Sorry about the delay in replying, I've had trouble with my new machine, as 
I've detailed in alt.comp.hardware.overclocking.

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:

In article <4730f514@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfit61nz@yahooligans.co.nz> wrote:

Somewhere on the interweb "Patrick Vervoorn" typed:

I got myself a G0 Q6600, not because it can be overclocked better,
but because I read it ran cooler, and consumed less power.

The G0 stepping only runs cooler and consumes less power (perhaps
with 80% of samples) when overclocked. At stock, without BIOS
tweaks, it runs to the Intel hard-coded specs which are the same for
all steppings of the Q6600. Same vcore = same heatoutput. Energy in
= energy out.

As far as I understood it, It's apparently below the 'magic'
power-consumption threshold (so that you can put it in cheaper, less
well cooled cases), but I can't be bothered to look up what exactly
that was. At least that's what I read, with no overclocking in the
picture.

My understanding is that both steppings have a "TDP" of 90 watts. However 
the G0 stepping has more "headroom", it will reach higher speeds without 
excessively increasing the core voltage, or even without increasing it at 
all in some cases.

I've also seen
some overclocking results, and I don't really think it's worth it.

Aye. OC'ing is not for everyone. However, you have a CPU that could
quite easilly run at 3.2GHz with the only added expense being a
better than stock cooler (assuming you have good case ventilation).
As you're running BOINC at 100% then you wouldn't experience the
issues that are worrying me.

I suppose it could, but I've also never seen the need to overclock my
previous machine (a P4 2.4GHz), and I also see no need to overclock
this one. As I said, perhaps if it runs out of steam, but by that
time, either a major upgrade (like perhaps an FSB1333 umpteen-Core
CPU or a GeForce 9 or 10 series GPU) or a totally new system will be
the better options, instead of squeezing out a few more % of
performance by overclocking some vital parts.

You most certainly have a point. However, computers, and overclocking are 
hobbies of mine. I don't just do it for the performance increase (often I 
don't need it), I do it because I find it challenging and rewarding.

For now, it runs what I want to run, as fast as I'd like it to run.
If/when it runs out of steam, I'll see what I can gain by
overclocking it's parts.

Sure, fair enough. To be honest I have no need of more power than my
CPU gave at stock speed. My main reason for OC'ing was to be able to
do more work for SETI, while still having power to spare.

While my point is that the system is doing a fine enough job for the
cause of Seti as it is now. ;)

Indeed.

Isn't your system consuming less power when you don't overclock it?
How about 'downclocking' it? Can't you downclock it in such a way
that you can let it run SetiBOINC, at 100%, in the downclocked state,
so that the entire system performs at the percentage you want it to,
and also consuming the amount of power you want it to?

I could underclock it, yes. I've underclocked machines before. However, then 
it would be slower at everything I use it for, which defeats the purpose of 
buying this CPU. I could have got a cheaper one that would use less power 
and do less work.

I started a team in my local computer usenet group which, at it's
height, had 50+ members. However, on changing to BOINC, a lot of the
folks dropped out.

The NZ team you are a member of? the team racked up a nice amount of
credit. :)

Yes, that's the one. We had our hey-day. However, it's largely inactive now.

You can find mine too, using
'Patrick Vervoorn', but I have hidden my computers, so there's not
much to see there.

Indeed. You've certainly crunched some units, with a lot of RAC.
That's a fast machine. :-)

Actually, the main crunchers are the Q6600 machine, my 'previous'
Game-Machine (P4-2.4GHz, 1.5GB) and a P4-2.8GHz-HT machine somewhere
else.

I had a fixed amount of money reserved for the CPU; for the cost of a
Q6600 I could've also acquired a 3.0GHz E6850. That would've perhaps
served current games better than the Q6600, but I counted on engines
to be able to use more than 2 cores, and I also had SetiBOINC in the
back of my mind, knowing that would like 4 x 2.4GHz cores more than 2
x 3.0GHz.

Well, I'm told that Crysis can use four cores. (I'm waiting for the demo to 
show on a magazine cover, I can't be bothered downloading 1.8GB.) Yes, 
SeiBOINC certainly prefers your CPU to a higher-clocked dual core.

Seems you joined Setiatome Classic about half a year before I did.
;)

Yeah, within around a month of them starting up. That's how long it
took for me to find out, via my local monthly computer magazine.

I can't really recall how and when I ran into it, but I apparently
found it cool enough to join. ;)

Heh! Yep, same here.

Perhaps they did the best they could using WinXP (Just speculation
from my side, no idea if they could've done it better)?

I have games that, when I exit them and look at the CPU usage graphs
for both cores, show fairly consistent usage of CPU, a smooth line
with maybe +/- 10% of the CPU being used. Baseline varying from game
to game. Nothing like the saw-tooth graph I see from SETI/BOINC.

But perhaps these games are limited/throttled in another way, for
instance by the amount of data they can move towards the GPU, just to
give an example? Or they are idling, waiting for the next frame to be
available? Or waiting for VSync? Those are pretty usable,
fine-grained things to synchronize with (~60-100Hz, depending on your
display), so that it can appear the game just uses 10% of your CPU.
But rest assured that when the code of these games is 'let loose' it
will use, during a short burst, 100% of both these cores.

When I monitor the behaviour during HL2: Ep2, it seems to use just a
single core (on my machine at least). Bioshock seems to limit itself
to using about 50% of all cores.

SetiBOINC isn't limited in that way, there's nothing it has to wait
for. Perhaps if you can write a script or something that can toggle
SetiBOINC's status 50Hz you might see something like this...? Of
course, the 'toggling app' should be smart enough to not use all the
left-over cycles. ;)

Understood. I'm not a code-monkey. <g> I couldn't write a script to save 
myself. I'm mainly hardware, I can do amazing things with hardware and am 
good at trouble-shooting and/or repairing and building PCs. I leave the code 
to the guys that know it. I've never been in a situation where it would 
benefit me to learn it.

What does
that same option do on a machine running Linux, for instance?

Other than once a few years back I've not tried Linux. Perhaps it's
time I gave it another go. I keep downloading ISOs...

I think you can download a fairly small 'Live CD' for Linux with
which you can experiment with this.

I have a couple of "live" CDs and play with them now and then.

Alternatively, two floppies worth
of Debian bootcode allow you to install the entire OS from the
Internet (That's how I installed a Stable Debian on the P1-133 MHz
machine). Are you still using that monthly-limited ADSL subscription,
or have things improved Down Under? ;)

I'm still limited, although it's daily, then it re-sets at 2am. After I hit 
my limit I'm rate-limited to 64/64kbps, just above dial-up speed until 2am 
rolls around. I can "buy" whatever amount of daily data I like by changing 
my "plan". Anything from 70MB to 2GB with my ISP. I'm on a 1GB/day plan.

LOL! That's an understatement. I have <looks around> 9 PCs in this
room alone that are ready to run. All over 1GHz CPU, a lot of them
Tualatin Celerons, others AMD Athlons. I must get around to getting
rid of some. The trouble is, nobody wants to pay any money for them,
with new, low-end HP/Compaq/Dell machines being so cheap. Yet
they're still excellent internet appliances, in fact far more
powerful than that. I hate to see good working machines scrapped. (I
built most of these from parts that my friends in IT gave me, parts
destined for the scrap-heap.)

Same here. I'm also running SetiBOINC on 2 x P3-700 machines, 1 x
AMD-1.4GHz, 1 x P4 1.7GHz, 1 x P2-400MHz and a P1-133MHz. Beyond that,
it's also running on another AMD ~700MHz machine somewhere else,
besides the main crunchers I mentioned above. All running at ~100%.

I had my days of running a half-dozen PCs for SETI. While I still have 
around 10 machines, usually only one is going (unless I'm mule-rushing in 
Lord of Destruction, I have four CD key sets).

I think it's safe to assume Intel considered a single thread OS or
just a single-threaded application running on these CPUs, so I think
you're worrying too much.

That is a trait of mine. Especially when I'm not easilly able to
replace the thing about which I'm worrying.

I'm pretty confident Intel thought this over, but if you want
confirmation of this, try it in one of the intel-groups, or perhaps
something like comp.arch (though one should perhaps be very careful
treading there :))

True.

Of course, if these extremes are happening because you overclock, I
suppose all assumptions Intel made are out of the door. ;)

No, I considered that and ran it back at stock speed for a while.
The thing behaved the same, albeit at slightly lower temperatures.
The fluctuations, which are my main worry, still occured at a rate I
found disturbing. I haven't raised the core voltage at all to reach
this speed so it's not what you'd call an extreme overclock by any
means.

I do hope you are also aware you could just be observing an artifact
of the temperature sensors in the CPU? I.e. during/after the 'speed
bump' they do not report the correct temperature, and perhaps the
temperature isn't fluctuating as quickly as you think it is? Also
something to perhaps consult the experts about; I can only speculate.

All my experince points to well-cooled CPUs being able to heat up or cool 
down at least 10�C a second. Maybe more. The folks on a.c.h.overclocking 
agree.

I've got the means to overclock it quite nicely (an nVidia 680i
based mainboard is underneath the CPU), but I have no incentive
really. Same for the graphics card (8800GTX); plenty of options to
overclock it, but why risk it?

Well, you have all the power that you could need, both CPU and
graphics already.

That was the main idea. ;) We'll see how long it holds out. It does
do a nice job of the Crysis demo, although the raw frame rate isn't
to write home about (with all settings at High, 1680x1050, I get
about 30fps, though the game does look pretty smooth due to their
motion-blurring in the engine).

Ah, you have the demo. It was designed to run different things (A.I. etc.) 
on different cores (or so I read in an interview with one of the creators).

Coincidently, an 8800GTX is sitting on the chair next to me, in it's
box with a NZ$920 sticker on it. I'm doing a re-build for a friend
this weekend, his system has to go into a new case as the 8800GTX is
a full-length card and won't fit his existing case. For doing this
for him he's giving me his "old" 7800GT (I get a lot of my hardware
this way, in payment for building/upgrading machines for gaming
friends).

The 8800GTX is a mother of a card to be sure. I just about managed to
squeeze it into my case, and when running a heavy application, it
blows out a LOT of heat out of the backside.

I managed to acquire a 256MB 7600GT when my 128MB 6600GT broke within
warranty, and the factory apparently didn't have a replacement 6600GT
to ship to me, so they shipped a 256MB 7600GT instead.

Nice score.

That card is
currently in the P4-2.4GHz machine, which is running Vista as an
'experiment'. Before I commit anything else to it, I want to make
sure it's stable.

Anyway, congrats on the 7800GT; should be a nice card.

Yes, thanks. I'm really happy with it. However, Battle.net server lag still 
reduces it to 3 or 4 fps sometimes, especially with my skellimancer. In SP 
it's very fast.

Gosh but I'm good at digression huh?

Always nice to get some background, my apologies for snipping it out
though. ;)

No problem. Some always needs to be snipped, although I tend to err on the 
side of caution.

I'm so happy my new machine is finally running as it should. :-) Got a new 
case with a 24cm fan in the side running at around 500rpm. It cools the NB, 
SB and RAM quite nicely. There's also a 12cm fan in the front to cool the 
HDDs. Lots of vents in the back, a strong breeze blowing through them.

Cheers,
-- 
Shaun.