Overclockers Top 6GHz With A 3.6GHz-Rated P4

sH4RD writes "The 6GHz barrier has been broken by two guys, a little LN2 (liquid nitrogen for those not as chemistry inclined), and an Intel Pentium 4 (Prescott) 3.60GHz. Check out some icing and some proof of speed. Better yet take a look at how fast it calculates pi. Also be sure to check out the original announcement."

Cold!

[erick99 (743982)]

Imagine having to keep a vat of liquid nitrogen at your desk in order to use your computer! Notice the Fluke thermometer showing -105C (-157F). Now that is damned cold....

-erick

Re:Cold!

[_Pablo (126574)]

If Intel hadn't decided to kill P4 in favour of PM then we may have had to do it sooner rather than later!

It would be amazing to have to use LN2...but then again since I first stuck my finger on top of my 68000 and realising it was a lot hotter than my 6502 i'm constantly amazed how hot these things are getting.

Re:Cold!

[Kenshin (43036)]

They're Finnish.

They don't need liquid nitrogen. Couldn't they have just put their PC outside?

Nah, LH makes for some serious problems.

[caveat (26803)]

I wrote a paper on Type I superconductivity (appears in metals when cooled to a few K of zero; ceramics are a totally different beastie) in school and got diverted into reading up on ultracryogenics for a few weeks - apparently at temps that low, you get all sorts of problems like extreme brittleness and differing rates of thermal expansion, the latter being a fairly major issue in designing an ultracryogenic system. There's a good chance the CPU die, wires, and case would all tear away from each other and destroy the thing. Not to mention that lead superconducts at 7.196K [superconductors.org]; i wonder what resistanceless solder would do to a mobo...

Erm...

[tehdely (690619)]

I sure hope they were using Gentoo, because if not they couldn't take advantage of those incredible speeds with some hot -O3 -funroll-loops action :P

In all seriousness, this is pretty amazing, but I can't really see the usefulness. For sheer geek pride, sure, why not? But as far as I can tell the expense involved outweighs any gain in performance; for probably half of what these poor folks spent getting a P4 to run stably at 6 ghz (and it doesn't even sound super-stable from what I've read) they could've probably bought a couple more CPUs and had a proper SMP system instead. Regardless, I admire their tenacity and mourn for the warranty on their poor CPU :P

Re:Erm...

[MikeXpop (614167)]

In all seriousness, this is pretty amazing, but I can't really see the usefulness.

To pick up chicks, obviously.

Re:Erm...

[bizpile (758055)]

But as far as I can tell the expense involved outweighs any gain in performance;

Isn't that what being a geek is all about? It's a "becuase it's there"-type of thing.

Re:Erm...

[anthonyclark (17109)]

speaking of gentoo; What I'd like to see would be a benchmark 'emerge system' or bootstrap.sh. One run should be on a single proc system with MAKEOPTS="-j2". The other should be on a system with dual processors at half the speed of the first system, with MAKEOPTS="-j3".

I ran something like this a while back; a dual p3-500 just about matched a single p4-1.5.

With some "real" benchmarks, we'd at least be able to weigh this 6GHz beast against a dual 3GHz beast...

Re:Erm...

[_Pablo (126574)]

Clock for clock, the final P3 (the Pentium III S) would smoke the original P4 (Willamete) no questions asked. So it's quite possible dual P3/500s could have beaten a 1.5Ghz P4 on many benchmarks.

Re:Erm...

[EinarH (583836)]

There is no *way* that a dual P3/500 system will match an 1 GHz P4, not to speak of your claims of beating an 1.5 GHz P4.

Sure it is.
The first Pentium 4 CPU was slow compared with a P3 1 GHz. One would belive that a 1.5GHz CPU would beat the last generations 1 GHz CPU, but in many tasks the P3 was faster.
-The P3 pipeline had 12 stages the P4 had 20.
-The P3 Katmai had 512k L2 cache, the P4 had only 256k. I remember some MySQL benchmarks showing a single P3 500 MHz Katmai beating a P4 1400 MHz in some tasks.

So even with all the IDE stuff enabled a Dual P3 could be faster than a P4 in Gentooing.

Re:Erm...

[_Pablo (126574)]

The CPU-Z shots very strongly suggest it's running in windows. But just maybe it's a VM on Linux, or Wine or some other reason to mention Linux on slashdot!

It's a shame the pi calc shot is done when it's running at 5.4Ghz instead of the arbitrary 6Ghz...

Re:Erm...

[justkarl (775856)]

and using a 6Ghz cpu w/ 512 ram...

Guess they got Longhorn running, eh?

Re:Erm...

[berkut7 (761778)]

The reason why they run with so little memory is the same why they are using a cheap video card: there is a chance they might kill it. The other more important reason is that they can reach higher FSB clocks with less memory sticks. I fthey had two or more memory sticks they would be able to reach same FSB speeds, an in turn, same CPU clock speeds.

Re:Erm...

[10scjed (695280)]

wow, windows at 6GHz, think of how much spyware it would take to finally slow it down...

Don't forget the dual clocked ALU

[prestwich (123353)]

So P4's double clock their ALUs - that means that ALU is shifting at > 12GHz.

Welcome to measuring your operations in picoseconds.

Re:Don't forget the dual clocked ALU

[Aadain2001 (684036)]

Actually, the ALU's in Prescott don't even use a clock! It uses self resetting domino logic, so the speed is completely based on the manufacturing process and the speed of the transistors. Damn hard things to make, even harder to formally verify that they will always work, and as far as I know Intel is the only CPU manufacturer in the world to use something like this in a mass-produced product. So you can really say that the ALU is working at >12GHz or whatever since it isn't clocked. Oh, and Intel has been measuring their operation time in picoseconds for a while now ;)

All of that speed...

[poofyhairguy82 (635386)]

calculates pi

Just to figure out the answer to a problem every 8th grader knows.

Re:All of that speed...

[lukewarmfusion (726141)]

No kidding. I could have told them that it was 3 and they would have saved so much time and money.

Just in time...

[Ars-Fartsica (166957)]

With winter coming and the price of oil approaching $50, you can now safely turn off your heater and just point the vent of your 6Ghz P4 into the middle of the room...or maybe run a venting system off of it connected to the heat ducts in your house...

Heh.

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

It would take a HUGE fan to keep it from overheating and causing a board shutdown or a processor meltdown.

I've got a 3.02 ghz, mildly overclocked, and the fan shutting down and the board automatically shutting down due to high heat are nearly simultaneous.

doom 3

[Coneasfast (690509)]

ok, yes, doom 3 has some pretty high sys requirements to run smoothly, but isn't this going a wee bit overboard?

Re:doom 3

[NtroP (649992)]

Nah, this is in preparation for Duke Nukem Forever.

calculate pi...

[spacemky (236551)]

Look how fast I can calculate pi:

3.1415927

wow, that was fast.

Re:calculate pi...

[by Anonymous Coward]

Memorizing pi is easy, once you've learnt the pattern.

Re:calculate pi...

[NonSequor (230139)]

Actually, he could be serious. There's a very simple formula [wolfram.com] for any arbitrary digit of pi in base 16.

Re:calculate pi...

[einhverfr (238914)]

I have been looking into this and it doesn;t work for arbitrary digits of pi, at least not as a simple formula fur such. The problem is that you have an infinite sum of fractions multiplied by 16 to a negative power.

So, you still have much computational work to do...

Tops 6ghz?

[by Anonymous Coward]

So it tops 6 GHz, but they only calculate pi at 5.4 GHz? Sounds like the only thing it can run at 6 GHz without crashing is CPU-Z...

skynet ensues...

[sciguy125 (791065)]

I think we need to stop making our computers go so fast. We're only making things easier for Skynet.

Re:skynet ensues...

[Etienne Steward (677851)]

I, for one, welcome our new 6GHz overlords...

In layman's terms...

[xactuary (746078)]

their scroll bar works faster than yours.

hmmm...

[jjeffries (17675)]

take a look at how fast it calculates pi

I hope it's a substantial improvement over my machine... Seems like I've been waiting forever for it to finish...

Re:hmmm...

[kzinti (9651)]

Seems like I've been waiting forever for it to finish...

May be, but at least it keeps your memory banks free of bloodthirsty demons like Boradis, Keslack, and Rejick.

Pi has been slashdotted

[by Anonymous Coward]

but don't worry I got a copy.

3.
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Re:Pi has been slashdotted

[Bryan_W (649785)]

You missed a few at the end

6 GHz is not that impressive.

[reporter (666905)]

At 6 GHz, the only applications that can show appreciable performance improvement are CPU-bound ones. Hence, a program that sits entirely in the on-chip cache will show significant improvement. An example of such a program is the one calculating the value of pi.

Memory-bound applications will not show significant improvement. At 6 GHz, most applications become memory bound since memory becomes extremely slow in responding to the 6 GHz processor.

Has anyone liquid cooled the G5 and the Opteron driven them to 6 GHz? I bet that the G5 could crush the Pentium in performance since the G5 has a powerful floating point unit.

Appropriate Homerism...

[3D Monkey (808934)]

mmmMMMMmmmm Pi

*drooling* aggghhhhhh

Hmmm

[Z-95 (801437)]

In other news, Microsoft increases Longhorn's recommended requirements to 7GHz.

It calculated PI?

[rco3 (198978)]

Waitaminute, waitaminute, waitaminute! They timed how long it took to calculate PI? That implies that it *FINISHED* calculating pi!

Now, THAT's "News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters"

Re:It calculated PI?

[SEE (7681)]

And it completed an infinite loop in under five seconds.

Re:It calculated PI?

[wildsurf (535389)]

They timed how long it took to calculate PI? That implies that it *FINISHED* calculating pi!

Well, considering it was done on a pc, 640k digits out to be enough for anybody.

Why LN2 when they live in Finland

[elmarkitse (816597)]

Why on earth would they go to the expense of an LN2 based system when they could just open a few windows.

Re:Why LN2 when they live in Finland

[Temporal (96070)]

So they could use in in the sauna, of course!

(That's sow-nah, not sah-nah!)

I wonder why...

[syukton (256348)]

I wonder why people are more inclined to use something temporary like a liquid nitrogen bath, instead of keeping the LN2 cool with a stirling cryocooler [stirlingtech.com]. I mean, sure, a 6 gigahertz computer is neat and all, but what use is it if you can't take it to a LAN party?

I'm not too familiar with the terminology used in the cooling world, but 15 watts of cooling power at 77 kelvin (-196 deg C / -321 deg F) sounds like quite a bit of cooling power to me. I've often wondered why Stirling technology isn't used in air conditioners.

Re:Only 5.4GHz

[mobby_6kl (668092)]

As the AC already said, it's not stable at 6Ghz, from the article:

Not bench stable - just a screenshot record :)

The CPU powersupply seems to require quite a bit of modding in order to bench past 5.4GHz.

Re:Hang one outside the ISS !!

[Holi (250190)]

Actually no, It would overheat quite quickly as a vaccuum is a very good insulator (heh some would say almost perfect).

Re:The Calculation

[Holi (250190)]

if you consider launching a computer into space easier.

+7.3, informationativinal

[by Anonymous Coward]

Looks like one of these doodads to me:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/oc z-booster.html [xbitlabs.com]

Re:liquid nitrogen sucks

[Big Bob the Finder (714285)]

Liquid propane boils at -42.1 degrees C. It goes from the solid to the liquid at -187.7 degrees C, which is not important for this, but read on below. It also has an explosive range from 2.8% to 9.5% in air- a little lower than natural gas.

Liquid nitrogen boils at -195.8 degrees C, which is cold enough to freeze propane into a solid (there's a fun experiment for you). Further, liquid nitrogen is not flammable, and presents no hazards other than asphyxiation and freeze damage. Nitrogen already makes up 80% of the air we breathe, so unless one works in an enclosed space with plenty of NL2 boiling off, it's tough to die from asphyxiation.

In other words, LN2 is colder, and won't blow up on you. I've used it for years, and have yet to get hurt by it. A little respect goes a long way.

Re:This is the type of thing.....

[RzUpAnmsCwrds (262647)]

MHz *does* matter. A 3GHz Opteron should be 2x as fast as a 1.5GHz Opteron (of course, that doesn't take into account the rest of the system - memory bandwidth, disk bandwidth, etc.)

The "MHz Myth" referrs to the fact that MHz is a poor metric to compare CPUs with. It's fair to compare a 3.2GHz P4 Prescott to a 3.6GHz P4 Prescott and expect that the 3.6GHz chip will be faster. What doesn't make sense is to comare a 3GHz P4 to a 2.4GHz Opteron and claim that the P4 is faster.

Re:Even colder...

[The Master Control P (655590)]

The problem with liquid helium (This made MRI scanners horribly impractical for a LOT of years) is that it has 1/20 the heat capacity of nitrogen, and you have to suck a thousand times the power to get down to helium temperatures compared to nitrogen. There would also be no quantum anomalies with silicon. It can only be compelled to a superconductive state under Extreme pressure [superconductors.org].

BTW, which is it... are we mounting it in a vaccuum or under liquid helium :)