Intel 670 3.8Ghz running at 4.2Ghz
I finally broke down and bought an expensive Intel 670 3.8Ghz CPU. In the past I have successfully overclocked cheaper CPU’s to their more expensive counterparts. Last year I overclocked a Intel 2.4Ghz to 3.2Ghz (I posted this CPU at 3.6Ghz ). Between the 670 and the 2.4Ghz I bought a Intel 630 3Ghz L2 2Mb HyperThreading (HT) CPU where I became found of the higher L2 cache and HT.
I have bought the latest motherboard, RAM, Hard Drive, CD/DVD drive, Sound Card and Video Card, but up to this point I had not bought the latest CPU.
The Intel 670 3.8Ghz cost me $615 at newegg.com. I installed it into a Shuttle barebones as its the machine I take to work every day. The shuttle is running a 915 chipset and 2Gb of Corsair 2-3-2-6 DDR 400 RAM. The Shuttle’s heat pipe and adjustable 80mm fan offers decent cooling ( can’t do much more with a small case like this ). So I applied my Artic Silver 5 and popped the CPU into the motherboard.
After some tweaking and a couple hours of benchmarking I was able to run my CPU at 4.2Ghz, I stopped trying to push it after it would post at 4.3Ghz but wouldn’t go into Windows.
Doing my own tests I found the CPU has given me about a 24% increase in my most common daily task. That daily task was compiling mxml files as I developed Flex an application. Before adding my CPU the application took 13 seconds to recompile every time I made a change (of course different application will take different times). With the new CPU running at 4.2Ghz (old one was at 3Ghz) I was able to compile the application in 10 seconds. This doesn’t seem like a big difference but when you are compiling the application hundreds of times a day it adds up. Mostly the time savings helps me from wondering off while waiting for it to finish.
Was it worth $615 dollars? Probably not. The pros are definitely the bragging rights to be past the 4Ghz bar and I figure within 6 months it will have saved me enough time to almost pay for it self.
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