Friday, June 2, 2006

Overclockers Continue Pentium D Experiments. Presler Overclocked to 5.9GHz!

4:32 pm | Aleksey Razin

The launch of Pentium D 960 (3.6GHz) processor took place in the end of April. At the same time Presler processors had to start migrating to C1 core stepping. In the meanwhile, the latter didn’t start selling, so the only chance to get once of those C1 core stepping based processors was to buy a Pentium D 960, which were only C1 core stepping base.

Not so long ago we witnessed successful overclocking of the Pentium 4 631 (3.0GHz) based on 0.065micron CedarMill B1 core stepping to the frequency close to 5.0GHz. As you know, Presler is a combination of two CedarMill dies. Therefore, Presler and CedarMill boast very similar overclocking potential. Look like we will still have to wait for quite a while before C1 core stepping based processors appear in stores, unless 0.065micron Celeron D CPUs come to their rescue. Nevertheless, we are very curious to study the overclocking potential of C1 core stepping today.

One of the members of the XtremeSystems.org forum from Hiroshima shared his results of Pentium D 960 (3.6GHz) C1 core stepping overclocking in negative thermal environment.

There is only one modification of the CPU marked as SL9AP, so you can simply pick it by the model name: you will get C1 core stepping no matter what. On July 23 the price of this solution drops down to $316, although I don’t think it is going to make the solution more attractive: you can buy processors with slightly lower clock speeds for less than $200. BY that time, the modifications based on C1 core stepping will most likely start selling and in the fall Presler may even migrate to a newer and “cooler” core stepping already.

I have to remind you that Pentium D 920 (2.8GHz) CPU will not be available on C1 core stepping, and its production is being discontinued little by little. However, Intel will also be offering some other interesting dual-core CPUs that will most likely feature the notorious C1 stepping.

The Japanese enthusiast managed to overclock his Presler CPU with C1 core stepping to 5.9GHz thanks to a sort of ice he use (it was most probably dry ice). This processor model was a great candidate for overclocking thanks to its high 18x clock frequency multiplier that allows to reveal the overclocking potential of the CPU without pushing the mainboard too hard.

Of course, not all overclocking fans will use ice of Freon cooling for their experiments. However, the results we have just seen prove how great the potential of the solution actually is. I believe that single-core CedarMill processors will be able to go beyond 5.0Ghz bar with air-cooling as well.

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