Overclocked Memory Breaks Core i7 CPUs 267
arcticstoat writes "Overclockers looking to bolster their new Nehalem CPUs with overclocked memory may be disappointed. Intel is telling motherboard manufacturers not to encourage people to push the voltage of their DIMMs beyond 1.65V, as anything higher could damage the CPU. This will come as a blow to owners of enthusiast memory, such as Corsair's 2.133MHz DDR3 Dominator RAM, which needs 2V to run at its full speed with 9-9-9-24 timings."
The What of the What? (Score:5, Funny)
This will come as a blow to owners of enthusiast memory, such as Corsair's 2.133MHz DDR3 Dominator RAM, which needs 2V to run at its full speed with 9-9-9-24 timings."
I'll just stick to the mathematics of quantum field theory. Kids these days and their crazy machines!
When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an Introduction was, he said "The what of a what?" which didn't help us as much as we had hoped...
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[quote]such as Corsair's 2.133MHz DDR3 Dominator RAM, which needs 2V to run at its full speed with 9-9-9-24 timings."[/quote]
Please forgive me if I'm missing something...but isn't that RAM well, not great?
Various benchmark tests on the web show that RAM running at anything more than a 1:1 ratio (well, 2:1 if you consider that it's Double Data *Rate*) with the FSB doesn't increase performance at all. At this point, timings become important.
But 9-9-9-24 is pretty bad right? Lower is better right? For $90AUD I
So what? (Score:2, Funny)
Warning, pushing your components beyond their ratings may damage them!
Wow, never knew that overclocking might be problematic, guess I shouldn't have ignored all those warnings by the manufacturer, the system bios, the warranty pamphlets, the packaging....
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Warning! May contain nuts!
If you know what I mean...
Not news (Score:5, Funny)
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Well the downsizing of the cpu transistors make them "faster" but also more fragile.
To be more specific overvolting is not a problem for the transistor itself but it is a problem for the interconnections due to the effect of Electromigration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration [wikipedia.org].
The interconnections of latest CPUS are so thin that +0.15 could mean a lifespan cut of 50% or more. While higher values could mean a lifespan of months instead of years!
Its true that overclocking was always said to be a dan
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Actually if you apply too much voltage to the gate of CMOS transistor you can exceed the breakdown voltage of the gate oxide which, as I recall, scales with oxide thickness which itself scale inversely with process node. So actually "overvolting" can be a problem for the transistors, although I admit I don't know if electromigration or oxide breakdown dominates as a failure mechanism given the minor voltage changes we are talking about here.
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video cards come standard overclocked now a days
No they don't [wikipedia.org].
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I don't think you can call a one-off design by a no-name manufacture "standard".
Re:Not news (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me say this slowly:
If the factory makes it that way, it is not overclocked.
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I don't think the term "overclocked" means what you think it does.
My mind is blown. I cannot believe so many people are claiming that Intel should support out of spec uses, because it knows some people have taken the risk of violating specifications for quite some time now.
It is like saying that Old Navy has a design flaw in their hooded sweatshirts because they don't include parachutes and they know some people choose to jump out of planes in them and
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Overclocked = faster than specified in the data sheets.
There's a difference - many chips are sold at a lower clock rate for either heat or marketing reasons, so the factory clock isn't really that relevant.
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No, Overclocked = more then it was set to go when you bought it.
Faster then the data sheets = exceeding 100% of design.
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Name one motherboard that overclocks fro you?
They give you the option to make adjustments for overclocking, but I don't see why Intel should have to support that.
I would use forth gear...but I wouldn't change the transmission to give me a 5th gears and expect the manufacture to take it into account when they design cars.
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You don't overclock your case? You're missing out.
Overclocking (Score:5, Interesting)
Stylish vegetable accessories! (Score:2)
...mmm, onions...
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I'd like it if Asus and Gigabyte could maybe come up with a 'Get off my lawn!' series for us folks who like stock voltages, and wear onions on our belts
Well, that was the fashion in those days.
As an answer to your question, though, I've taken to spending a little more money to get actual Intel boards for their CPUs and then buy RAM as inexpensively as possible along with a dead-midrange graphics card. The retail Intel desktop boards have very little in terms of whizbang features, but manage to be very solid performers.
Some of the OC memory is hard to install (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some of the OC memory is hard to install (Score:5, Informative)
Yes and No. The JEDEC specifications say that DDR2 must be able to handle UP TO 2.3 volts before incurring any PERMANENT damage. However, 1.9v is considered the max when stability is of concern and anything over that is not guaranteed to work (properly).
DDR3 is specified to work at 1.575v, but able to withstand up to 1.975v .. Again, no guarantees it will function properly, but (according to the standard) shouldn't fry it. Now, other factors do come into play such as less life, more heat generated, more power used, etc.
The JEDEC specification is for memory modules. What Intel is saying is their processor will (likely) get damaged any more than 1.65v.
Out of Spec (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that so many memory modules require running out of spec voltages to operate properly, while the Intel CPU requires voltages within spec, it would appear to me that the memory makers are turning out bad memory.
Maybe instead of requiring users ramp voltages up to CPU damaging levels, they should fix their chips? Now that Intel has brought the memory controller into the CPU, that they have tighter tolerances for the voltages does not surprise me.
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This doesn't surprise me. (Score:2)
Granted, I do a bit of overclocking of my video card, and the processor, but I never screw with voltages. NEVER screw with voltages. That silicon has a tolerance range, but I've learned over the years that playing with voltage (Cyrix M-II processor, anyone?) is generally a bad idea.
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Undervolting is nice in some cases. That's the only way I'll skew voltages. It keeps your fans from coming on as often because it doesn't get as hot, uses less power which is REALLY nice when running on battery in a laptop...
But I agree, upping voltages to get things to go faster is just asking for trouble.
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Something else was going on, then. I can't think of any physical/electronic mechanism or find any reliable references to undervolting causing damage other than your anecdote.
Integrated memory controller. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the boost that on-die memory controllers gave to AMD, back when they adopted them, I suspect that the tradeoff will still be worth it. On the other hand, I strongly suspect that there are going to be some very unhappy cries of "WTF! How could RAM voltage kill my CPU?" from adventuresome kiddies unfamiliar with the implications of this change. Warning stickers aren't going to deter them.
Blazing 2 MHz Memory! (Score:3, Funny)
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It's just a matter of time... (Score:5, Funny)
Bonus points if they're LEDs.
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Armed with the knowledge that the PN junction voltage drop of a Diode is 0.7v, and either no forethought, or no knowledge beyond that at all in the hardware domain, you have managed to make a very absurd statement (no offense.)
I'm not going to get into the myriad ways that this is absurd and impossible, but lets start (and end) with the fact that you can't just start soldering things on a board when things are clocked in the Gigahertz range from a theoretic
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Ehm, and since when has that stopped the casemodder and overclocker crowd? Note that he never said that such a setup would actually work. He only said that somebody will be stupid enough to try it...
Intel can't do split volts on the cpu and ram like (Score:3, Insightful)
Intel can't do split volts on the cpu and ram like amd boards and older Intel boards can do??
Will any other stuff like this show up in QPI 2+ systems with the QPI bus?
dominator (Score:2)
9-9-9-24 timings are "dominator" good? I thought 2-2-2-6 was good, with 5s being average and common. 9-9-9-24 sounds horrible in comparison.
Not that I care, I'm just confused.
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Back in the day of DDR1 you'd be right, but these days the timings on the RAM are much larger but this isn't necessairly a bad thing. DDR3 runs much faster then it's older brothers and so the actual latency times are quite comparable.
The bigger numbers in timings mean a whole lot less when the clock is ticking that much faster :)
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Like DDR2, DDR3 increases latencies to allow for higher clockrates:
While the typical latencies for a JEDEC DDR2 device were 5-5-5-15, the standard latencies for the newer JEDEC DDR3 devices are 7-7-7-20 for DDR3-1066 and 7-7-7-24 for DDR3-1333.
But remember these latencies are measured in clock cycles, so timing wise, these latencies are shorter; they just happen to have more clock ticks between them.
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DDR3 Specs vs Nehalem's Supported Speed (Score:2, Informative)
That means DDR3-1600 is the max speed as a standard.
Anything faster than DDR3-1600 is already an overclocked memory by the memory manafacture.
However, Nehalem supports up to DDR3-1333 only.
As a hardware enthusiast (but not an overclocker), I would rather be using a DDR3-1600 memory.
Understandably, the over
I overclocked my memory... (Score:2)
... I forget what happened next.
typoinsummary :P (Score:2)
Just wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
A few months after the initial release of desktop i7 chips, they'll release a chip that can handle up to 2.0V DDR3 running at up to 2.4 GHz. The CPU will cost $1500, have an unlocked multiplier, and require a $300 motherboard, a $200 power supply, and a $100 cooling device to function with the out-of-spec enthusiast RAM. Gamers with more money than sense will eagerly shell out for it, and blame Nvidia's drivers when they only get an extra 1.3 FPS over JEDEC-compliant mainstream CPU/RAM configurations.
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Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:About overclockers: (Score:4, Funny)
If they can get a stock four-banger with nitrous feed and twin turbos bolted on to not slip the clutch until the checkered, they're doing pretty well. I'd expect that setup to fly apart closer to the green.
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Once you "hit the limit" when overvolting, you cause damage.
Whether or not you notice that damage is another issue.
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Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Informative)
You are missing a point here. there are ram chips out there that are designed to run with more voltage then 1.65. So you do not even need to overclock for this to happen.
for example
OCZ Platinum 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 is a 1.8v standard. that's NOT overclocking
I agree overclocking and you break something your own problem but this product can't even use some decent ram as its stated to be used without blowing the CPU. At that point I would want my CPU replaced thank you,
Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Informative)
1.8 volts for DDR3 memory is severly out of spec.
The nominal voltage is 1.5. Chips nominally operating at higher voltages are of *LOWER QUALITY* than chips operating at the proper 1.5 voltage.
The ability to increase voltage to offset more aggressive timings than the memory supports is the real issue. At that point you are getting no real performance improvement and the real possibility of random bit flips + additional wear on the memory/northbridge/cpu.
DDR3 and CPU caches are all about bulk data transfers and have zero to do about latency. Whatever silly gains you think you are getting by playing with timings are hidden by the nature of the hardware.
Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Interesting)
No, they're lower binned parts that couldn't make "enthusiast" OR normal speeds at 1.5 volts.
They crank up the voltage and re-rate them at a higher speed, and slap on ridiculous cooling (heat spreaders, heat pipes, built in fans).
They KNOW these pieces will fail at high rates, so they jack up the price and call it gamer/enthusiast RAM. When the return rates start to drop off, they start issuing rebates to move remaining stock.
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So buy some memory made on 45nm processes so it doesn't require 1.8v to do its work.
Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Informative)
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While I'm sure that's true, I would like to know if there's a technical reason why RAM voltage must be linked if the chips can take it or whether this is simply an Intel manufacturing decision not to support it. As far as I know AMD has had an integrated memory controller for quite some time and I never heard of any limitation like this and it's not exactly an unknown practise.
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Probably because the IO voltage rating of the Intel technology for the transistor is lower than AMD. Intel CPU is on a 45nm process and AMD a 65nm process, usually bigger process are more tolerant. If Intel IO run at 1.5V we can suppose there are 2 reason for the limit of the ram.
First if the IO go beyond the 1.5V you can either break the protection diode on the cpu pin or inject current on the power line for the IO on the chip. That part is bad because it force the power supply to compensate for that and t
Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the point here. If there are RAM chips out there that are designed to run with more voltage than 1.65v then those RAM chips are not designed to the JEDEC standard. Legally, they probably shouldn't even be able to sell them as DDR3 since DDR3 is a JEDEC standard and the parts on non-compliant. Of course, most of the memory manufacturers do this anyway, and since they are part of JEDEC nobody complains too loudly...except when things don't work, of course.
OCZ Platinum 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 is a 1.8v standard. that's NOT overclocking
But it is over-volted.
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You are missing the point - those RAM modules don't run at standard voltages. They are designed to run at higher-than-normal voltages.
They REQUIRE those voltages because the RAM chips themselves are essentially lower quality chips that have been overclocked. The added voltage necessary for the overclock results in more heat. This is why you get heatpipes and retarded shit for a fucking stick of memory.
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If you push the limits of a device, you deserve what you get. Maybe good and cool, maybe broken shit.
Considering an entire subset of the industry exists dealing exclusively with parts designed to run 'faster-than-spec' I'm more inclined to lay the blame on Intel. They should know full well by now that the enthusiast market drives a lot of personal buying decisions further down the food chain...
Remember when Tom's Hardware broke this story? [zdnet.com]
If you can't release components that will run with existing kit, well someone is going to get the short end of that stick... And when it's the high end consumers, well O
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The main problem is that to get the speeds and efficiency of this part they went down to a tiny little gate technology. That technology requires lower voltages than your 130nm or 90nm RAM does.
Somebody needs to release some RAM that's built on little bitty gates so that it draws tiny little voltages, or the MB manufacturers need to design their boards with separate voltage settings for the RAM and CPU.
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blame it on 3rd party memory vendors that violate DDR3 spec.
This issue is a material physics problem, not a 'CPU' problem.
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I don't really know why there's a sudden flood of people trolling overclockers. Overclocking is a legitimate way to gain more frame rates. For my job I often adjust clock settings on CPUs for benchmark tests, and it's not as if the CPUs that are overclocked weren't designed to do so.
The reason AMD processors used to be popular was that they appealed to enthusiasts and they had the ability for overclocking more so than Intel.
For a company that sits in the lead of the processor market, putting out a high-
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and it's not as if the CPUs that are overclocked weren't designed to do so.
I can remember a time when connecting nodes on circuit boards with a graphite pencil was a good way to increase multipliers and voltages. And it wasn't that long ago, these new fangled extreme processors and enthusiast motherboards are a pretty new thing. So I guess this doesn't surprise me too greatly, I'm sure a lot of minds at Intel Corp. remember the good old days when they were the ones OC'ing chips straight off the assembly line to sell as premium stock and motherboard settings were locked down like G
It might work, but you're on your own (Score:2)
When part manufacturers design and specify their parts they will often be very conservative. This gives them some room for process variance, changed materials, etc. Thus, one batch might work fine at high voltages and some will not. Or current parts will work but some future parts will not.
Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
They deserve to live with their results, be those increased performance or broken components. Saying they deserve busted components is like saying someone who soups up their car deserves a blown motor. Both endeavors, done correctly, can boost the performance of the tool in question. It's not hurting anyone, so why the sour grapes? Never were quite able to get the CPU overclocked so you want everyone who tries to fail?
Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Informative)
Push what limits?
You're not pushing a cpu, it was designed to run faster! Just bined lower.
You're not overclocking overclocking ram at 2v. Its designed to run with that voltage!
This isn't an overclocking issue, its a design flaw by Intel. Not our fault you can't see the forest for the trees.
Run a CRC on your brain, sparky, you dropped a bit or two.
The Nehalem CPU is designed to run at JDEC Spec of 1.5V, but can handle 1.65 without being binned. Yes, the RAM is designed for 2V, but the CPU wasn't - use the RAM, take a chance on killing the CPU and voiding your warranty.
60nm parts have 25% more area in which to absorb electrons and 25% more dielectric between elements than a 45nm part, so of course they could handle more voltage without damage. It's a design flaw in material physics, not the processor.
Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Funny)
So much for intelligent design.
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60nm parts have 25% more area in which to absorb electrons and 25% more dielectric between elements than a 45nm part, so of course they could handle more voltage without damage. It's a design flaw in material physics, not the processor.
And that looks like a fault in your calculation. 45^2 = 2025, 60^2 = 3600. 3600/2025 = 1.78. So 60 nm parts have 78% more area.
Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not pushing a cpu, it was designed to run faster! Just bined lower.
This is a brand new CPU. I don't think they're worried about the low-end market just yet, and are labeling them as high as they can.
Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Informative)
by adjusting the RAM voltage, you are also the voltages on the input pins of the processor. Overvolting an I/O pin can cause latchups, which basically is a short circuit.
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You're not pushing a cpu, it was designed to run faster! Just bined lower.
This isn't an overclocking issue, its a design flaw by Intel.
Wow. Did you not notice the contradiction of those two statements?
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This isn't an overclocking issue, its a designed flaw by Intel.
Fixed that for ya
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A high-speed clock and data recovery system like that used to implement the memory controller and RAM won't be fixed with additional mobo components. Put anything in that path and it will very likely break. 2.0V is likely well above the Vmax of the FETs used in Intel's controller. They needed to take care of the voltage conversion at the pads to avoid issues like this. Instead I'm guessing they run the whole controller at the same voltage as the pads. That might allow them to run the controller logic a
Re:About overclockers: (Score:4, Funny)
Still running that Dell eh?
Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Insightful)
That extra 20fps won't make your penis any larger.
Sorry..
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If it's porn rendered in 0.5 fps on the Dell maybe it will.
Re:About overclockers: (Score:5, Funny)
I'll be the one laughing at the pathetic excuses you make up when I still kick your ass.
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Correct.
Out-of-spec voltages is one of the things I complained about earlier...in a post I can't find.
Basically, stick with the value ram, or basic ram with good timings.
Corsair, OCZ, etc., with all the shiny heatspreaders, heatpipes, and LEDs are bullshit.
They put out the least reliable RAM ever, and it's (mainly) because they run on non-spec voltage.
Also, the reliability of RAM is inversely proportional to the size of the rebate.
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And then there are those of us who under-volt to squeeze more battery life out on the airplane...
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Have you? Overclocking is bad because it is not reliable, for thousands of reasons no software stress test will ever show.
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Then how is it proven that ANY processor can be run reliably at its binned speed? You can NEVER prove that it is reliable except by running limitless operations and checking the result of each one.
Re:About overclockers: (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, this is still logically intractable. The best you can do is run it and wait for it to fail. If it doesn't fail, all you've shown is that...it didn't happen to fail. That isn't to say that it WOULDN'T have failed if you had run it for one more cycle, just that in your test space, you didn't get it to fail.
Short form: try to prove that something DOESN'T fail is trying to prove a negative, which doesn't work.
This is what you were getting at, obviously. I just wanted to clear it up for other people. :)
Re:About overclockers: (Score:4, Informative)
Because Intel and other chip fabricators can run lower level tests on the actual electronics of the chip than a nerd on the internet can.
They can physically inspect the chips from a given batch.
The most 99% of overclockers do is run a program to calculate Pi to a hojillion places over night.
Intel and other chip fabricators have set tolerances for the electronics. If a part falls within the tolerances, it is deemed good, if it doesn't, it is deemed bad.
For Intel and other fabricators, if a chip passes physical inspection, and a batch of them meets or beats the MTBF, they are considered good. If they pass physical inspection, but are statistically deviant from the MTBF (in a bad way), the batch is bad.
In a processor, logical failure is often the end result of physical failure, but physical failure usually does NOT end in logical failure.
You CAN prove that any given processor is logically reliable if run all possible valid input sequences on it. This is beyond astronomical (but not infinite, since we're talking about a logical level, and there are a finite number of logical states to any processor, along with a finite number of valid inputs).
You cannot prove that a processor is physically reliable, since the processor physically changes as you use it. This is why we have tolerances. Unfortunately, we want more performance, which means smaller fabrication processes, which means tighter tolerances, which means lower yields.
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"Among other things"?
Other things like the fucking initial design and engineering process? The processes, parts, and materials we use all have known physical limitations.
We know what the theoretical top speeds are when we design processors. We know that variations in the manufacturing process often alters the capabilities of a design in the real world.
It's not like baking a fucking cake and then being surprised at how delicious it is. We design, manufacture, and test to make sure we get our expected deli
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A properly written software test is what, exactly?
Something that would cause the chip to fail physical inspection may not show up on any software test, especially if it only caused the part to be rebinned to a slower speed.
A CPU can be operating incorrectly in countless ways. Whether it shows up on one specific logical test under certain physical conditions, or whether it continues to show up or not after a certain amount of time is another issue entirely.
Go to school, or go back, or major in something oth
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...
The stress of overclocking / overvolting reduces the lifespan of the processor.
The damages and errors may show up sporadically, unter certain environmental / power conditions, or after a period of time.
Even if you had software that could check every fucking part of your processor, and it returned a clean bill of health today, that would mean nothing tomorrow.
Beyond that, no piece of software exists that completely or thoroughly tests a CPU. Stuff overclockers use is basically "throttle it to 100% usage
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Methinks someone doesn't know what DDR stands for...
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You've overclocked Celerons? Say it isn't so....
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No, you're right. In rare cases an overclocked Celeron performed better than the standard-clocked Pentium 3 of the same nominal speed on most benchmarks. It's been a long time since the Pentium 3 and that generation of Celerons, though, and it usually wasn't worth doing even then.
Re:I don't get memory overclocking (Score:4, Interesting)
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Plus just about any database system.
Of course the OS is doing just that, by caching disk access in the spare memory & (ideally) keeping the memory utilisation at max.
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Buy DIMMs that work at lower voltages because they use smaller processes or buy motherboards that separate the refresh power circuits from the data circuits on your RAM. It's doubtful that the data lines need 1.8 or 2.1 volts or whatever.
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Says Intel, dipshit.
This is old news, by the way.
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The data and address lines are connected. No amount of design can change that.
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The memory controller is now integrated with the CPU (instead of the north bridge). If you mess with the RAM settings and/or voltage, it messes with the memory controller, and that could potentially damage (or destroy) the CPU. That's my guess anyway.
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No they don't.. that's not overclocking.
They're specced to work within a certain range (and they'll have a step down as that's how you save power) and merely don't default to working at the maximum speed in that range. Makes sense from a heat/power point of view... most of the time the processor isn't doing a lot and having it ticking over at idle whilst running cooler is good. If you fire up Crysis it revs up to max for you.