# PPD for an i7



## [Ion] (Jun 16, 2010)

Hey guys,
I got an i7 860 and I've decided to try FAH on it for a little while vs WCG.  I have it OCed to 3.8ghz and it's currently pulling right at 15k running SMP2.  This is 2.5x what the X4 got during the CC, so I'm very impressed.  Is this good PPD for 3.8ghz, or should I be getting closer to 20k?


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## theonedub (Jun 16, 2010)

That is about the same I was getting running my 860 @ 3.5 for the CC as well. Your results are probably just fine as PPD still varies amongst projects like in GPU folding. 

Welcome to the i7 club


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## [Ion] (Jun 16, 2010)

theonedub said:


> That is about the same I was getting running my 860 @ 3.5 for the CC as well. Your results are probably just fine as PPD still varies amongst projects like in GPU folding.
> 
> Welcome to the i7 club



OK.  I'm loving the i7, I got to 4ghz with under 5 minutes of work in the BIOS and it was rock-stable, I backed it down to 3.8ghz because of temps (and it didn't have much of a PPD hit).  I have pretty slow memory with pretty loose timings, which could be part of it (DDR3-1456, 9-10-10-9-24).  3.8ghz takes 1.27v, and temps are right at 70c with push/pull on the H50.  The P7P55D Pro I picked up has 2 open PCIe x16 slots for GPUs, so I'll be looking to see what I can find to fill those.  I'd love a pair of 8800GTS 512s or a 9800GX2, but I may get a 2nd GTX260 so I can SLI for games (and then maybe an 8800GT as well)


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## theonedub (Jun 16, 2010)

Can you post up all your voltages? I want to see what you needed for 4ghz incase I ever decide to take it that far  

The only thing that I would do is see if it would take any lower voltage @ 3.8 to keep the temps down. Do you run AC now for the summer?


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## [Ion] (Jun 16, 2010)

theonedub said:


> Can you post up all your voltages? I want to see what you needed for 4ghz incase I ever decide to take it that far
> 
> The only thing that I would do is see if it would take any lower voltage @ 3.8 to keep the temps down. Do you run AC now for the summer?



Everything is stock except for the CPU vCore, which took 1.33v for 4ghz.  AC is on (damn good thing too, it's been 90+ recently), which helps keep temps down


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## sneekypeet (Jun 16, 2010)

I'm sorry if I am way off here, but isn't the i7 860 capable of running the big advanced WU's?


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## [Ion] (Jun 16, 2010)

sneekypeet said:


> I'm sorry if I am way off here, but isn't the i7 860 capable of running the big advanced WU's?



Yep, with 6gb or more of memory.  I didn't have enough space in my build for an i7, a good mobo, and lots of RAM, so I decided to cheap out on the RAM on the theory that it's the easiest/cheapest part to upgrade later


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## sneekypeet (Jun 16, 2010)

my fault, didnt relize there was a ram requirement


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## [Ion] (Jun 16, 2010)

sneekypeet said:


> my fault, didnt relize there was a ram requirement



You can only run it in Linux, and it requires pretty substantial RAM for the virtual machine.  I'm considering more RAM for bigadv, but I may just get more GPUs instead


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## overclocking101 (Jun 16, 2010)

I thought folding@home was single threaded?? odd when I was running it it only loaded one thread maybe I did it wrong


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## [Ion] (Jun 16, 2010)

overclocking101 said:


> I thought folding@home was single threaded?? odd when I was running it it only loaded one thread maybe I did it wrong



You must have, it's using all 8 threads of my i7 nicely


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## BUCK NASTY (Jun 16, 2010)

I have noticed that the on-die mem controller of the 860 does not clock as high with 6-8gb of ram as it does with 4gb. I can run 4.0Ghz all week long with smp2 @ 4gb ram, but 8gb/-bigadv limits me to 3.6ghz and daily random crashes/lost WU's. This is why I have chosen the 18K ppd of SMP2, plus I have not had to re-start the rig in over 3 weeks


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## [Ion] (Jun 16, 2010)

BUCK NASTY said:


> I have noticed that the on-die mem controller of the 860 does not clock as high with 6-8gb of ram as it does with 4gb. I can run 4.0Ghz all week long with smp2 @ 4gb ram, but 8gb/-bigadv limits me to 3.6ghz and daily random crashes/lost WU's. This is why I have chosen the 18K ppd of SMP2, plus I have not had to re-start the rig in over 3 weeks



Well in that case it sounds like I'll stay with SMP2, I'll try to clock it up some more (4ghz hopefully), but if the 860 has that much of an issue clocking with more RAM then I'm not interested.  Especially if I could only get 2K PPD more with bigadv and it would cost another $120 in RAM


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## bogmali (Jun 17, 2010)

Folding the -bigadv WU requires 4-6GB RAM with an A2 core and 3-5GB with the A3 core.


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## [Ion] (Jun 17, 2010)

bogmali said:


> Folding the -bigadv WU requires 4-6GB RAM with an A2 core and 3-5GB with the A3 core.



Well if what Buck said is true I'm not interested in bigadv, I'll OC a bit more, stay with SMP2 and stock up on GPUs


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## [Ion] (Jun 17, 2010)

4ghz failed, with a voltage that maintained any reasonable temps (1.31v, and 80c, respectively) I got random reboots, so I'm back at 3.8ghz until I can find a better way to cool things (affordable, preferably, or it gets lower priority than GPUs and hence probably won't happen)


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## theonedub (Jun 17, 2010)

Might need some VTT boost, that was what was causing my OCCT instability when I intially OCed. 

Here is what I use for 3.5 @ 100% load:


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## [Ion] (Jun 17, 2010)

OK, I'll give that a shot later!


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## [Ion] (Jun 18, 2010)

Well, I'm still at 3.8ghz, PPD has settled at 15.5k for the "standard" A3 WUs and 11.5k for the P6701 WUs.  Very nice


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## [Ion] (Jun 21, 2010)

Well, the v2.22 A3 cores have brought me a slight boost to 16.1-16.5k PPD


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