was research! I'm off to update my resume...
It's back up. FYI we had Apache set to load a few too many clients so ran outta memory. Reboot, trim it back and it seems to be working. Slow, and I imagine some people are getting "sod off, we're busy" messages, but at least people are seeing pages (eventually) now.
From my observations, burning in simply refers to the fact that chips seem to be able to run at higher stable speeds over time. I have seen this with quite a few of the 60 or so C366@550's I sold and a few personal chips including a P3 and a classic Athlon (750 taken to 1080MHz water-cooled)..
I've not seen or done any proper experimentation to see what kind of things make it work better/faster, but as it seems to depend a lot on the particular chip anyway, you'd need a pretty large sample set to get any kind of usable information, and the rules might completely change for different types of cores..
You can speed up the process by locking the CPU at 100% load for a while. I've heard that people think it's mild electromigration (not sure how this would INCREASE stability, though, but I'm no electronics engineer). Some people say higher voltage improves it but from my observations it's not REQUIRED to see the effect. If your chip is more than a month or so old I don't think you'll push the limits much higher.. the effects mostly happened in the first 48 hours or so (of continuous 100% load) for me.
Then there's the whole thing about cooking your CPU deliberately. I've heard 3 separate instances now where a pelter's cooler has failed and the chip has been raised to some incredibly high temperature.. instead of dying, it actually became BETTER at overclocking once it had cooled and the cooler was fixed. I do not recommend trying this, though..
So, it may all be related to heat somehow.. the cooking, cpu loading and overvolting all are heat-increasing activities - which may suggest electromigration (or a zillion other things).
Regardless, this kind of thing almost certainly has an effect on the longevity of your chip, if it's the classic 10-years to 5-years then yeah, who cares, but if it shortens it down to a year or so (not inconceivable for "cooked" chips) it may be more of a worry..
Anyway, IMHO, burnin seems to be a normal part of the chip's lifecycle. When you first get a chip they sometimes don't overclock very well at all, in fact I had a couple that I'm pretty sure I damaged by trying too high too soon (616@C366).. they became unstable even at 550 then, when they'd been fine for an hour or so before, I called this "shocking" the chip. After a while they seem to have been run in a little.. [shrug].. I offer no explanations, only observations.
Ramble ramble..
BTW, this has come up a few times in our own forums, you might want to check out this thread for a recent debate on the topic.. not that you won't get enough opinions on Slashdot.:)
Slashdot Mirror
We have a comprehensive review on OCAU also: http://www.overclockers.com.au/article.php?id=4895 87
We compare the new high-end 2.93GHz X6800 and the 2.67GHz E6700, with the current Pentium D 955XE and AMD's A64 FX-62. Lots of info, loads of benchmarks and of course, some overclocking.
you're welcome to email them to me. I don't have plans for a followup article, but I could always put them on our news page. credited to you of course, if you like.
Thanks for the server stress-test! We've tweaked the config a fair bit and things look happier now. If you had trouble reading the article earlier, sorry about that. Should be good to go now, touch wood. :)
Well, we've sent out more traffic than this in the past, in terms of bytes/sec. So large images aren't too much of a concern for us. I figured it was the usual servers-dying slashdot effect, but they're both coping fine. Current theory is that we're being capped on a router or something. Anyhoo, site is working, but slow.
No, it's a P4 3GHz doing the webserving with a dual AthlonMP 2800+ doing the database back-end. S'funny, the servers are both coping fine, so I'm wondering if we're being capped on a router somewhere..
My original newspost on OCAU:
---
From Dark_Greg: A rather interesting astronomical phenomenon can be observed over the next month, with Mars being closer to earth then it has been in at least 5,000 years, with some estimates putting it at 60,000 years. Needless to say you wont get another chance to see this again in your lifetime. Details can be found here. That explains all the Mars probes being launched over the last few months.
---
Hopefully you can appreciate the difference in meaning between my use of "that explains" and the mis-quoted "this is probably the reason for".
But hey, I'm happy to be credited like some kind of expert on interplanetary travel. All that time watching Star Trek wasn't just slacking off, it was research! I'm off to update my resume...
Yes, that's right. You're very clever and we're all very proud of you. Run along now, the adults are talking.
It's back up. FYI we had Apache set to load a few too many clients so ran outta memory. Reboot, trim it back and it seems to be working. Slow, and I imagine some people are getting "sod off, we're busy" messages, but at least people are seeing pages (eventually) now.
From my observations, burning in simply refers to the fact that chips seem to be able to run at higher stable speeds over time. I have seen this with quite a few of the 60 or so C366@550's I sold and a few personal chips including a P3 and a classic Athlon (750 taken to 1080MHz water-cooled)..
.. they became unstable even at 550 then, when they'd been fine for an hour or so before, I called this "shocking" the chip. After a while they seem to have been run in a little.. [shrug] .. I offer no explanations, only observations.
:)
I've not seen or done any proper experimentation to see what kind of things make it work better/faster, but as it seems to depend a lot on the particular chip anyway, you'd need a pretty large sample set to get any kind of usable information, and the rules might completely change for different types of cores..
You can speed up the process by locking the CPU at 100% load for a while. I've heard that people think it's mild electromigration (not sure how this would INCREASE stability, though, but I'm no electronics engineer). Some people say higher voltage improves it but from my observations it's not REQUIRED to see the effect. If your chip is more than a month or so old I don't think you'll push the limits much higher.. the effects mostly happened in the first 48 hours or so (of continuous 100% load) for me.
Then there's the whole thing about cooking your CPU deliberately. I've heard 3 separate instances now where a pelter's cooler has failed and the chip has been raised to some incredibly high temperature.. instead of dying, it actually became BETTER at overclocking once it had cooled and the cooler was fixed. I do not recommend trying this, though..
So, it may all be related to heat somehow.. the cooking, cpu loading and overvolting all are heat-increasing activities - which may suggest electromigration (or a zillion other things).
Regardless, this kind of thing almost certainly has an effect on the longevity of your chip, if it's the classic 10-years to 5-years then yeah, who cares, but if it shortens it down to a year or so (not inconceivable for "cooked" chips) it may be more of a worry..
Anyway, IMHO, burnin seems to be a normal part of the chip's lifecycle. When you first get a chip they sometimes don't overclock very well at all, in fact I had a couple that I'm pretty sure I damaged by trying too high too soon (616@C366)
Ramble ramble..
BTW, this has come up a few times in our own forums, you might want to check out this thread for a recent debate on the topic.. not that you won't get enough opinions on Slashdot.
Agg
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