Favorite Place

Our cat likes to sit in the middle of my wife's knitting stuff. All cats seem to like playing with balls of yarn.

Kentsfield & P5W DH

Now testing Kentsfield in the Asus P5W DH Deluxe. Maximum FSB is not as good as the P5B. Only about 350. But the P5W DH BIOS allows multipliers up to 20. This is helpful when using extreme cooling because you don't have to rely on high FSB.

Quad-Prime

To properly test Kentsfield stability, you need to run four instances of Prime simultaneously. This will really heat up the processor, especially with small FFT's. VCore was 1.4v. Anything above 1.45v will result in CPU load temps in the 70's!

64-bit OS

Rendering speed is a little faster using the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003.

Rendering

One of the things a quad-core CPU gives you is tremendous rendering power.

Kentsfield

Guess what showed up at my doorstep. ;) Initial air-cooling tests with Kentsfield quad-core.

M/B: Asus P5B Deluxe
RAM: Corsair 6400C3
Cooling: Tuniq Tower 120

Sandra

Sandra unbuffered with P5B and E6600. You can see just how much unbuffered bandwidth you get with DDR2 at 570MHz. :)

DDR2-1215

The Asus P5B is finally giving me a chance to see what my Corsair 6400C3's can do. The P5B runs the 2:3 ratio very well.

P5B Testing

I've begun testing the Asus P5B Deluxe. Not many problems so far. CPU temperature readings seem a little high. Will have to check my HSF to make sure it's mounted right. The latest BIOS (0403) allows FSB up to 500.

New Board

Got a new board, the Asus P5B Deluxe. It uses the Intel 965 chipset. I'm hoping it will run the 4:5 ratio better than my P5W DH. Time will tell. ;)

Power

California set a new record today for power usage. Peak demand reached more than 50,000 megawatts. The temperature hit 109F on Saturday, 111F on Sunday and around 108F today. We've now had nine consecutive days of 100+ degree weather. No rolling blackouts which is about the only good news.

Rebates

Just a word of caution about buying anything at Amazon.com because there's a good rebate. Last December, I purchased a cell phone for my wife at Amazon. There was a nice $150 rebate included. It took more than six months before I got the rebate check. That just seems a little ridiculous to me. And I had emailed the information for the rebate right after I got the phone.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't always send in rebates, mainly because I forget to do it. I'm sure companies are hoping the majority of people are like me. Rebates are definitely not for people who want to save money right away. The exception, of course, being an instant rebate. Better yet are products that are already discounted.

Pasta

Our cat Pasta is doing fine. It's now been about six months since his heart problem was diagnosed. He takes medicine (actually a supplement) every day. He eats and plays like he used to. He's not as active as he was when he was younger. But that's to be expected. We love him very much.

Fredyama

My friend fredyama now has Conroe X6800 ES. He has already set a world record in SuperPi 32M. Well done, Fred-san.

470 FSB

These Conroe boards are strange. By loosening the memory timings a little and running async, you can sometimes push the FSB up very high. At 3-2-2 and 4:3, was able to reach 465. With 4-4-4 and 4:3, I'm up to 470 FSB.

Very Hot

Temperature hit 107F yesterday. Expected to be almost as hot today. Yes, summer has arrived here in the Central Valley.

SP2004

Is Conroe stable with FSB above 450? I ran dual-SP2004 for 30 minutes with CPU at 455 X 8. I lowered multiplier in Windows, then raised FSB. The SP2004 GUI shows the speed I booted up at. AiBooster gives correct FSB & CPU speeds. I know some people like to run Prime longer than 30 minutes. But it was getting late and I wanted to shut off the machine for the night.

Cinebench

A good test for measuring the rendering power of your CPU is Cinebench. The multi-processor test result was 1251 with Conroe at 4GHz. This is the 32-bit test. Score would be much higher with 64-bit version.

4112MHz

Air-cooled Conroe E6600 on unmodded Asus P5W DH. Running 4:3 ratio with RAM at 3-2-2-1.

4:3 Ratio

As some people are finding out, the 4:3 ratio allows you to get a little higher FSB. Even though RAM is running slower than FSB, performance is still decent.

Tomatoes

When I was younger, I didn't like tomatoes. What it really boiled down to is that I didn't like store-bought tomatoes because they tasted like rubber. When I started growing my own, my opinion of tomatoes changed dramatically. Home-grown tomatoes taste so much better. There are dozens of varieties, including the heirloom tomatoes. But I've always preferred the standard varieties like Early Girl for salads.

The V Sign

In Asia you will often see young women and men giving the V sign when they're being photographed. So what does it mean? This is what Wikipedia has to say about it.

"During the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, figure skater Janet Lynn stumbled into Japanese pop culture when she fell during a free-skate period, but continued to smile even as she sat on the ice. Though she placed only 3rd in the actual competition, her cheerful diligence and indefatigability resonated with many Japanese viewers, making her an overnight celebrity in Japan. Afterwards, Lynn (a peace activist) was repeatedly seen flashing the V sign in the Japanese media. Though the V sign was known of in Japan prior to Lynn's use of it there (from the post-WWII Allied occupation of Japan), she is credited by some Japanese for having popularized its use in amateur photographs.

Through the 1970s and 1980s in Japan, the V sign was often accompanied by a vocalization: "piisu!" This gairaigo exclamation, which stood for "peace", has since fallen into disuse, though the V sign itself remains steadfastly popular.

Perhaps due to Japanese cultural influence, the V sign in photographs has become popular with young Koreans, Hong Kongers, and Taiwanese as well. The sign is ubiquitous in Taiwan and is closely associated with the English word, "happy". Print and television advertisements read "happy" with hands waving while displaying the V sign, and the average Taiwanese person will invariably give that word as the meaning of the sign."

Gardening

Gardening is my way of escaping the rat race. It's very satisfying to watch things you plant with your own hands grow into something beautiful. My father was a professional gardener and my mother did Japanese flower arrangement (Ikebana). I didn't have much interest in gardening when I was young. But as I grow older, I enjoy it more and more.

Under 13 Mins.

Switched to single-stage cooling. As I expected, sub-zero temperatures do not defeat the FSB wall. The only thing I managed to achieve was raising stability closer to the FSB limit.

World Record

I believe this is the best 32M time done with air-cooling. But I think the CPU is reaching its limit on air.

Best on air

This is the best 32M time I've managed on air. Sub-12 minutes might be difficult. Using Corsair 6400C3 at 3-4-3 and 2.4v (BIOS). For some reason, the board won't let me run this RAM at 3-3-3 at 434MHz. Otherwise, the Corsairs and the Asus board seem to be a good match.

Vmch Mod

In order to push the FSB even higher on my Asus P5W DH, I will likely need the mod that will allow me to run higher chipset voltage. Kyosen was kind enough to illustrate both the Vmch & VDimm mods for the board.

450 FSB

This is the highest I've managed so far with air-cooling. 450 FSB. :)

E6600

The E6600 is a good CPU if you want to crank up the FSB past 400MHz. Cooling is limiting me from going higher.

New CPU

Just got a Conroe E6600 ES. Only tested it for a short time, but already have it up to 4GHz with air-cooling (Tuniq Tower 120). This CPU may have some potential. ;)