45nm Processors and a bit of caution

[tomcat2200]

I recently experienced an upgrade from the venerable Q6600 to one of the newer Yorkfield 45nm processors. Specifically the Q9450 was my choice. I picked this because it has the full 12Mb cache, and it has taken residence on the price point well below the "extreme" processors. I have noticed a significant difference in the way it behaves with the more recent 780i Motherboards. One thing you should not do is simply bump up the FSB to gain extra CPU cycles. Another thing is you cannot trust many of the temperature monitoring softwares out at the moment. As of this post, only Real Temp v2.60 will read the Yorkfield cores properly. All others including the nVidia System Monitor, Everest, Core Temp v0.99 and others, will read the temps as 10C too high. The System Monitor in the BIOS seems to provide proper readings for the most part, but you cant see that one while your running MS Word.

The other problem is if you bump the FSB above the stock rating, the BIOS will automatically boost the CPU vcore to 1.260v. While this is not particularly dangerous to the CPU as it is designed to tolerate this level, it does do a few things the user may not want. I found I can do a mild 3.2GHz overclock with the vcore set at 1.100v on air cooling. My temps on the cores run around 35C/50C for idle/load. That load temp is a 100% load on all four cores. If one allows the default vcore of 1.260v to ride, the idle/load temps become 55C/75C. While this is well within the spec of the CPU, it is an unecessary heating of the processor. Tj Max for the Q9450 is 95C. That is the maximum temp rating for the processor. Personally I much prefer the 45C headroom to the default 20C headroom. I expect my processor to last a good long time, and I enjoy a processor that can run at quad extreme speeds without resorting to exotic or water cooling. It also keeps the case temps down as well, which helps everything else in the box.

I believe this applies well to some of the more budget offerings such as the 750 nVidia base motherboards and the other 45nm chips from intel. The beauty of the 45nm chips is they can run well, at lower temps compared to their larger die siblings. My own experience bears this out. I hope some find this of interest. Especially those getting new CPU's and considering overclocking for the first time.

[martini161]

your chip is not going to die anytime soon using the 20c headroom, 45 c is just plain over-double-triple-extreme-itwouldbeabiggerrisktojumpoveracurb-kill. even with only 15 c of headroom to your tjunction temp your chip will last long enough to be more obsolete than an intel itanium is now