Intel will never make SLI chipsets, NVIDIA hates intel with a passion. And yes, it is well known SLI chipsets are HORRIBLE for overclocking. Theyre fine for most people, but when you want to go extreme, they wont do it.
And Djs87, you get 18,5 in 3DM06 with TWO 8800gts 512’s? From what i see on XS, thats awfly low. I get just over 20k with a single G92, and a Q9450 @ 475x8. My shaders are clocked 450 mhz higher, but still… Is the Q6600 really that big of a bottleck? I had one at 450x8 a while back, and i could get 18,5k with a single G92 when i ran it at 4.2 ghz.
Something else in your system is cutting 2K+ of your 3DM06 scores.
A 4ghz dual will get the job done, but you likely would benefit from even a 4.2 clock. You have a 9x multi, that P35 should be able to do 4.5 with some tweaking.
the q6600 is the bottleneck for sure. it takes too much voltage to hit 4.0 and makes me nervous keeping it there (using an evga 780i board). At 3.6 it only needs about 1.42v and at 4.0 I have to up the fsb to 1.5 and the core to 1.52. Seems too high to keep there on an 85 degree day. Not to mention that extra fsb the q9450 has. Ill switch to a q9405 like yours soon. They can be had for $300 at microcenter. Just gotta sell my q6600.
Oh and as for your overclock…you got freakin lucky man. Thats one of the highest g92 OC’s ive ever seen. In order for me to achieve near that id have to be lucky enough for both to get that high. One of my cards is limiting me. As soon as I break 1878 on the shader I get crashes all the time. I have had the cores pretty high tho. But after awhile it also crashes. I think my next move is to replace the TIM on both cards and see if that helps any. Then the Q9450.
My core is actually poor on my 8800GTS 512, some people do 850 with 1.4V on the stock cooler, it takes mine 1.5V to do that with 2300 shaders. To get above the clocks youre hitting now, you need to volt mod the card. You can get the core a bit higher, and the shaders much higher. Crysis loves high shader clocks. And make sure to mod the cards bios with a updated fan profile so it throttles at higher temps, and new TIM allways helps for a few C.
After denying Intel the use of its SLI technology in all but its top-end Tumwater and Skulltrail chipsets, Nvidia has finally given in and allowed Intel to make its nForce 200 chip a part of Intel’s forthcoming X58 ‘Tylersburg’ chipset for Nehalem CPUs.
As such, this will make X58 the first mainstream desktop chipset that supports both SLI and CrossFire. Not only that, but the nForce 200 chip is a part of Nvidia’s latest nForce 7-series of chipsets, which can support 3-way SLI, as opposed to the older, 2-way SLI nForce 100 chip found on current Skulltrail motherboards. Nvidia explained to Custom PC that this wasn’t a licensing deal with Intel, but that motherboard manufacturers would be directly purchasing the nForce 200 MCPs from Nvidia. It’s an interesting move from Nvidia, who has so far only offered SLI support on its own nForce SLI chipsets in the mainstream motherboard market.
Intel hasn’t revealed a lot of official details about Tylersburg yet, but a leaked slide on the Internet reveal that it has over 32 PCI-E lanes, which can support two PCI-E 2.0 graphics cards with 16 lanes each, or four cards with eight lanes each. This seems highly likely, given the inclusion of the nForce 200 chip. Meanwhile, another leaked slide suggests that the X58 chipset will be completed by an ICH10 Southbridge.
Either way, the new chipset marks a big departure from Intel’s previous chipsets, as Nehalem CPUs will feature an integrated triple-channel DDR3 memory controller, meaning that the chipset no longer needs to control the memory. Nehalem (codenamed Bloomfield) CPUs will also feature modular components connected by QuickPath interconnects, and Intel plans to span the architecture over several of its product lines, including both single and dual-CPU configurations.
In fact, the Tylersburg chipset will also span across single and dual-processor motherboards, and with two Nehalem CPUs you’ll be able to control a further three channels of memory. Nehalem will also add support for SSE 4.2, and Intel’s Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) technology, which, like Intel’s previous Hyper-Threading technology, allows you to execute two threads on one core at the same time. Intel also says that the Nehalem architecture will be scalable from two to eight cores in a single package.
Would you be interested in buying a standard desktop motherboard with support for both SLI and CrossFire? Let us know your thoughts.
I gotta say though. Having a board that supports both sli and xfire would be insane. Especially now since ati is making some seriously competitive cards. Too bad id have to swap out my evga 780i to get two ati cards workin together.
Zomgvtek, what are your voltages for your q9450? I know the q6600 G0 has no issues with a 1.5v fsb, but is that too high for a 45nm chip? I know with a locked multi in order for me to hit 4.0 Im going to need some serious fsb speeds. I wonder if 1.4v is enough.
ASUS P5K Premium, Black Pearl - 0612
Q9450 475x8 - 1.1250Vid, 1.40Vbios, 1.386Vload
TRUE - Lapped - Dual 115cfm Panaflo’s
MSI 8800GTS 512 850/2300/1275 @ 1.425Vcore Load, 2.150Vmem
4x1GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066 @ 950 1:1 - 2.25V - 4-4-4-12
2x Hitachi 7K1000 in RAID 0
Silverstone ZEUS 850W PSU
Windows XP Pro 64 Bit
Apple OS X 10.5.2
Vcore is no biggie, these chips dont need much, but i wouldnt go above 1.4 for 24/7. VTT is what can kill a 45nm, dont go above 1.4v, my board limits VTT from 1.5 on a 65nm to 1.4 on 45nm. No way you can run anything above 475fsb on a quad. No current chipsets can do it. My board will do 550+ FSB on a dual core, some do 650+, but on a quad about nothing goes above 450-475.
Thats the problem, intel kills these chips by limiting the multi, and you need insane FSB’s, its not really posable to hit 4.0 stable on this chip. Thats where the extreme series comes in… QX9650 FTW!
got the q9450 with c1 step to 3.8 1900 stable. I didnt care to take it any higher. It wouldnt boot at 4.0. Too bad my 3D mark score barely went up. Its still hovering around 19000. I just cant overclock those gpus anymore. Thats gotta be whats holding me back.
