o-clock.. am I OK ?

[Brett_Henderson]

I've got this Q6600 at 3.0GHZ stable...

I'm running Everest... it says it doesn't support the eVga 780i.. so I got the beta version from their tech forum, that's supposed to support it.

Running Prime95.. Everest shows all 4 cores at 100%.. and the temps I get are:

CPU             ~61C
CORES        ~73C

Is that safe ?

[Slotback]

Personally I wouldn't go over a Tjunction reading of 70 degrees celcius for a G0 Q6600, and maybe 60 degrees B3 Q6600. You probably have a G0.

To be sure, Open up CPU-Z and read the Revision field below the Stepping field.

I am thinking of Oc'ing this... what case and cooling do you have?

[Brett_Henderson]

I made sure it was a G0  (as in your nick  ;)  ) before I took it home..

I'm using a Zalman CNPS9500-A, in an open case.

I ended up using Everest for temp monitoring.. CoreTemp doesn't like vista64, and SpeedFan isn't accurate for Q6600s.

I'm pretty sure that under a "all 4 cores at 100%" stress test (Prime 95), 61@Tcase and 73@Tjunction is safe (I hope). It doesn't ge anywhere near that, running FSX (or anything else I've thrown at it)..

It idles  Tc@40  Tj@50  .. and hits  53/62 running FSX.

[Slotback]

You should be fine.

How high you reckon I can get this with stock cooling?

[congo]

[quote]


It idles

[Brett_Henderson]

You should be fine.

How high you reckon I can get this with stock cooling?

That's the $64,000 question. And just for the record... the Q6600's thermal shutdown works  :-[  I had my old HDD installed as a slave to get some data off of it... and when I took it out, I inadvertantly let a SATA power cable get wedged twixt the Zalman cooling fins and the fan blade  :o  )...

I'd imagine you could go well over 3.0ghz on the stock fan (with care, working your way up) depending on your RAM... It might not survive a Prime95 test... but I don't think any applications push it anywhere near that hard. Like I said.. FSX pushes all the temps about 60% as hard as Prime95 does..

I'd get a good fan though.. just to be safe. I always thought the Zalman stuff was a bit over hyped, but that thing does an incredible job of moving heat. It comes with a manual CPU fan-speed control. With Prime95 running; the temp increase/decrease is almost instantaneous when you adjust the speed... and when I jammed up the fan blade, the shutdown was maybe 30 second past booting up and even the outer edge of those big copper fins were warm to the touch...

[Brett_Henderson]

[quote][quote]


It idles

[NickN]

Your fine

the max on the Q6600 is 110c and it will shut down well before then

I would try to keep it in the low 70's anyway (under regular use)

[Slotback]

Brett.... Add this line to fsx.cfg.

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=15

[NickN]

Brett.... Add this line to fsx.cfg.

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=15

not needed for SP2

as of SP2 that edit is not going to net anything. SP2 fixed the threading issues in FSX

[Brett_Henderson]

I've been extensively testing this stuff.

While the loading is never even (not sure if it would matter), when you really push the graphics rendering (like a fast, high-bank turn near a scenery rich area), all four cores DO load up... with or without the Affinity Mask tweak... and cores 2,3,4 load up in spurts, now and then.

It's probably just me, because I can't find a reliable, consistent test method.. but the load sharing seems a little more proportional, with the tweak (even though I know that's not logical... kinda like telling FSX to do what it's already doing).. but it certainly doesn't hurt.

I'm not gonna bother with any other fsx.cfg tweaks, because a Q6600@3.0ghz / 8800GTS(g92) / and 4GB of RAM are performing better than I had hoped ...

[NickN]

[quote]I've been extensively testing this stuff.

While the loading is never even (not sure if it would matter), when you really push the graphics rendering (like a fast, high-bank turn near a scenery rich area), all four cores DO load up... with or without the Affinity Mask tweak... and cores 2,3,4 load up in spurts, now and then.

It's probably just me, because I can't find a reliable, consistent test method.. but the load sharing seems a little more proportional, with the tweak (even though I know that's not logical... kinda like telling FSX to do what it's already doing).. but it certainly doesn't hurt.

I'm not gonna bother with any other fsx.cfg tweaks, because a Q6600@3.0ghz / 8800GTS(g92) / and 4GB of RAM are performing better than I had hoped ...

[Brett_Henderson]

Oh my... sounds like fun... I'll report back  :)

[NickN]

[quote]Oh my... sounds like fun... I'll report back

[Brett_Henderson]

Ok.. got the GEX installed.. Good stuff  :)

I fly mostly in rural areas, so to get the full effect I had to get out of winter, and see it flying summer. I can't put my finger on it, but everything just feels more "real".. it's a very good investment

I'll try the FEX later... after I play with this for a while...

Thanks !  :)