Weekend Experience with Q6600 and Cosmology

[meshmar]

you would be better off getting 2x1 gig ram and running them dual channel.
also, I believe that proc doesn't come with a heatsink/fan, so make sure you get one and if you plan to overclock the snot out of it, you better get a good one.

I'm getting 2x512 for the 1GB and running dual channel.

Yes, no heatsink/fan - but it's a low power cpu and you can 'overclock the snot out of it' at standard voltage to over 3 GHz with a cheap hsf and have no heat issues. I plan on getting better than 'a cheap one' ...

[gatekeeper53]

You can try one of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835702001 the "snot" can then run in rivers and it stays cool. I have on on my 4800 and have had it to 3.6 and the cpu stayed cool it was the southbridge that gave me fits.

[liuqyn]

nice one there, but add that cost to the cpu he listed and could just get one of these instead http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103226

[meshmar]

You can try one of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835702001 the "snot" can then run in rivers and it stays cool. I have on on my 4800 and have had it to 3.6 and the cpu stayed cool it was the southbridge that gave me fits.

They aren't in stock any more ... and this cpu doesn't need that much from every thing I've read.

Phenom ... well, it just isn't that phenom(enal) - yet.

I can get the black cpu; hsf; mobo and the mem for the cost of the Phenom ... give or take a little

[gatekeeper53]

Can't blame anyone for not spending money on one of these coolers since they cost more than a good X2. It was a fun toy for awhile though.

[meshmar]

What's nice about the Black Edition cpus - they have unlocked multipliers. You can crank that without changing voltage or any other mobo setting so the mobo runs rock stable while the cpu flies. Since it's a low power cpu, it doesn't take a massive hsf to keep it cool enough to get a huge overclock. It looks like it's going to be one of my favorites for a while on the amd side ...

[drezha]

Go for the 5000 black edition. The 6400 is to near the performance ceiling and in the UK, is about the same price (+- £10) to a Intel Q6600.

The 5000 overclocks far better than the higher one.

[meshmar]

The 5000+ is exactly the cpu I was going for ...

Evil minds think alike - and all that.

In fact, I ordered:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103194
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835200036 and
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820313010

[gamer007]

A day crunching Cosmo with 4 cores, lots of work being done!

One of the neat features about my motherboard is it has preset OC profiles of higher-end cpus. So I used one to OC up to a QX6700 (2.6GHz), works nicely. To test it out, I used 3DMark06 Advanced (came with my mobo) and scored just over 500 points compared to stock speeds (2.4GHz).

I don't know how many people have have used 3DMark to benchmark their computers, so I don't know if it's worth it to post here or not. First time using it.

As for the CPU Level Up profiles, I also have a choice between a QX6800 (2.93GHz) and a QX6850 (3.0GHz). Of course, I can manually OC, but I have no experience with that.

I'm sure the faster speeds will be good for BOINC.

EDIT: It even OC'd my RAM. Default speed is DDR2-667. Now it's running DDR2-742.

[drezha]

Gamer, what's the motherboard?

I'm undecided on either a AMD Black Edition of a Quad Core Intel.