wow BOXX just overclocked the xeon E5 2600 to 4GHz

[Solanke Olayinka]

I guess this would make cs6 dance, check it out,http://www.boxxtech.com/Products/3d...GjI4AScdlI/qLAzICFpZo2FFaFfiNaIVD8vtSB061UT7s

 

[DJ Meyer]

Careful, marketing speak.

The config page says 3.286 Ghz and it's based on E5-2687w.

So that means they set the BCLK to 106. You get 4.028 Ghz in short bursts on one core turbo.

You get 3.286 if using all cores, and it scales between 3.286 and 4.028 depending on the core load.

So if its stable it's a 6% increase.

Will be interesting to see how stable 106 BCLK is. In my testing it wasn't worth it.

The Sandy Xeons are multiplier locked so it is technically impossible to do a true 4.0 ghz overclock.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

It's a 5% overclock -- They have boosted the "turbo" frequency or what the CPU sustains under load from 3.8GHz to 4GHz. The EVGA, ARIMA, ASUS and SuperMicro motherboards all allow various degrees of overclock, but it seems 5% is the limit of what most of the CPUs can handle. FWIW, I believe BOXX is using an ARIMA motherboard with a custom tweaked BIOS. On the Xeon CPUs, the internal multiplier is locked, you have to overclock by increasing the external base clock. So instead of 2.9GHz, they're running the E5-2690 at a base of 3.045GHz. They should be getting just under 4.1GHz on their dual E5-2687W system for "turbo".

That said, I think this is a seriously ballsy move by BOXX. Maintaining a stable 5~6% overclock on the 2690 and 2687W Xeon CPUs has been problematic on occasion here. I wonder how many Xeon CPUs they have to test before they qualify for the overclock configuration? Judging by the price premium being charged, I'm sure they have to test a handful of them to get a qualified pair of CPUs.

I'm running my SuperMicro based dual E5-2687W system at x1.04 BCLK. Can't get it to go to 5% reliably. Managed to get to a full 5% on two other systems, one a SuperMicro based server, the other on an EVGA motherboard based workstation. The server failed after a few days at that speed. The workstation is still going strong. EVGA based workstation handled 6% as well, but would hang intermittently. I'm guessing we didn't have the voltage dialed in just right and my friend who had me help build the system decided to keep it at 5%.


Anyway, definitely a brave move by BOXX. The only other vendor out there currently that may do this for production workstations is probably Origin. I still fully expect my 4% over clocked rig to just go *poof* one day...


DJ beat me to it, I see...