Overdone? Poppycock! They are just right. If I wanted overdone I would've gotten a Geforce 7900, the biggest most expensive AMD CPU there was and a TB of hard drive space. All the stuff in her rig is pretty middle-of-the-road. Mine is the one I went a little nuts on but I wanted this kind of highend stuff for a while now. The CPU and RAM especially. To think that I spent the same amount on the CPU and the RAM...

So you are saying your rig is bigger and more expensive than Jenni's?

Haha! I was wondering if you'd catch that. Just kidding ya.

So far I have got it to exceede the X2 4800 CPU. I've overclocked it to 2.4 GHz with a FSB speed of 1.44 GHz and RAM speed of 480 MHz. I haven't done any overclocking of the video card just yet so there was no improvement in any of the video benchmarks but there was tons of improvement in all the others.

I used Sisoft Sandra, ScienceMark2, 3DMark 2006, 3Dmark 2005, Quake 4 timedemos and Half Life 2: Lost Coast Video Stress Test for my benchmarks.

Sandra:_______________________________________
Default settings:
CPU math: ALU 19792 MIPS / iSSE3 8764 MFLOPS
cpu multi media: int x16: 30117 it/s / Floating point: 46411 it/s
RAM Bandwidth: Int Buff'd iSSE3: 4941 / Float Buff'd iSSE3: 5301

Overclocked to 2.4GHz FSB 1.44GHz:
CPU math: ALU 23670 MIPS / iSSE3 10510 (16% faster)
CPU multimedia: int x16: 35834 it/s / iSSE2: 55844 it/s (16% faster)
Ram Bandwidth: Int Buff'd iSSE2: 5300 MB/s / Float Buff'd iSSE2: 5347 MB/s (7% faster / 1% faster)

The overclocked results of the X2 3800 were about 8% faster than the X2 4800 standard results. I saved myself about $300 and got a faster processor with very little effort.

3DMark:______________________
Default settings:
3D Mark 06: 3184
3D Mark 05: 5887

Overclocked to 2.4 GHz FSB 1.44 GHz
3D Mark 06: 3255 (3% better)
3D Mark 05: 5892

ScienceMark 2.0______________________________
Default settings:
Molecular Dynamics: 2829.34
Primordia: 1120.99
STREAM: 1086.84
RAM Bandwidth: 1201.73
BLAS/FLOPs: 363.94

Overclocked to 2.4 GHz FSB 1.44GHz
Molecular Dynamics: 3467.06 (19% faster)
Primordia: 1331.84 (16% faster)
STREAM: 1244.94 (13% faster)
RAM Bandwidth: 1419.54 (16 % faster)
BLAS/FLOPs: 431.24 (16% faster)


Quake 4:
1024 x 768 4x AA
Timedemo 1: 53.7 FPS
Timedemo 2: 49.8 FPS

Half Life 2:
Video Stress Test Lost Coast:
1024X768 4x AA 8x AF:
59.26 FPS

I will see how much farther I can push the processor and RAM. I think it can go a bit farther. I'll post more results when I start OC'ing the video card.

"A 4.1 GHz Dual Core at $130 - Can it be True?"

Just stumbled on to this:


..."There are still some situations in life that are guaranteed to put a grin on anyone's face, even hard-boiled technical skeptics like us. This particular story borders on being a sensation unmatched in our last eight years of hardware reviews. The news, for those who just can't stand the wait any more, is this: Intel has offered a budget Pentium as part of its processor line-up for a little while now. With a simple modification, however, this CPU can outperform every top-of-the-line processor around.

The bottom line is that the Athlon FX-60 and the Pentium Extreme Edition 965 have both met their match - there's simply no escaping this conclusion! This is bound to cause lamentation among the elite circle of users who've invested big bucks in their high-end systems, if not outright wailing and rending of garments. The basic stats for this insignificant-seeming budget processor read as follows: Pentium D 805 clocked at 2.66 GHz, equipped with two processor cores both with 64 bit support. At your friendly neighborhood retailer you can pick up this secret weapon for pocket change - right now, for example, it's available at newegg.com for just under $130. We were quite amazed as the first performance figures emerged from our test labs: stable operation was possible at 4.1 GHz, and without even the need for substantial boosts to cooling!"...

Price at Newegg

Sounds all good, but you probably should have put a warning on that link.. "Warning: If you like CPUs and are squeamish to their demise.. Do not proceed. Link may contain mutilated pictures of a tortured CPU by a drill like instrument."

Seriously, that is horrible. What are they to gain by that except the obvious destruction bit? Is it an analogy to overclocking that you more than harm the CPU but it is like taking a drill to it? Are they for or against overclocking? Seems so senseless to me. Would get a better effect if you were to take a picture of it in flames or rather replace the drill with a blowtorch and have the flames almost engulfing the chip. Now that would be a great picture to see. The chip melting a bit on the sides, flamed drops dripping down..

Horrible for the CPU people yes, but better than being tortured by a drill. At least that way it be over quick.

Wow! That is fast. I'll have to read the whole thing to see how it compared to other CPUs like the one I have. I've heard bad things about the dual core Intels.

I have reached the limit of my overclocking. I've got my AMD X2 3800 to go from it's stock of 2 GHz to 2.7 GHz. I had to up the voltages on the RAM, Hypertransport, CPU and Northbridge but it works. It is 26% faster now than it was at its stock settings.

Here are the results:

CPU: 2.70 GHz
FSB: 2.70 GHz
RAM: 540 MHz

Sandra results:
CPU Math: ALU 26567 MIPS / iSSE3 11711 MFLOPS
CPU Multi Media: Int 40353 it/s / Floating Point 62373 it/s
Ram Bandwidth: Int 5995 MB/s Floating Point 6023 MB/s

Quake 4:
1024 x 768 4x AA
Timedemo 1: 56 FPS