# Overclocking benefits?  How much?



## mrsemi (Nov 24, 2009)

I got my system to 4.0 with pretty much ease and lots of reading.  I'm thinking it'll do 4.3 or 4.4 every day use, no problem when I finally get off my duff.  

Can anyone comment on how much more productive these machines are at that level?  Is .3 g worth that many more points?  My bar fluctuates all over the place, since I've overclocked I don't have any issues gaming and crunching now.

I've felt bad about my roomie's power bill, I pay a set amount.  Bother with more power?  Worth the watts and heat?

65 celsius is max on core 2, all others 63 max crunching 24/7.


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## theonedub (Nov 24, 2009)

As Mike says Ghz rule in crunching  

I havent had a chance to dabble in i7s, but I like the Vcore metric. If you have to jack up the Vcore by a large margin compared to your 4ghz setting- leave it be. In the grand scheme of things 4.0 (with HT on) is a monster anyway


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## angelkiller (Nov 24, 2009)

I think you're looking at _efficiency_, ie performance per energy used.

I think stock voltage overclocking will get you the highest performance per watt. Messing with the voltage, even a little, will have a huge effect on power consumption. Increasing frequency doesn't affect power consumption nearly as much as voltage does, and provides very tangible performance gains. So I would either *A)* Leave it stock and turn the volts down until it becomes unstable, or *B)* Leave the voltage stock, and crank up the frequency until it's unstable. *OR* You could even do a combination of the two. Turn the voltage down a bit and turn the frequency up. All these situations maximize power efficiency so you can do the most work possible for the energy that you use.


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## mrsemi (Nov 24, 2009)

Thanks for the responses, let me ask a different way.  For those of you with I7, what voltage, mhz, are you running and what do you get at those specs in a 24 hr period on average.

I got 3650 points yesterday but that doesn't count because I had shut down the night prior and forgot to turn it back on so some was stored.  For your dedicated i7 machine how much is an average for 24 hours at what voltage and ghz?


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## [Ion] (Nov 24, 2009)

mrsemi said:


> Thanks for the responses, let me ask a different way.  For those of you with I7, what voltage, mhz, are you running and what do you get at those specs in a 24 hr period on average.
> 
> I got 3650 points yesterday but that doesn't count because I had shut down the night prior and forgot to turn it back on so some was stored.  For your dedicated i7 machine how much is an average for 24 hours at what voltage and ghz?



PPD scales linearly with clocks, so at 4ghz you'll get almost exactly 50% more PPD than at 2.66ghz, and at 4.4ghz you'll get another 10%.  CP has an i7 at 4ghz, and I think he gets around 4500 PPD from it, but I could be mistaken.


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## PaulieG (Nov 24, 2009)

theonedub said:


> As Mike says Ghz rule in crunching
> 
> I havent had a chance to dabble in i7s, but I like the Vcore metric. If you have to jack up the Vcore by a large margin compared to your 4ghz setting- leave it be. In the grand scheme of things 4.0 (with HT on) is a monster anyway



This should be revised to "VERY STABLE ghz rule in crunching". Not talking bench stable here. I'm talking 25 cycles of LinX or 2 hours of OCCT stable.


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## trickson (Nov 24, 2009)

Paulieg said:


> This should be revised to VERY STABLE ghz rule in crunching. Not talking bench stable here. I'm talking 25 cycles of LinX or 2 hours of OCCT stable.



+1 ! 
I think when you talk about over clocking stability is the key .


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## Jstn7477 (Nov 24, 2009)

Paulieg said:


> This should be revised to "VERY STABLE ghz rule in crunching". Not talking bench stable here. I'm talking 25 cycles of LinX or 2 hours of OCCT stable.



Yes, stability is imperative. Otherwise, you will be doing work units, turning them in and not getting any points for them because the results are not the same as other, stable computers.


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## suraswami (Nov 24, 2009)

mrsemi said:


> I got my system to 4.0 with pretty much ease and lots of reading.  I'm thinking it'll do 4.3 or 4.4 every day use, no problem when I finally get off my duff.
> 
> Can anyone comment on how much more productive these machines are at that level?  Is .3 g worth that many more points?  My bar fluctuates all over the place, since I've overclocked I don't have any issues gaming and crunching now.
> 
> ...



You best friend is this little thing,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...15001&cm_re=kill_a_wat-_-82-715-001-_-Product

You will definitely know if the increase is really worth it or not.


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## RAMMIE (Nov 24, 2009)

Paulieg said:


> This should be revised to "VERY STABLE ghz rule in crunching". Not talking bench stable here. I'm talking 25 cycles of LinX or 2 hours of OCCT stable.



LinX  and OCCT don't mean anything.
Only WCG stable means anything as far as crunching goes.


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## 4x4n (Nov 25, 2009)

You'll be very lucky if you can get to 4.4 for 24/7 crunching. I ran my i7 at 4.2 for a while, but the extra heat and power draw I don't think are worth it. I run 4.0 @ 1.25v, temps stay in the high 60's low 70's. Average boinc points are around 4500.


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## Asylum (Nov 25, 2009)

4.2Ghz is the sweet spot on most i7 920's.
You should be able to run 4.2Ghz with turbo on @ 1.28 voltz.
Increase your vtt to 1.3 or 1.35.
Try it out and see what you think.


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## theonedub (Nov 25, 2009)

Paulieg said:


> This should be revised to "VERY STABLE ghz rule in crunching". Not talking bench stable here. I'm talking 25 cycles of LinX or 2 hours of OCCT stable.



Couldn't agree more, my OCs are all at a min~2hr30min OCCT stable- usually much more


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## [Ion] (Nov 25, 2009)

I've added a section on whether or not to OC to my Essentials thread.


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## Chicken Patty (Nov 27, 2009)

At 4.1 ghz 1.270v load I did about 4-4.4k PPD.   Crunching at stock now, running my heatsink passively.   Stock but dropped voltage to 1.000v


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## 4x4n (Nov 28, 2009)

Chicken Patty said:


> Crunching at stock now



WTF???? 

C'mon CP, that's just not right.


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## Chicken Patty (Nov 28, 2009)

4x4n said:


> WTF????
> 
> C'mon CP, that's just not right.



Bro, i've had issues with my rig which were caused by the sound card, i'm having some now that I hope is just something that is off.  But I don't want to put this chip through more hell.  I want to piece together a benching rig, but my daily rig I don't want to keep messing with it.


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## 4x4n (Nov 29, 2009)

Hey, just busting your balls CP  

Your problem was with your sound card right? I know you probably don't want to, but maybe try a fresh install. I've had similiar issues from changing a bunch af stuff around with the same OS install.

On another note, I'm trying to get a rig going to put back crunching for TPU. It's probably going to have to wait until after Christmas though. But hopefully soon you'll see 4x4n_TPU climbing back up the ranks.


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## Chicken Patty (Nov 29, 2009)

4x4n said:


> Hey, just busting your balls CP
> 
> Your problem was with your sound card right? I know you probably don't want to, but maybe try a fresh install. I've had similiar issues from changing a bunch af stuff around with the same OS install.
> 
> On another note, I'm trying to get a rig going to put back crunching for TPU. It's probably going to have to wait until after Christmas though. But hopefully soon you'll see 4x4n_TPU climbing back up the ranks.



Yeah it was soundcard, now it is again.  I'll leave it out.  I eventually have to get around with buying W7 and with fresh install I'll give it another shot.

Looking forward for the helping hand you are going to be giving us soon


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## mrsemi (Nov 30, 2009)

4x4n said:


> You'll be very lucky if you can get to 4.4 for 24/7 crunching. I ran my i7 at 4.2 for a while, but the extra heat and power draw I don't think are worth it. I run 4.0 @ 1.25v, temps stay in the high 60's low 70's. Average boinc points are around 4500.



So 4.0 and you're pulling 4500?  I decided to leave mine where it was at at 3990 and I just got my all time high of 3770.  So I wonder what your computer is doing better to add all those extra points.


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## Binge (Nov 30, 2009)

mrsemi said:


> So 4.0 and you're pulling 4500?  I decided to leave mine where it was at at 3990 and I just got my all time high of 3770.  So I wonder what your computer is doing better to add all those extra points.



CP has a fantastic i7.  One of the best I've ever seen.  No two i7 perform exactly alike.


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## Chicken Patty (Nov 30, 2009)

Binge said:


> CP has a fantastic i7.  One of the best I've ever seen.  No two i7 perform exactly alike.



At 4.3Ghz I averaged 4.4-5k.  Thanks Binge


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## 4x4n (Nov 30, 2009)

mrsemi said:


> So 4.0 and you're pulling 4500?  I decided to leave mine where it was at at 3990 and I just got my all time high of 3770.  So I wonder what your computer is doing better to add all those extra points.



I run only the cancer projects and average about 31-32k WCG points which is 4400-4500 boinc points. If you are running 24/7 you should definitely be above 4000 ppd. My other 920 is at 3.8 and averages about 4200 boinc.


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## mrsemi (Dec 1, 2009)

Well, I believe I've figured out the mystery.

I wasn't on run always, it was on run based on settings and the settings said only when computer is in use.  When I got home today, only 667 reported all day thus far.  

So I believe this thing has been running only when I'm either surfing, or those times where it didn't go into sleep because I kept it hovering over a website.  It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few days. Lets see if it busts 4k  in the next day or two.

If so


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## Kei (Dec 1, 2009)

angelkiller said:


> I think you're looking at _efficiency_, ie performance per energy used.
> 
> I think stock voltage overclocking will get you the highest performance per watt. Messing with the voltage, even a little, will have a huge effect on power consumption. Increasing frequency doesn't affect power consumption nearly as much as voltage does, and provides very tangible performance gains. So I would either *A)* Leave it stock and turn the volts down until it becomes unstable, or *B)* Leave the voltage stock, and crank up the frequency until it's unstable. *OR* You could even do a combination of the two. Turn the voltage down a bit and turn the frequency up. All these situations maximize power efficiency so you can do the most work possible for the energy that you use.



A man after my own heart, that's what I do with all my processors. I either run them at stock speed with the voltage so far down it's laughable or leave them at stock speed and see how high I can set the clock. I don't really put much effort into finding out what the max voltage is I can use to get the highest super clock as it's just wasteful for me.

Since the newegg price drop I picked up an X4 955 and I'm working now on finding it's limits. So far on air I was able to set it to 3.9Ghz in AOD on stock voltage and get in a few SuperPi runs before it decided that's enough. I also bumped it down to only 2 cores (in bios) just to see if 4Ghz had a chance and it did it with relative ease on 1.4v running SuperPi a few times before it finally had a hiccup. All testing is on my usual super silent fan settings of roughly 400-490rpm (out of 2000rpm+ 110cfm 120mm fan) so I'm super impressed.

Working now on knocking the voltage down at the stock speed to see what happens. I had it down to 1.30v (stock 1.35v) and was still able to run at 3.4Ghz passing stability tests (all four cores) no problem so now I'm on 1.25v at stock 3.2Ghz speed for a few hours no problems....now to knock it down even further. 

Great to see I'm not alone out there in my thinking. 

My last two processors got the same treatment and yielded fantastic results...

Phenom I 9850 X4 2.5Ghz @ 1.062v (freakin insane)
Phenom II 920 X4 2.8Ghz @ 1.200v
Phenom II 955 X4 3.2Ghz @ 1.25v and dropping lol

Kei

(I've got one of those Kill-A-Watt too plugged in 24/7)


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## trickson (Dec 1, 2009)

Kei said:


> A man after my own heart, that's what I do with all my processors. I either run them at stock speed with the voltage so far down it's laughable or leave them at stock speed and see how high I can set the clock. I don't really put much effort into finding out what the max voltage is I can use to get the highest super clock as it's just wasteful for me.
> 
> Since the newegg price drop I picked up an X4 955 and I'm working now on finding it's limits. So far on air I was able to set it to 3.9Ghz in AOD on stock voltage and get in a few SuperPi runs before it decided that's enough. I also bumped it down to only 2 cores (in bios) just to see if 4Ghz had a chance and it did it with relative ease on 1.4v running SuperPi a few times before it finally had a hiccup. All testing is on my usual super silent fan settings of roughly 400-490rpm (out of 2000rpm+ 110cfm 120mm fan) so I'm super impressed.
> 
> ...




Those whom are afraid to crank the volts and fsb are never going to attain E-Peen status !


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## Kei (Dec 1, 2009)

lol, I do still check out the relative max speed of my stuff though so my e-peen should be safe I hope. 

Update: I've been running 3.2Ghz @ 1.232v for just shy 1 hour and 20 minutes so far. I ran 20 minutes stability test in AOD and then immediately 45 minutes with Everest Stress test (harder) and now just enjoying myself for a bit and no problems so far. I'll go for more later, but so far I'm run through the street naked kinda happy. 

(pics attatched...look at the fan speed and temps)

Kei


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## BraveSoul (Dec 1, 2009)

this thread is called "Overclocking benefits? How much?" but all i see is underclocking benefits, how much u may ask? 20watts   crunching at 2.8ghz 1.2v  'kill a watt' is showing 20watts less power consumption   greattttt


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## Kei (Dec 1, 2009)

Under also shows a potential benefit to what he's asking, we're just showing him that if he has to go through much (if any) more voltage that it's not really worth it. Even more so if he can drop the voltage he's using now or maybe the clock a little bit and reap the other side of the benefit tree so many people forget about on the quest to beat everyone else's clocks. 

Kei


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## BraveSoul (Dec 1, 2009)

ahhh it just gives me a peace of mind when i know that crunching all night will only draw 170watts instead of 195watts ,,, craving  to go lower now,, downclocked the ram too 1.9v 800mhz


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## BraveSoul (Dec 1, 2009)

higher NB frequency ups cpu voltage requirement, true?


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## Kei (Dec 1, 2009)

Have you already done all the power saving features availalbe in the bios for your board? Those are great numbers still, I've never done any folding so I don't know my power consumption numbers for that.

Does that use the gpu as well as the cpu or no? My idle wattages with my 5770 (w/o bios changes for lower power on the gpu) still rocked out at an awesome 113W with the processor running 2.8Ghz 1.2v (the 920 I had).

I'm hoping that when I get the daily setting for my new 955 it's at near the same or lower wattage at idle. The 100% cpu load numbers so far without doing anything but dropping the cpu volts were 171W in AOD and 178W in Everest Ultimate. I haven't done any other mods literally to the system so everything else is still on stock volts so it's got a big chunk to come off still when I get done testing the processor. 

Kei


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## BraveSoul (Dec 1, 2009)

power saving features availalbe in the bios?????  plz give a few examples im very interested
pss  just passed 10mins of prime at 2.8ghz 1.15v


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## Kei (Dec 1, 2009)

Go through your bios and look at the options for the Chipset to see what power savings features you may or may not have. On my ASUS board there are options for the North and South bridges as well as the HTT and Memory which may help you out if you have them.

There are usually options that people never even realise are in the bios that help a lot at times. 

Awesome clock even if it's not 100% stable in the end....just being able to start stress testing at the voltage is awesome. Reminds me of my Phenom 9850 which ran at 2.5Ghz @ 1.062v (stock speed down from 1.30v stock)

Kei

Still rockin away at 3.2Ghz @ 1.23v haven't tried to go lower yet just enjoying some music and chatting for now. It's been through multiple stability tests and running for hours now though. I think there is still more to come


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## BraveSoul (Dec 1, 2009)

Phenom II 955 at 3.2Ghz @ 1.23v     running for hours?  sounds very promising


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## Kei (Dec 1, 2009)

I'm hoping it will go a bit further still as I haven't even had so much as a hiccup yet, then again the board I have seems to be the greatest board ever made. 

I'm afraid that when I finally decide to hang it on the wall the new board won't be as good lol.

Kei


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## BraveSoul (Dec 1, 2009)

it seems to me that downclocking from 1.20 to 1.15 saves another 7watts or so,,,


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## BraveSoul (Dec 2, 2009)

downclocked some more  2.6ghz at 1.1v   30mins prime stable
and guess what, kill a watt shows 153watts while crunching, doing prime showed 164watts
  loving it


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## Kei (Dec 2, 2009)

Awesome Brave, I ran a test earlier at 2.7Ghz @ 1.07v which gave me something like 155W or so which is awesome. I'll give it the hard test in a little bit when I turn on my 360 and play some Call of Duty with my brother...I hope it passes the looong test.

Keep at it, do you know what the lowest voltage you could run the stock 3.2Ghz at was? Mine was 1.20v (didn't test 1.18v yet but 1.17v wasn't stable enough) which I've been running since yesterday without any hiccups even during long stress tests.

Kei


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## BraveSoul (Dec 4, 2009)

stock 3.2 no clue,,but if i can run 940stock of 3.0 at 1.2v i would be happy  ,, i only tested it at 1.30v (stock 1.35v)  im wondering ,, 955 u got has to be a different revision vs 940 that i got when it just came out


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## Chicken Patty (Dec 4, 2009)

Guys, if you want a pretty decent comparison of stock vs overclock, this chart pretty much has most CPU's at stock and overclocked.  Take a look and see how it helps 


Click Here


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## BraveSoul (Dec 9, 2009)

thanks for the link,, looks like Intel i7 is the clear winner with its hyper threading exceeding its rivals by as much as 66%  HUGE


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## Chicken Patty (Dec 9, 2009)

BraveSoul said:


> thanks for the link,, looks like Intel i7 is the clear winner with its hyper threading exceeding its rivals by as much as 66%  HUGE



When it comes to crunching, they are monsters because they can do 8 tasks at once bro.


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## Kei (Dec 9, 2009)

BraveSoul said:


> stock 3.2 no clue,,but if i can run 940stock of 3.0 at 1.2v i would be happy  ,, i only tested it at 1.30v (stock 1.35v)  im wondering ,, 955 u got has to be a different revision vs 940 that i got when it just came out



Sorry missed this post, yea I'm using the 955 not the 940 although I DID have a 920 that I bought when they (920 and 940) first came out. My 920 did it's stock 2.8Ghz @ 1.21v which is pretty awesome for a non black edition cpu.

My 955 will do the stock 3.2Ghz @ 1.20v, and even more impressive 3.0Ghz @ 1.104v. 

Kei


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## BraveSoul (Dec 9, 2009)

3.0ghz at 1.1volts


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## BraveSoul (Dec 9, 2009)

Chicken Patty said:


> When it comes to crunching, they are monsters because they can do 8 tasks at once bro.


monsters yeah  so wana get that i7 860,, but got a questions 
8 tasks only give 30% boost in WCG  instead of theoretical 100%  right?


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## DrPepper (Dec 9, 2009)

BraveSoul said:


> monsters yeah  so wana get that i7 860,, but got a questions
> 8 tasks only give 30% boost in WCG  instead of theoretical 100%  right?



Well 8 threads doesn't mean twice the performance of 4 threads. What Hyperthreading does is it holds lower priority code until the processor has spare time to process it. Something like that anyway.


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## Kei (Dec 9, 2009)

BraveSoul said:


> 3.0ghz at 1.1volts



Ahem...my 24/7 setup passed every test I threw at it (OCCT, LinX, Everest Ultimate, and AOD) and uses very very little power. 

Here's a quick shot of a LinX run during stress testing to see if it was stable or not. Also a fun shot of my usual _ridiculii_ (new word from me...definition: multiple levels or instances of ridiculousness) stress testing a quad core at 0.928v which is the lowest my motherboard likes to play around with. That one really shocked me what I could actually get to be stable...












Kei


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## Chicken Patty (Dec 9, 2009)

Dr pepper, thanks for elaborating on my previous post  you are correct


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## Kei (Dec 9, 2009)

Chicken Patty said:


> Dr pepper, thanks for elaborating on my previous post  you are correct



....he's a doctor...of course he's right.


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## Chicken Patty (Dec 9, 2009)

Hahaha, that was funny.   Oh kei, thanks to a member that gave me a great deal, I'm picking up dual 4850's over the weekend


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## 4x4n (Dec 9, 2009)

BraveSoul said:


> monsters yeah  so wana get that i7 860,, but got a questions
> 8 tasks only give 30% boost in WCG  instead of theoretical 100%  right?




I ran a Q9650 @ 4ghz and now have a i7 920 @ 4ghz. Not sure if clock for clock they are the same, but the 9650 averaged about 20k wcg points, and the 920 with ht on averages about 32k wcg points. Plus the power usage is slightly lower with the i7.


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## [Ion] (Dec 10, 2009)

From what I've read here and at XS, i7s tend to be ~50% better than Yorkfields at the same speed, and tend to overclock better as well.  I can't conform this because all I have is Yorkfield, but the Yorkfield @ 2.66 is ~100 PPD better than the Kentsfield Q6600 @ 3ghz I had.  So I would call that a success.  And it runs cooler


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## Chicken Patty (Dec 10, 2009)

Just some info for you guys

My k7 at stock 2.8 Ghz does about 500-700 more points than my QX 9650 @ 3.0 Ghz.  Although clocked lower, the HT seems to help tremendously.


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