Is this motherboard OK with an overclocked Intel D 805?

[altcomphardware]

Hi guys. I'm planning to build my second overclocked Intel D 805 system
after having an excellent experience with an Asus P5ND2-SLI + Intel D
805 @ 3.33GHz.

The motherboard below looks promising - cheap, DDR2-667 and with
onboard graphics.

IMVHO overclocking any further requires a DDR2-800 mobo + RAM + water
cooling, which makes it not worth it. I'm happy with a dual core
3.33GHz CPU...

However I have had some bad experiences with MSI before and wanted to
know whether anyone else here has tried overclocking an Intel D 805
with this motherboard.

The CPU support list says the mobo is OK with this CPU, but it remains
to be seen whether this is the case when overclocked.

Thanks.

RC410M-L from Ebuyer Quickfind code 114087
http://msicomputer.co.uk/Products.aspx?product_id=703703&cat_id=77
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_cpu_support_detail.php?UID=706&kind=1

 

[jamesthomasstowe]

Hi guys. I'm planning to build my second overclocked Intel D 805 system
after having an excellent experience with an Asus P5ND2-SLI + Intel D
805 @ 3.33GHz.

The motherboard below looks promising - cheap, DDR2-667 and with
onboard graphics.

IMVHO overclocking any further requires a DDR2-800 mobo + RAM + water
cooling, which makes it not worth it. I'm happy with a dual core
3.33GHz CPU...

However I have had some bad experiences with MSI before and wanted to
know whether anyone else here has tried overclocking an Intel D 805
with this motherboard.

The CPU support list says the mobo is OK with this CPU, but it remains
to be seen whether this is the case when overclocked.

Thanks.

RC410M-L from Ebuyer Quickfind code 114087
http://msicomputer.co.uk/Products.aspx?product_id=703703&cat_id=77
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_cpu_support_detail.php?UID=706&kind=1

Why are you planning on using an D805? Core2 is out and it is light
years ahead. You can pick up a 6300 for around £120.

I'm using Intel Core 2 DUO E6300, GeIL 1GB PC6400 and Gigabyte
GA_965P_DS3. Plenty of people are overclocking from 1.8Ghz upto
3.0Ghz+. These new chips are amazing! Check out the overclockers forum.

 

[altcomphardware]

Why are you planning on using an D805? Core2 is out and it is light
years ahead. You can pick up a 6300 for around £120.

In what way is Core2 better than a D805? The benefits seem to be 65nm
vs 90nm and thus energy efficiency. Also a bigger cache.

I use the cores independently (two almost identical jobs running
simultaneously)

Do you know if a Core2 Duo @ 3.0GHz is faster than a D805 at 3.33GHz?

I'm using Intel Core 2 DUO E6300, GeIL 1GB PC6400 and Gigabyte
GA_965P_DS3. Plenty of people are overclocking from 1.8Ghz upto
3.0Ghz+. These new chips are amazing! Check out the overclockers forum.

MSI RC410M-L Socket 775 800MHz FSB LAN SATA VGA Audio 114087 £25.52

Intel (BX80551PE2666FN) Pentium D 805 Dual Core 64 bit LGA 775 2 x 2.66
GHz 2MB (1 Mb per Core) Cache 107617 £58.66

Ebuyer 1GB DDR2 667MHz PC2-5400 240pin Extra Value Ram 115961 £45.99

Casecom KL-188 Silver ATX Midi Tower Case With 350W PSU 088475 £12.76


Sansun Black 600W PSU - 20/24pin SATA 101806 £14.99

My barebones number cruncher below costs under £200 including VAT.

Can you build an equivalent Core 2 system at that price?

 

[jamesthomasstowe]

In what way is Core2 better than a D805? The benefits seem to be 65nm
vs 90nm and thus energy efficiency. Also a bigger cache.

I use the cores independently (two almost identical jobs running
simultaneously)

Do you know if a Core2 Duo @ 3.0GHz is faster than a D805 at 3.33GHz?


MSI RC410M-L Socket 775 800MHz FSB LAN SATA VGA Audio 114087 £25.52

Intel (BX80551PE2666FN) Pentium D 805 Dual Core 64 bit LGA 775 2 x 2.66
GHz 2MB (1 Mb per Core) Cache 107617 £58.66

Ebuyer 1GB DDR2 667MHz PC2-5400 240pin Extra Value Ram 115961 £45.99

Casecom KL-188 Silver ATX Midi Tower Case With 350W PSU 088475 £12.76


Sansun Black 600W PSU - 20/24pin SATA 101806 £14.99

My barebones number cruncher below costs under £200 including VAT.

Can you build an equivalent Core 2 system at that price?

No, its more expensive.
Core2 e6300 £120
GA965pds3 £100
1GB 6400 £70

From what i've read, you'll never be able to do big and stable

overclocks with cheap components. The MB won't last long. All that
4.0Ghz overclocking of the 805 was done using £140 MB and £200 RAM.

People that are into gaming are keen on the new chips. I know some of
these new chips can match the FX-62 in gaming.
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/06/05/first_benchmarks_conroe_vs_fx-62_uk/

My 6300 is 31C @ 1.86 GHz (stock)
36C @ 2.1 GHz
I haven't gone further yet. But even at stock it is much faster at
games than my old P4 3.0Ghz.

I suppose it depends what you are doing. May be core2 is only good for
games?

 

[altcomphardware]

No, its more expensive.
Core2 e6300 £120
GA965pds3 £100
1GB 6400 £70
OK.

overclocks with cheap components. The MB won't last long. All that
4.0Ghz overclocking of the 805 was done using £140 MB and £200 RAM.

Yeah. That's why I'm not pushing it to higher than 3.33GHz.

DDR2-800 mobos and RAM cost a premium, as well as water cooling. IMVHO
the sweet spot is overclocked to match DDR2-667 mobos/RAM, BICBW.

People that are into gaming are keen on the new chips. I know some of
these new chips can match the FX-62 in gaming.
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/06/05/first_benchmarks_conroe_vs_fx-62_uk/

Yeah, that was one of the first places I checked when you mentioned the
Conroe. It remains to be seen though, whether a *reasonably*
overclocked Core Duo 6300 can beat a *reasonably* overclocked Intel D
805 in proportion to its cost.

My 6300 is 31C @ 1.86 GHz (stock)
36C @ 2.1 GHz
I haven't gone further yet. But even at stock it is much faster at
games than my old P4 3.0Ghz.

I suppose it depends what you are doing. May be core2 is only good for
games?

I'm using it for scientific (mostly) floating point calculations. The
monitor is off 99% of the time.

 

[jamesthomasstowe]

Yeah. That's why I'm not pushing it to higher than 3.33GHz.

DDR2-800 mobos and RAM cost a premium, as well as water cooling. IMVHO
the sweet spot is overclocked to match DDR2-667 mobos/RAM, BICBW.


Yeah, that was one of the first places I checked when you mentioned the
Conroe. It remains to be seen though, whether a *reasonably*
overclocked Core Duo 6300 can beat a *reasonably* overclocked Intel D
805 in proportion to its cost.


I'm using it for scientific (mostly) floating point calculations. The
monitor is off 99% of the time.

You've probably got the cheapest/best setup possible. You could build a
core2 system alot cheaper than I did though.

Asrock Conroe945G-DVI (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
(MB-004-AK)
for £54.04 has onboard graphics too.

Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM
(CP-135-IN)
£126.89

Plus all the other components you picked.

 

[kony]

I'm using it for scientific (mostly) floating point calculations. The
monitor is off 99% of the time.

It is not a good idea to try for such aggressive overclocks
with extensive calculations, ie- result important ones,
rather than those where an occasional error may not matter
(like games).

Core Duo is not what you want, ideally, unless you have
multiple high-demand apps running, you will have better
performance from a single core at higher clockspeed. That
is unless your scientific app is multi-threaded, which I
doubt but certainly possible.

 

[JohnS]

Asrock Conroe945G-DVI (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
(MB-004-AK)
for £54.04 has onboard graphics too.

Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM
(CP-135-IN)
£126.89

Im leaning that way right now. I was thinking about the 805D but AM2s
and Conroes are getting surprisingly cheap already. Plus some of the
numbers given for power consumption on an OCed 805D look really bad.

In the US theres a cheapo ASrock for $55 that said to work with the
Conroe 6300 which is slightly under 200 now.

Id like to get the Gigabyte but the 965P S3 version since its only 119
here though it seems to have some memory incompatibility problems at
the moment.

I could actually go AM2 if the prices were cheap enough though.

 

[altcomphardware]

It is not a good idea to try for such aggressive overclocks
with extensive calculations, ie- result important ones,
rather than those where an occasional error may not matter
(like games).

I would agree with you, except the nature of my work is 100s - 1000s of
short discrete runs, instead of one mega-long one. As such errors will
not accumulate and scramble up the result of a long run but are more
likely to be compartmentalised to a short bad run.

FWIW so far I have been running a Intel D 805 2.66GHz at 3.33GHz for 1
week straight, and have not detected any numerical errors. One annoying
bug with 32 bit and 64 bit Intel Fortran compilers though :-(

Of course IME the Asus mobos are of better quality than the MSIs hence
me asking if anyone here has had any experience with an overclocked
Intel D 805 and the above MSI mobo.

Core Duo is not what you want, ideally, unless you have
multiple high-demand apps running, you will have better
performance from a single core at higher clockspeed.

I actually bought the dual core Intel D 805 because of its reputation
for overclockability (I was not disappointed!) and also I worked out
that for the price of a dual core 2x2.66GHz 2x1MB cache system at that
time, I could get 2 low end Celerons.

That
is unless your scientific app is multi-threaded, which I
doubt but certainly possible.

It is multi-threaded, but there is a computational overhead in
decomposing the problem among the CPUs. This overhead is paid off if
the run is very long. In my case my runs are sufficiently short that
the multiprocessor version using 8 dual core nodes (16 cores) on my
university's Xeon cluster is slower than a single processor version on
my desktop AMD64 754 3400+!

 

[kony]

I would agree with you, except the nature of my work is 100s - 1000s of
short discrete runs, instead of one mega-long one. As such errors will
not accumulate and scramble up the result of a long run but are more
likely to be compartmentalised to a short bad run.

While that may be true, does it have the ability to go back
and check everything? If not, how will you catch these
errors?

FWIW so far I have been running a Intel D 805 2.66GHz at 3.33GHz for 1
week straight, and have not detected any numerical errors. One annoying
bug with 32 bit and 64 bit Intel Fortran compilers though :-(

Well it's all a matter of how overclocked... whether
instable or not. Some instability may not be so easily
detected, if a certain part of a CPU is continually used but
never this part continually stress-tested, or if an error
were to occur once every 36 hours. 2.66 to 3.33 isn't that
much of an o'c in the first place, and one can generally
look at the core family and see what the ceiling spec'd
speeds were per the family and make a guesstimation about
what *most* members of that family can overclock to within a
reasonably margin of error (until getting into exotic
cooling).

 

[altcomphardware]

While that may be true, does it have the ability to go back
and check everything? If not, how will you catch these
errors?

Sharp of you to notice, Kony. Unfortunately, you're right that there is
no recursive checking of results to ensure there are no errors.

However, I do check the final answer of the run manually to ensure the
predictions match up, which is how I spotted that 32-bit version 8.0
compiled Fortran code produced errors on 64 bit machines running 64-bit
version 9.0 libraries. The code didn't crash or anything obvious like
that - variables were just getting scrambled :-(

Wasted 1 week of computations :-/

Well it's all a matter of how overclocked... whether
instable or not. Some instability may not be so easily
detected, if a certain part of a CPU is continually used but
never this part continually stress-tested, or if an error
were to occur once every 36 hours. 2.66 to 3.33 isn't that
much of an o'c in the first place, and one can generally
look at the core family and see what the ceiling spec'd
speeds were per the family and make a guesstimation about
what *most* members of that family can overclock to within a
reasonably margin of error (until getting into exotic
cooling).

By the way, do you agree with my assessment that a reasonable overclock
(i.e. 2.66 to 3.33GHz, up to a DDR2-667 mobo/RAM) is better than an
extreme overclock (i.e. ~4.0GHz with DDR2-800 mobo/RAM) because the
premium you pay on a quality mobo/RAM/PSU/cooling system would be
better spent on a second number cruncher or a stock high end CPU to
start with?

Have you heard any stories about a MSI RC410M-L and Intel D 805 combo?

Would you regard MSI motherboards as quality or cheapo ones?

Thanks Kony.

 

[kony]

By the way, do you agree with my assessment that a reasonable overclock
(i.e. 2.66 to 3.33GHz, up to a DDR2-667 mobo/RAM) is better than an
extreme overclock (i.e. ~4.0GHz with DDR2-800 mobo/RAM) because the
premium you pay on a quality mobo/RAM/PSU/cooling system would be
better spent on a second number cruncher or a stock high end CPU to
start with?

It depends on the circumstances. I've gone both ways with
similar situations.

Sometimes you can get a cheap board to do fine overclocking
if you just make sure the capacitors stay cool enough,
either with an oversized fan on the CPU heatsink that flows
quite a bit of air over the area, or a supplimental fan (or
northbridge fan IF it's close enough and large enough but
usually they aren't) nearer those capacitors. See the
following example of how to keep a cheap board running at
high overclock long-term. On this example I even added a
potentiometer to fool the voltage regulator chip into
producing far higher voltage if desired.

http://69.36.189.159/usr_1034/nb_sinks/1.jpg

The beauty of that one is that by using a 50x15mm HQ fan, it
didn't even need to run at moderate RPM. Another thing
worth nothing is that unlike some who try to get the biggest
heatsinks possible on the mosfets, when reasonably possible
(not too much work sawing down little pieces of heatsink) I
prefer to use narrow heatsinks that only cover the width of
the mosfet packages, leaving a direct airflow path from the
fan to the copper on the motherboard, since that copper is
the more efficient heatsinking from these surface mount
parts.

Funny thing about that board is I actually got it free
because someone had stabbed it with a screwdriver when they
tried to put the heatsink on, it had ripped off a couple of
the surface mount parts above the northbridge. They were a
difficult repair because the traces were already a little
ragged from the screwdriver event, so after putting new
parts on I coated the whole area in the same dark grey epoxy
I'd used to mount the POT to the game port.

Have you heard any stories about a MSI RC410M-L and Intel D 805 combo?

No, but even if I had, so far as heat goes it'll still
matter quite a bit how well your case is cooled and/or
ambient temps.

Would you regard MSI motherboards as quality or cheapo ones?

MSI I see as as a good value, middle-of-the-road choice. A
definite step above 3rd tier makes, similar to Gigabyte in
overall quality. Gigabyte makes some superior high-end
boards but those tend to be really pricey, and GB's low end
boards seem not as good as MSI's.

One thing about MSI boards though, they seem to try to omit
a lot of capacitors the engineers designed for. While
that's no worse than some brands like PCChips that don't
even bother to design for that many, it also seems a pity
they chose to cut corners on some of the parts that are
known to be shorter lived, particularly when at the volume
they're buying, it would likely cost less than $1 to have
fully populated the board.

Another issue is lifespan though, I tend to buy with the
idea that I'll either resell or give away (or part out to
give away) systems so I will tend to spend more on a board
if necessary to avoid low-end 3rd party junk. If I were
only looking at throwing a board away after 3 years of use I
might tend to buy the cheaper boards instead, as I don't
really need the integrated features on most anyway.

I'd tend to prefer Abit, Asus, or sometimes Intel retail
over MSI, but with Intel boards I don't even know what
overclocking facilities they have anymore, it's been awhile
since I bought any.

For number crunchers though, I would tend to look into
something like 2 or more mATX boards with integrated video,
even if a cheaper one, instead of trying to build one really
expensive system. Then again, I don't know your tasks well
enough to make that call, I'd be seeking some benchmarks
before deciding.

 

[altcomphardware]

http://69.36.189.159/usr_1034/nb_sinks/1.jpg

Out of curiosity, did you add the extra heat sinks and glue the large
fan on? How did you mount the fan without screws, or did you epoxy on a
set of matching screw threads as well?

How do you know the ins & outs of all these hardware bits & pieces?
Experience, training, both?

No, but even if I had, so far as heat goes it'll still
matter quite a bit how well your case is cooled and/or
ambient temps.

OK thanks.

MSI I see as as a good value, middle-of-the-road choice. A
definite step above 3rd tier makes, similar to Gigabyte in
overall quality. Gigabyte makes some superior high-end
boards but those tend to be really pricey, and GB's low end
boards seem not as good as MSI's.

One thing about MSI boards though, they seem to try to omit
a lot of capacitors the engineers designed for. While
that's no worse than some brands like PCChips that don't
even bother to design for that many, it also seems a pity
they chose to cut corners on some of the parts that are
known to be shorter lived, particularly when at the volume
they're buying, it would likely cost less than $1 to have
fully populated the board.

My first and last experience with MSI was a twitichy Socket A board.
Kept on rebooting and freezing. It was a pain to diagnose between the
usual suspects (and lockups); faulty RAM, CPU, etc...

I suppose every batch has its rotten apples, given that you've got more
experience with hardware issues.

For number crunchers though, I would tend to look into
something like 2 or more mATX boards with integrated video,
even if a cheaper one, instead of trying to build one really
expensive system. Then again, I don't know your tasks well
enough to make that call, I'd be seeking some benchmarks
before deciding.

Yeah, that was what I was thinking. Wasted £30 on a cheapo graphics
card for my Asus P5ND2-SLI which did not have integrated graphics. It
had a good "AI Overclock" feature in the BIOS though, which
automatically set the voltages, etc. to get a good overclock. All I had
to do was define "Stable overclock" and it settled at 3.33GHz from
2.66GHz.

The job I'm running is a finite element program LS Dyna, run hundreds
to thousands of times on smaller, simpler models than once on a complex
model (thats the nature of my work). An educated guess would be that it
is mostly floating point calculations with some integer calculations.
YMMV with LS Dyna benchmarks because I have yet to see a site that
comprehensively lists hardware comparisons like Tom's Hardware does for
games.

I agree with you that its better in most cases to build a few cheaper
systems, as you have commodity pricing of mass-market off the shelf
components on your side.

 

[kony]

Out of curiosity, did you add the extra heat sinks
yes

and glue the large
fan on?

The heatsinks (all of them) have arctic alumina epoxy.
On flipchips there's often loops or throw-holes for a clip
instead, it wouldn't be good to epoxy a big 'sink on an open
flipchip, though ok if it has a well-secured heat spreader
integral.

How did you mount the fan without screws, or did you epoxy
on a

set of matching screw threads as well?

The northbridge sink has the fan screwed onto it on one
side. While it looks like the typical little socket 7 era
heatsink, this is a particularly thick & sturdy 'sink, it
holds the fan quite well.

How do you know the ins & outs of all these hardware bits & pieces?
Experience, training, both?

I've been at it from several angles for quite a while
including sales, electronics, repair, overclocking, and just
a general desire to make anything run at peak performance
forever and a day. Plus it doesn't hurt to have drawers
full of leftover heatsinks from the various eras of CPUs and
enough tools to force my will upon them. Motherboards are
fairly easy, it's video cards and some of the chipset 'sinks
with limited clearance that require more careful heatsink
selection, often shallow 'sinks that may not fit so well due
to nearby surface-mounted board parts.

Even that can be overcome though, the most useful thing I've
learned is probably to buy the system case ahead of time and
look at what the parts' requirements will be. Given
forethought, a lot of difficult cooling problems can be
overcome. Drill a couple holes in a motherboard tray and
you can mount a fan on a bracket, that blows across an
nForce4 chipset 'sink if there's no room on the 'sink for
one. Plus, I always try to be rid of tiny fans, they never
seem to last very long.

My first and last experience with MSI was a twitichy Socket A board.
Kept on rebooting and freezing. It was a pain to diagnose between the
usual suspects (and lockups); faulty RAM, CPU, etc...

I had a few of those, but I forget the model numbers. One
had a peculiar fault where it'd run the memory at 133MHz but
not even 1MHz higher... it had some vacant spots around the
DIMM slots so I added a capacitor or two and got another
10MHz out of it, which wasn't much but I wasn't comfortable
running that system for any serious use with a mere 1MHz
stability margin. I think a friend of mine has at least two
different MSI skt A boards I sold to him, they might've been
K7T266 Pro2 and K7T Turbo 2, but it's been awhile, I might
be wrong.

Come to think of it, I still have a Tualatin Celeron system
here with an MSI 6368 (PLE133T, mATX all-integrated board)
in it, that board had the defective (GSC?) capacitors on it
and I replaced those. Seems like I bought another MSI board
a few months later, a KM266 something-or-other, not the
later one that took both PC133 and PC2100 memory but the
earlier version, might've been a 6390. It was a better
board, by that point MSI had stopped using the bad GSC caps
and went with Rubycons, IIRC.

I suppose every batch has its rotten apples, given that you've got more
experience with hardware issues.

IMO, every single board has some kind of significant
problem, it's just a matter of whether that problem randomly
effects you, or effects somebody else instead. IOW, it's
easy enough to populate a board then then-popular parts and
have it work fine but throw in a different part or use the
system for something that stresses a particular subsystem
more and your luck may run out.

Yeah, that was what I was thinking. Wasted £30 on a cheapo graphics
card for my Asus P5ND2-SLI which did not have integrated graphics. It
had a good "AI Overclock" feature in the BIOS though, which
automatically set the voltages, etc. to get a good overclock. All I had
to do was define "Stable overclock" and it settled at 3.33GHz from
2.66GHz.

yep, integrated video can be great if you don't have to do
anything graphically intensive on a system, nor have any
special needs like DVI output because you're not even
sitting in front of the system. Then again, for most uses I
could get by sitting on front of an integrated video based
system since I have a separate gaming and multimedia
systems.

The job I'm running is a finite element program LS Dyna, run hundreds
to thousands of times on smaller, simpler models than once on a complex
model (thats the nature of my work). An educated guess would be that it
is mostly floating point calculations with some integer calculations.
YMMV with LS Dyna benchmarks because I have yet to see a site that
comprehensively lists hardware comparisons like Tom's Hardware does for
games.

I agree with you that its better in most cases to build a few cheaper
systems, as you have commodity pricing of mass-market off the shelf
components on your side.

I like economizing in some ways, but I hate the thought of
some of the cheap motherboards. I'd proably go with MSI or
Biostar, maybe splurge on Asus for a mATX board with
integrated video, but to a certain extent the mATX boards
are more alike than diferent, so long as they use the same
chipset. I'm just glad so many features are now being put
into southbridges or single-chipset solutions, even if I
don't want those features on my primary use systems, it's
nice to be able to retire a system from a primary use to a
secondary one where I don't have to dig up a NIC or sound
card, etc.