The XEON W3570

First off the Xeon 3570 is an amazing chip. Period. On phase it overclocked to 5225 MHz on only 1.44 Vcore and 1.30 vtt for a very respectful PiFast run of 16.17sec. I might add that I was running a 2:10 divider on the ram and a 20x uncore. I won’t bore you with ram timings and such. All of that is visible in the screenies below. I also managed a nice Super-Pi run of 7.75sec at the same speed of 5225 MHz..

Unfortunately for the WPrime runs of 32m and 1024m I had to drop back my clocks a bit due to the fact that my phase couldn’t keep it cold enough. Even at only 1.43Vcore. But it still produced some respectable numbers. Prime32 was actually not that bad and my temps stayed low enough to make a 4.731 run at 5091mhz. Prime1024 was a bit harder and hotter so I had to drop the CPU back to 4946 MHz but it still made respectable run of 153.984 or 3min 33secs. If I had ln2 for this wonderful w3570 I am positive I would have a world record competitor.

The Radeon 5970

Out of the box….this thing is freaking huge. Its length dwarfs my EVGA Classified by about a 1 3/4″. You are definitely not putting this card into a mid-sized case. If you manage to, you will kill it and everything in your pc with heat. Capable of running 1.3vgpu and a 1gig core you can heat a small room with it. No kidding!!

Some benchmark tests

First off, the driver for this card is at best, poor. When they work they work great. But for an overclocker they are a nightmare. Constant crashing and the need to reboot, uninstall and reinstall drivers becomes the norm after about an hour with this card. Is it worth it? IMO if you’re an overclocker and into the HWbot anything is worth the huge points this card has to offer. I was totally blown away when I was running a 1gig gpu core clock in Vantage at 1.3Vgpu. Interestingly enough I couldn’t get the 1 gig clock to run in 03, 05, and 06 without a huge meltdown of the drivers. But the high 977 MHz clock for 3Dmark 03 and 06 turned in some nice scores. While I only managed a 920 core clock for 3Dmark 05 my score was very respectable. All in all… it was a great time benching these cards. It’s not often that we see an increase in performance hardware that makes us “hardware junkies” excited. I can say that this was one of those rare times.

I’ve been building computers longer than I will ever admit to, but it wasn’t until about one year ago that I discovered the wonders and joys of OVERCLOCKING!!!! Quite by accident as it was….

While upgrading the graphics card in our “family” computer, I decided a good cleaning was in order. When I pulled the CPU HSF off, there was no CPU in the socket!!! AHHHHHH.. I screamed (not really, but the drama is good). Slowly I turned… the HSF over…. only to find the CPU stuck to the bottom of it, all it’s little pins bent from being pulled through the lock down device…. sob. FREAKED out, I was. Wife due home soon, she was. DEAD I was… soooooo, I scrambled to the nearest MicroCenter and put about $2300 on my AMEX and raced home to start assembling a new machine… maybe she wouldn’t notice?? hahahahaha

That rig turned out to be my first gaming rig. Based on a nVidia 780i, and Intel Q9450, 8Gigs of Corsair Dominator Ram, SLI XFX 9800GTX+, a huge HSF, and at least a dozen blue 120mm fans…. awesome dude! Also turned out to be my last blue themed rig?? (ps – I ended up buying a used Pentium and sticking it back into our “family” machine for her to use lol)

Got that bad boy up to around 3.6Ghz and my UT3 count was climbing. Then, Intel released the Core i7 processors and I was drawn like a moth to the flame. Consumed by the desire to build the ultimate rig I’ve gone where no (sane) man has gone before. From the infamous “Battlestar”, to the “Duelling Banchettos”. From the 775 socket to the socket 1366, from ASUS Rampage II Extreme to eVGA Classifieds, from water cooling to Phase Change I’ve evolved from a wannabe to a be ??huh?? 920D0, 965, 975, got one of each (only two rigs though???… note to self, build another rig)…I can see my NBOC brothers shaking their heads right now!

Soon the six core multithreaders will be out – 12 frickin virtual cores man!!!! I mean like WOW MAN!!! At least one of those unlocked versions WILL find its way to the socket in my Classified 759 mobo to be frozen into overclocking nirvana ….far f’n out man. Maybe one for my Classified 769 too ??? hmmmm… Anyway, that’s a brief look at the Maad me.

I’ll put up more on the rigs and my Maad theory behind their designs sometime soon (hints: the wc’d Banchetto boots at 4.6Ghz (with or w/o HT enabled) while the phased one boots at 4.8Ghz+.

Keep on clocking