When I moved the server a few months back, I screwed up the download links and didn’t realize it until just now. They should all be fixed now. Let me know if there are any more issues. More posts coming soon now that the holidays are over.
Jan 042012
Corsair Hyrdo Series H60, H80 and H100 Liquid CPU Coolers
The Corsair Hydro Series of liquid CPU coolers aim to give you the power of liquid-cooling in a compact, easy to install package, without the complexity of traditional water-cooling kits. They are designed to be a closed-loop solution with no maintenance required at all. But just how well do these Corsair liquid-coolers perform against the current cream of the crop air-coolers? After all, Corsair is targeting the high-end air-cooling market with these cooling solutions, both in price and performance. First, let’s take a look at the specs for the units being tested today. [...]
Jul 252011
Here’s my first of hopefully many contributions over at AnandTech. I still plan on updating this site, so don’t worry. This opportunity delayed my Sandy Bridge overclocking guide, but it’s still coming. Better late than never, right? Anyway…
Intel’s Second Generation Core processors, based on the Sandy Bridge architecture, include a number of improvements over the previous generation’s Nehalem architecture. We’ll be testing one specific area today: the improved memory controller. Current Sandy Bridge based processors officially support up to DDR3-1333 memory. Unfortunately, due to changes in the architecture, using faster rated memory (or overclocking memory) on Sandy Bridge via raising the base clock is extremely limited. Luckily, there are additional memory multipliers that support DDR3-1600, DDR3-1866, and DDR3-2133 memory. Some motherboards include support for even higher memory multipliers, but we’ll confine our investigations to DDR3-2133 and below.
Since Sandy Bridge is rated for up to DDR3-1333 memory, we will start there and work our way up to DDR3-2133 memory. We’ll also be testing a variety of common CAS latency options for these memory speeds. Our purpose is to show how higher bandwidth memory affects performance on Sandy Bridge, and how latency changes—or doesn’t change—the picture. More specifically, we’ll be looking at the impact of memory speed on application and gaming performance, with some synthetic memory tests thrown into the mix. We’ll also test some overclocked configurations. So how much difference will lowering the CAS latency make, and does memory performance scale with processor clock speed? [...]
Jun 212011
Upgrading my system made me think about the graphics cards I’ve had over the years. As a result, I put together a list of all the graphics cards I’ve owned in the past 15 years. Because I have no idea when I originally bought these cards, I included the month and year that the card was released and ordered them from newest (owned, not released) to oldest. It’s interesting that I’ve listed 15 graphics cards, but I don’t upgrade every year. I generally upgrade every two years or so, but a few of the times I was able to work in some sort of minor upgrade along the way. When I’ve done this it’s usually due to some amazing deal I got or it was little to no money out of pocket for me.I’ve owned many more cards than this over the years, but these are the ones that were put to use in my main gaming rig at those times. Grab a Bawls and get ready for a visual journey through my graphics card history. Continue reading »
As of version 3.67, Real Temp includes support for Intel’s new Sandy Bridge platform. Since the latest available from the Real Temp website is only 3.60, I’ve included it here.
Real Temp is a temperature monitoring program designed for all Intel single Core, dual Core and quad Core processors. Each core on these processors has a digital thermal sensor (DTS) that reports temperature data relative to TjMax which is the safe maximum operating core temperature for the CPU. As your CPU heats up, your Distance to TjMax will decrease. If it reaches zero your processor will start to throttle or slow down so obviously maximizing your distance away from TjMax will help your computer to run at full speed and more reliably too.
Features
- Reads temperature information from all Intel Core based processors. Pentium 4 processors are not supported.
- Ability to individually calibrate Real Temp for each core of your CPU.
- Program is based on temperature data gathered using a Fluke 62 IR Thermometer.
- Test Sensors feature will check your DTS sensors for any sign of problems.
- Keeps track of Minimum and Maximum temperatures with full logging features.
- Reporting and logging of the Intel PROCHOT# thermal throttle activity bit.
- Quick, very accurate and repeatable benchmark.
- Displays MHz, TJMax, CPUID, APIC ID and Calibration settings.
- High temperature alarm and shutdown feature based on CPU or Nvidia GPU temperature.
- No installation or registry modifications required.
- Support for Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / Windows 7 (32/64 bit) Continue reading »
This series will explain my methods on overclocking and stress testing Intel’s new Sandy Bridge line of processors. I will focus on overclocking the Core i5 2500K and Core i7 2600K processor models since they have an unlocked multiplier and are begging to be pushed to their limits. The goal will be finding maximum speed and having ultimate stability while keeping temperatures and voltages within what I consider the safe zone. The maximum temperatures and voltages for Sandy Bridge is still a hot topic since these chips are new. In this series I will explain the maximum values I feel are safe for 24/7 usage. I will also go into great detail on how to overclock the Core i5 2500K and Core i7 2600K processors; including: how to find highest ideal CPU multiplier, how to find ideal CPU voltage & how to stress test your CPU to ensure maximum stability. Many may find this method an overkill, but I prefer not having to deal with random BSOD’s as a result of an unstable overclock. I plan on visiting the manual CPU voltage versus offset CPU voltage debate and providing pro’s and con’s for each. CPU degradation… Yup, I’ll cover that too. Continue reading »
Intel Burn Test is a program that simplifies the usage of Intel Linpack benchmark. The latest version has been updated with AVX support.
What’s Linpack?
The main point of Linpack is to solve systems of linear equations of the given size (Problem Size). It is designed as a benchark to test the performance of a system in GFlops – billions of floating point operation per second. But being highly optimized it is also the most stressful CPU testing program to date and is a great tool in determining stability/instability of a CPU, outperforming other CPU testing software at least time-wise. One and the same system of equations is solved repeatedly; if all results match each other – the CPU is stable, otherwise the instability is obvious, since the same equations system cannot produce different solutions.
What’s AVX?
Intel® AVX is a new 256 bit instruction set extension to SSE and is designed for applications that are Floating Point (FP) intensive. It was released early 2011 as part of the Sandy Bridge processor family and is present in platforms ranging from notebooks to servers. Intel AVX improves performance due to wider vectors, new extensible syntax, and rich functionality. This results in better management of data and general purpose applications like image, audio/video processing, scientific simulations, financial analytics and 3D modeling and analysis. Continue reading »
I’ve read way too many “which graphics card should I buy” threads recently and there’s one recommendation that pops up a lot. It’s that you should buy a Radeon HD 6950 and unlock the extra shaders to turn it into a Radeon HD 6970. With all the hype surrounding the Radeon HD 6950′s unlocking ability, I wanted to find out how much of a difference unlocking the extra shaders really makes. So began my weekend of running benchmarks and compiling the results. So how does the stock Radeon HD 6950 fare against it’s unlocked brethren? Let’s find out!
AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series Specs
Stock HD 6950
- Unified Shaders: 1408
- Core Clock: 800MHz
- Memory Clock: 1250MHz Continue reading »
Jun 092011
I’ve repacked LinX to included the latest version of Linpack from Intel. To make use of AVX, you will need a CPU that supports it and Windows 7 SP1.
Why?
The version of Linpack included with Intel Burn Test doesn’t support AVX. The later versions of Linpack include support for Intel AVX. The version of Linpack included with LinX 0.6.4 may support AVX, but it’s outdated. I prefer LinX’s interface over IBT’s so I decided to repack the latest LinX with the latest Linpack.
What’s LinX?
A simple GUI for Intel Linpack Benchmark.
What’s Linpack?
The main point of Linpack is to solve systems of linear equations of the given size (Problem Size). It is designed as a benchark to test the performance of a system in GFlops – billions of floating point operation per second. But being highly optimized it is also the most stressful CPU testing program to date and is a great tool in determining stability/instability of a CPU, outperforming other CPU testing software at least time-wise. One and the same system of equations is solved repeatedly; if all results match each other – the CPU is stable, otherwise the instability is obvious, since the same equations system cannot produce different solutions. Continue reading »
I decided to put my cooler testing theories to work on comparing Push vs. Push/Pull on my trusty Hyper 212 Plus. How does adding a second fan to the Hyper 212 Plus affect temperatures? Hows does varying the RPM’s affect temperatures? Let’s find out!
Test Setup
- CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K clocked at 4.8GHz using 1.326V (avg load voltage)
- Case: Corsair 600T w/side panel off
- Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
- Fans: 1 or 2 Cooler Master Blade Master 120 PWM fans set to 100% (~2000 RPM), 70% (~1600 RPM) or 50% (~1200 RPM)
- Used ambient temp at the end of each run to calculate delta temp Continue reading »
