Official TPU Old School Competition - April 14th through May 19th

[TheMadDutchDude]

It’s time to bring a friendly old school overclocking competition to TPU! We’ve had a number of benchmarks pop up in the polls and comments. The most common, as seen here, ended up being Cinebench R15 and SuperPi 32M – both of which are a firm favorite of many benchers.

There was also a lot of mention of the X265 1080P benchmark, which is a newer benchmark, but one that still benefits from tweaking as well as raw performance.

Given that there wasn’t much support for GPU benchmarks, I feel it’s fair to omit them. Whilst it would be doable, it would also make it incredibly hard to moderate as it’s a more difficult line to draw with regards to the age of the GPU(s).

Whilst it would be fun to deal with all the benchmarks, it makes it incredibly hard to find time for them as most of us are busy in our day-to-day lives. If you’re really disheartened by the choice, please let me know and I will look into adding it.

A firm favorite of mine is seeing how far we can push the overall base clock – known as Front Side Bus (FSB) on 775. I think this should be included as it takes a lot of skill and time to get the most out of your rig. In light of this, I would also like to bring up another competition front for us. Minimum multiplier, typically 6x on Core 2 Duo CPUs, and the highest possible frequency that will pass SPi32M.

Let’s establish some ground rules…

• All benchmark runs need to have a valid screenshot to prove the run(s) (see below);
• No CPUs newer than LGA775 and AM3/AM3+ Phenom II to be used.
• Cheaters with invalid submissions will need to be removed from our friendly competition in the form of disqualification.
• All results must be on ambient cooling such as air or water cooling. Nothing subzero to be used!

This competition is going to run for a total of six weeks, starting on April 12th 2019 through May 17th 2019. This should give most people ample time to at least get a few runs in. I know that we all lead busy lives, which is why six weeks seems like a reasonable amount of time.

I will do my best to keep track of the results in several Google spreadsheets that you will all be able to see. If I can figure out how to get you to add your own results without changing others, then I will also do that. If anyone knows how to set this up, please let me know.

To summarize, the list of benchmarks are as follows;

Cinebench R15 (see below)
SuperPi 1M – must show the "Pi Calculation Complete" popup!
SuperPi 32M – must show the "Pi Calculation Complete" popup!
X265 – 1080P benchmark (see below)
CPU OC Percentage
Raw FSB frequency – CPU-Z validation upload is fine
Raw FSB frequency with 6x multiplier in Pi32M. Must pass all calculations! (see below)

This is my rough draft – please feel free to message me privately to add something if I’ve missed it. I’m sorry for the delay in getting this posted.

Your screenshot will need to have up to three CPU-Z tabs; one showing the CPU frequency, another showing the memory speed and timings and the motherboard (optional) used as well. The other obvious component that is needed is the score! As mentioned in the other thread, these are essentially the HWBOT rules. If you are already comfortable with them, then there's no issue. I will have to stick to a moderator-esque role and remove submissions that don't follow the rules.



Spreadsheet(s) for the competition are underway.

Here's a link for now:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WB5uhH-BJXH-w0m17rKu-Qj1UmEZ-9_5vF07qJAKeyc/edit?usp=sharing

I am trusting you guys to NOT make changes to other people's results. You can enter your own, and I will verify that they match up with your submission(s).

 

[Dinnercore]

To get this party started, I´ll throw in my E4300 111% frequency OC:

Ambient watercooling @ 20°C water-temp.

https://valid.x86.fr/tm7ksx

Sadly it was not very durable at that voltage and I could not really bench it stable. Best shot for our SuperPI 1M category:

 

[storm-chaser]

CBR15 on a Phenom II 960T unlocked to x6 as the 1600T @ 3.8Ghz.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Unlocked 960T on 990FX.
Modded bios makes board and CPUz misread the processor badly. Sorry.

 

[storm-chaser]

And Mr. Scott draws first blood! I'll have to see if I can improve my score via AMD Overdrive. Last resort option enabled!

Well, overdrive helped improve my clocks but did little to improve my score, in fact, it was quite a bit lower (551) despite the following clocks:
CPU 0: 4.0Ghz
CPU 1: 3.9Ghz
CPU 2: 3.9Ghz
CPU 3: 3.9Ghz
CPU 4: 3.8Ghz
CPU 5: 3.8Ghz

I am assuming this is due to the loss of NB speed. Because without a custom P state (I.E. the only mode that works with overdrive) the CPUNB reverts to the stock 2000Mhz clock speed, hampering my efforts to improve memory throughput.

 

[DR4G00N]

And Mr. Scott draws first blood! I'll have to see if I can improve my score via AMD Overdrive. Last resort option enabled!

Well, overdrive helped improve my clocks but did little to improve my score, in fact, it was quite a bit lower (551) despite the following clocks:
CPU 0: 4.0Ghz
CPU 1: 3.9Ghz
CPU 2: 3.9Ghz
CPU 3: 3.9Ghz
CPU 4: 3.8Ghz
CPU 5: 3.8Ghz

I am assuming this is due to the loss of NB speed. Because without a custom P state (I.E. the only mode that works with overdrive) the CPUNB reverts to the stock 2000Mhz clock speed, hampering my efforts to improve memory throughput.

Use K10Stat, you can adjust CPU & CPU/NB Multi's & Voltages IIRC.

 

[storm-chaser]

Use K10Stat, you can adjust CPU & CPU/NB Multi's & Voltages IIRC.

Thanks for the tip. But unfortunately, in this case, the NB DID option is blanked out...

Guess I have to settle with my initial score. I do have another 960T that clocks a bit higher but it doesn't unlock into a hexacore...

 

[Dinnercore]

Okay I will add my E8500 for SuperPI 1M:


9.314s E8500 @ 5006MHz / 1.44V

I could push it further, the voltage would allow a bit more but I want to safe this chip from degradation and keep it for my first dice sessions later this year.

 

[storm-chaser]

Baseline run for my Q9650 @ 4.3Ghz, hopefully we will improve from here.

Super Pi 1M Submission

Super Pi 32M result

 

[DR4G00N]

SPi32M: 10m 02.282s

 

[TheMadDutchDude]

Someone’s like, hard core going for it! I love it!

 

[Mr.Scott]

Someone’s like, hard core going for it! I love it!

It's ok to be 'aggressive' as long as it stays fun.

I see a few people here that will put up some pretty good scores even for fun.

 

[DR4G00N]

I'm taking it easy with the superpi tweaks since some of them are pretty obscure and not a lot of people know about them. Just Maxmem & Waza to keep it simple. Oh, and stripped XP of course.

 

[Dinnercore]

E8500 Cinebench R15: 278cb (4987MHz @ 1.52V)



My 2nd lapped E8500, as you can see this one needs a lot more voltage to get anywhere. Still on ambient water, temps are in the mid 60°C range.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Does Cinebench work without SSE? ie Pentium III class.

 

[storm-chaser]

Okay... swapping to my E8600 now. Had enough of the Q9650. Despite the fact I was getting 500Mhz FSB BEFORE I cant seem to dial in my config and it wont boot into windows @ 4.5Ghz. Maybe I will have better luck with the E8600...

Initial Super Pi 1M result, baseline run...
E8600 on air cooling (Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme)

Baseline CBR15 Result (same specs as above)… seems a little low for these clocks?

CBR 15 Run # 2...

Super Pi 1M Run #2....

 

[MetalRacer]

Can I run my Single Stage cooler?

 

[TheMadDutchDude]

Nope. Ambient only.

Can a mod please add that into the “ground rules”...?

Something to the effect of: “Use ambient cooling only. This is limited to air and/or water cooling.”

Thanks!

 

[MetalRacer]

I should have a waterblock somewhere in that case.

 

[Dinnercore]

I saw that E8600 ( @storm-chaser ) and thought I´d give my soldier a try. Lapped it and threw it in...

It is a horrible clocker. Don´t know if it is because I bought it cheap from a chinese reseller and it lived many years in the worlds most outdated btc farming rig or if it just degraded from normal use or if it was a bad sample from the start. Maybe all three of those things.

SuperPI-1M result:


It barely made it to 4.7GHz, just enough to beat the air cooled result by tiny amount. But even with 1.52V and 10MHz less it would not do a single Cinebench run. Below 4.2GHz it runs fine, needs less then 1.3V for 4GHz. But has a hard wall already at 4.7GHz. I´m a bit disappointed by this result but it is what it is. And believe me, I tried everything that came to my mind. All the skews, GTLs, PLL Voltage etc.. Spend 2 hours trying to convince it to do that CB run.
Thought I´d share the failed attempts too, atleast you can see the temps I get at around 1.52V+



Adding a picture of my setup, ambient water-cooling for the CPU and many fans for the board.

 

[moproblems99]

CBR15 on a Phenom II 960T unlocked to x6 as the 1600T @ 3.8Ghz.

That is actually quite impressive compared to the 3770 and 4770K.

 

[MrGenius]

Does Cinebench work without SSE? ie Pentium III class.

I think you need at least SSE3. But more importantly, it's a 64-bit program, so you need a 64-bit CPU(running a 64-bit OS...obviously). Which really narrows down the use of Intel CPUs to pretty much just LGA775.

Unless....you have one of the super rare Socket 478 Pentium 4s with SSE3...AND...EM64T(SL7QB or SL7Q8). Which I will...soon...if all goes as planned...

EDIT: Just took a quick look and there's a bunch of old Xeons(Socket 604 and LGA771/LGA775) that you could use too.

 

[Ferrum Master]

I think you need at least SSE3. But more importantly, it's a 64-bit program, so you need a 64-bit CPU(running a 64-bit OS...obviously). Which really narrows down the use of Intel CPUs to pretty much just LGA775.

Unless....you have one of the super rare Socket 478 Pentium 4s with SSE3...AND...EM64T(SL7QB or SL7Q8). Which I will...soon...if all goes as planned...

EDIT: Just took a quick look and there's a bunch of old Xeons(Socket 604 and LGA771/LGA775) that you could use too.

This contest is not old enough

 

[TheMadDutchDude]

Well, then maybe the next one will be even older!

 

[Bones]

Well, then maybe the next one will be even older!

In terms of hardware, works for me.