Skulltrail, dual 5482 quad Xeons- Need help overclocking

[slief]

Well as you probably noticed, I am new here.. Great site too! I dug around and there is a ton of great info...

I am in the process of building a workstation that has SkullTrail at its heart. I currently have a pair of 5482 3.2 Ghz Xeon Quad cores in it with 4 GB Kingston 800Ghz ram running XP Pro 32 bit and an Nvidia FX4600.. I need to get the CPU's up to 3.8 and 4.0 Ghz as the application I am working with requires CPU power that the 3.2 quads alone wont handle.. The sweet spot is 4.0 but I think 3.8 will cut it.

I have built many computers but I have never had to overclock one.. Most needed ridiculous disk performance which I can deal with but as I have already found out, there is a science to overclocking and for the life of me, I cant make it work as I dont know what voltage or CPU settings to use.

I am also not sure if the Xeons will even handle it. I do have a pair of 3.2 Ghz quad core Extremes coming in tomorrow just in case but I am hopeful the Xeons will work and be reliable and perhaps the better choice.

Any help, suggestions or even settings would be greatfully appreciated!

I also read that XP Pro does not take advantage of more than 4 CPU's.. Is that true and does it apply to dual quad cores? I have a 2003 advanced server license which I can use if need be.

Thanks in advance!

Scott

[hat]

whoa whoa SkullTrail is LGA771? Are there 775 variants? :(

If you can be arsed use the Extremes. They will be much easier to hit that 4.0 with the unlocked multiplier and are just more overclockable and just overalll better then Xeons.
vcore is cpu voltage
vmch is northbridge
vdimm is memory
FSB is the number you multiply to get corespeed. My P4 3GHz had a rated FSB of 800 and a multiplier of 15. Now you should know you don't multiply 800 by 15 to get 3GHz, the FSB is quad-pumped, so if you have a 1333MHz FSB chip your "real" fsb is 333...

[slief]

whoa whoa SkullTrail is LGA771? Are there 775 variants? :(

If you can be arsed use the Extremes. They will be much easier to hit that 4.0 with the unlocked multiplier and are just more overclockable and just overalll better then Xeons.
vcore is cpu voltage
vmch is northbridge
vdimm is memory
FSB is the number you multiply to get corespeed. My P4 3GHz had a rated FSB of 800 and a multiplier of 15. Now you should know you don't multiply 800 by 15 to get 3GHz, the FSB is quad-pumped, so if you have a 1333MHz FSB chip your "real" fsb is 333...

That is great info.. The Skulltrail supports both 775 and 771 right out of the box.. I am running 1600Mhz FSB. I have pair of 3.2Ghz Quad core extremes coming in tomorrow AM just in case... Unfortunately they cost much more than the Xeons at the same speed at $1600 vs $1300 on the Xeons.. That surprised the hell out me as I always understood the Xeons to be a better architecture and typically more expensive than all other CPU's at the highest speeds..

[DaMulta]

So if your saying that it will run 775, then you can use the desktop chips?

I don't believe you can with that board.

[ktr]

No, skulltrail is skt771 only...

[slief]

No, skulltrail is skt771 only...

My bad... I was thinking the Extremes were 775 but I had my numbers mixed up.. 771 only is correct.

[ktr]

My bad... I was thinking the Extremes were 775 but I had my numbers mixed up.. 771 only is correct.

I understand...;)

the qx9775 is skt771
the qx9770 is skt775

[kwchang007]

The extremes would be alot easier to oc with b/c of the unlocked multi's, especially because skulltrial doesn't do very, very high fsbs. Also, do you have aftermarket cooling on? I wouldn't try 4 ghz with stock cooling.

[slief]

The extremes would be alot easier to oc with b/c of the unlocked multi's, especially because skulltrial doesn't do very, very high fsbs. Also, do you have aftermarket cooling on? I wouldn't try 4 ghz with stock cooling.

Yea, I have some monster cooler masters on it now and a hodge podge of liguid cooled stuff coming in to kluge together if needed.. I really would hate to have to liquid cool it though if done right, it does look nice. The chassis which also has 24 drives in for raid plus a pair of mirrored OS drives has a wall of four 4" fans between the array and mother board. It sucks air across the drives from the front of the chassis and blows across the Mother board. There are also blowers in the rear of the chassis along with a pair of additional smaller fans plus plenty of vent holes. I am hopeful that I won't need to use liquid to cool it but I am prepared to do what ever it takes to make it work reliably while keeping it clean. If I have to go to the Extremes, I have them and will use them if needed but I would much prefer to stick with the Xeons as they are cheaper even though they are both Quad 3.2 1600Mhz FSB.. I was thinking that the Xeons would be more reliable but they may not be up to par for this task.

[kwchang007]

Yea, I have some monster cooler masters on it now and a hodge podge of liguid cooled stuff coming in to kluge together if needed.. I really would hate to have to liquid cool it though if done right, it does look nice. The chassis which also has 24 drives in for raid plus a pair of mirrored OS drives has a wall of four 4" fans between the array and mother board. It sucks air across the drives from the front of the chassis and blows across the Mother board. There are also blowers in the rear of the chassis along with a pair of additional smaller fans plus plenty of vent holes. I am hopeful that I won't need to use liquid to cool it but I am prepared to do what ever it takes to make it work reliably while keeping it clean. If I have to go to the Extremes, I have them and will use them if needed but I would much prefer to stick with the Xeons as they are cheaper even though they are both Quad 3.2 1600Mhz FSB.. I was thinking that the Xeons would be more reliable but they may not be up to par for this task.

Well you can go ahead and try, but to get 4 ghz on the xeons you would need 500 mhz fsb (2000 mhz effective). So that's alot of overclock, but you would want to try that first. You can play around with the voltage settings, just make sure things don't get too hot, also remember you may need more voltage to the memory b/c those are rated to 400 mhz (800 mhz effective). And I wouldn't be surprised if you need to raise voltages on the nb. Just be careful with voltages and never go crazy and try to keep an eye on the temps

[slief]

to get 4 ghz on the xeons you would need 500 mhz fsb (2000 mhz effective). So that's alot of overclock, but you would want to try that first. You can play around with the voltage settings, just make sure things don't get too hot, also remember you may need more voltage to the memory b/c those are rated to 400 mhz (800 mhz effective). And I wouldn't be surprised if you need to raise voltages on the nb. Just be careful with voltages and never go crazy and try to keep an eye on the temps

Is it less of an overclock or less of a hurtle to get to 4Ghz on the Extremes of the same speed? Whats the best way to monitor temps? I found core temp..

[kwchang007]

Whats the best way to monitor temps? I found core temp..

That's best for cpus, but just make sure the temps make sense. Ex, if your pumping 1.5 v @ 4ghz, you should expect 55+, you know what I mean?

[hat]

coretemp is the best IMO.

Yeah so you have a 400MHz FSB out of the box. I would just use the extremes and go for 400x10 on a 1:1 fsb:dram ratio. If its unstable just keep adding vcore. The RAM will be running at stock settings with this config.

[slief]

That's best for cpus, but just make sure the temps make sense. Ex, if your pumping 1.5 v @ 4ghz, you should expect 55+, you know what I mean?

That opens a whole new can of worms.. What are acceptable CPU temps? I am also thinking that I will need ram coolers of some sort as well??? How do I monitor that? At those temps, I would probably need my barbq temp guage.. :twitch:

[kwchang007]

That opens a whole new can of worms.. What are acceptable CPU temps? I am also thinking that I will need ram coolers of some sort as well??? How do I monitor that? At those temps, I would probably need my barbq temp guage.. :twitch:

lol, umm ram, a good thing to do is ask people what kind of voltage they run through ram, I'd imagine 2.2, 2.3 MAX, and coolers would be good (no heatspreaders on those pre-installed?). Acceptable CPU temps, every differs about this, but MAX for 24/7 is usually 60-65 C. Also, remember the lower the voltage and temp, the longer the chips will last.

@hat: I think it's the money difference that's the biggest, however using the extremes and bumping multi's is so much easier than playing with the fsb and it'll take alot of work out of it.

[hat]

He said he already had them on the way, so... whatever
The extremes aren't just desktop chips with an unlocked multiplier and higher frequency, they are also higher binned, and are higher quality chips. Probably higher quality than server chips.

[Kursah]

The extremes get my vote also, not only for easier OC-ing, but higher OC's. As long as you monitor your temps and stay below the chip's rated Thermal Max temp, you'll be fine. My e6300 is rated at 62 or 65C iirc, which is TCase or CPU temp, the cores are rated to 75C iirc..as at least on the older conroe's they had this -15C adjustment for the chips. Just watch Coretemp and keep the temps as cool as possible, make sure that's a major part of your OC goal. You may be able to OC more or less depending on your temps, but I try to stay at 55C or less on the cores as a personal preference...not a necessicity.

I recommend do some research on your chips, google them with Overclocking and see what you come up with, that'll give you a good idea for a goal based on your cooling, and what voltages you may need to increase, and what kind of OC you can expect.

Make sure you stress your CPU's to verify high temps, though for 8 cores, I dunno, multiple instances of Orthos or Prime95 may work just fine though. SuperPi is a decent bench/stress also.

Glad to see you're taking the right steps and asking good questions slief, wish I had your budget to play with! Keep us posted man!

:toast:

[slief]

We got it working today... We switched to the Quad core 3.2 Ghz Extremes, bumped the voltage up,, Got it stable at 4.0Ghz as well as 4.2Ghz.. The max core voltage was at 1.5V. CPU temps are between 53c and 63c at 75% CPU usage..The application seems to peg the first core but the rest are at about 75 per task manager. We ran it for some time. We did not have a chance to run other tests as we spent a good part of the day switching to water to be safe. We went with a thermaltake bigwater 760i as we could easily modify it to fit in a special slot on the back of our rack mount chassis.

After all the fun today, we are still not quite up to snuff which lends me to believe that we need to go beyond the CPU and speed up the bus/ram... I know we can bump the CPU's up further but I dont think that is the answer now. 4.0 is the sweet spot. We didnt bother to touch any other settings other than the Core stuff.
Any body have any suggestions or advice on speeding up the bus on this thing??

We are still waiting on some 45 degree water fittings for the CPU blocks so we can have enough clearence for the cooler which mounts above the I/O panel in the rear of the chassis so I figured pics of the completed unit would be best..


Kursah,
I just noticed you are from Missoula.. I went to school for a year in Thompson falls in the early 80s. I was out your way in September running around 9ishing mostly) between big fork and yellowstone.. Kind of a long trip but a great none the less. I love Montana and have wanted property out there since I was 16! I have a good friend who writes for the Universities newspaper and website in missoula and other one who has worked for a bike shop in Missoula for the last 20 years or so... I envy you!

[Kursah]

...
Kursah,
I just noticed you are from Missoula.. I went to school for a year in Thompson falls in the early 80s. I was out your way in September running around 9ishing mostly) between big fork and yellowstone.. Kind of a long trip but a great none the less. I love Montana and have wanted property out there since I was 16! I have a good friend who writes for the Universities newspaper and website in missoula and other one who has worked for a bike shop in Missoula for the last 20 years or so... I envy you!

:toast: Hell yeah!

I love where I live, granted there's not a ton of money to be made here, and the cost of living isn't exactly the easiest to get by on, once you get used to that, this place is wonderful! I can't imagine living in a big city or any flat-land area! LoL! Too much to do up here for outdoor recreation, plus the scenery! My town at 3500 elevation and 60,000 city limit population is plenty for me!

Nonya, another TPU member has a place outside of Lakeside by Hauser Lake outside of Helena, now there's a guy to be jealous of! Missouri River with it's kickass fishing and plenty of stuff to do that way also!

Nice to see members around this forums that have visited my area and have been able to enjoy it!

:rockout:

[Wile E]

We got it working today... We switched to the Quad core 3.2 Ghz Extremes, bumped the voltage up,, Got it stable at 4.0Ghz as well as 4.2Ghz.. The max core voltage was at 1.5V. CPU temps are between 53c and 63c at 75% CPU usage..The application seems to peg the first core but the rest are at about 75 per task manager. We ran it for some time. We did not have a chance to run other tests as we spent a good part of the day switching to water to be safe. We went with a thermaltake bigwater 760i as we could easily modify it to fit in a special slot on the back of our rack mount chassis.

After all the fun today, we are still not quite up to snuff which lends me to believe that we need to go beyond the CPU and speed up the bus/ram... I know we can bump the CPU's up further but I dont think that is the answer now. 4.0 is the sweet spot. We didnt bother to touch any other settings other than the Core stuff.
Any body have any suggestions or advice on speeding up the bus on this thing??

We are still waiting on some 45 degree water fittings for the CPU blocks so we can have enough clearence for the cooler which mounts above the I/O panel in the rear of the chassis so I figured pics of the completed unit would be best..


Kursah,
I just noticed you are from Missoula.. I went to school for a year in Thompson falls in the early 80s. I was out your way in September running around 9ishing mostly) between big fork and yellowstone.. Kind of a long trip but a great none the less. I love Montana and have wanted property out there since I was 16! I have a good friend who writes for the Universities newspaper and website in missoula and other one who has worked for a bike shop in Missoula for the last 20 years or so... I envy you!
The problem with getting more FSB out of Skulltrail, is the FB-DIMMs. They aren't very good overclockers. They won't go much above 800 usually. You can try to increase vDimm, and push them higher, but they run very hot as it is. You may want to get a fan or 2 blowing on them. Then just try upping the fsb, a couple MHz at a time, and hope for the best.

The next hurdle is the chipset itself. They usually don't clock very well.

One thing you can look into, is seeing if the board supports quad channel ram, and what needs to be done (besides having 4 sticks of ram) to activate it, if at all. Should give a decent boost.