M17x CPU and overclocking Question

Hello!!!

I wish I knew of this forum years ago! I've been using OC forums for help.

I was wondering about the T9600 & QX9300.

I want the overclockability and I do want the quad core at some point.

My question is, can the T9600 be overclocked, or is the bios locked at factory?

If it is locked, can it be unlocked, or will it just make purchasing a quad core down the road relatively not-fun, lol.


On a side note, I have 2 M9700's and one of them is experiencing a pretty rough life, with its second set of GPU failures, I was just wondering if anyone knew where I could buy a Nvidia 230M or 250M to keep her alive for a bit longer?


Finally, how unstable is RAID 0? I've done a lot of things to a computer.. and RAID isnt one, haha. I was going to go RAID 0 SSD but for the cost I think I'll wait, LOL.

 

All cpus can be overclocked on the M17x. Non extreme OC through FSB, extreme through both FSB / multiplier.

 

If your talking Montevina based procs I'm assuming you are referring to the "AllPowerful" M17x and not the area-51 m17x. The bios is not locked. All procs will OC through the bios. Extreme procs have the added ability to also adjust the multiplier.

People have been complaining about RAID 0. They are hearing clicking noises and seeing stuttering. I don't know if it's been determined to be the RAID setup or the disks themselves. I haven't seen anyone with SSD RAID complain about it yet.

 

Overclocking is completely unlocked in the BIOS, both front side bus and multiplier (on extreme processors).

Not sure where you'd get a 230M or 250M.

Raid 0 is 100% stable. The ONLY risk is if one of the drives fail, then the data on all the drives in Raid 0 becomes useless because of the way it's stored.

Don't bother putting SSDs in RAID 0. They're already so fast that the speed benefit from placing SSDs in RAID is negligable.

 

Do you know where there are any benchmark comparisons on this? I wanted to test this myself.

 

Thats fair enough.

I'll get a single SSD then.

Is it simple enough to place a second HDD in the second slot, just for storage? I see thats not an option anymore =[

I like the SSD running software and the HDD for storage, etc.

 

I don't know of any benchmarks unfortunately.

You'll have to ask them for the mounting for the second HDD..

 

I'm assuming this will cost more $$? How much does the extra mounting brackets cost?

 

My didn't cost anything. I just had to call in several times to correct what they were sending me. They sent me the drive bay twice, once with one screw and the third time they sent me the drive bay, one screw, and the transposter/interposer that you need to connect the SATA drive.

 

How much can we overclock without access to the multiplier say for example the Q9000?

 

Depends ... But in the m17x you will hit 2.4-2.5

 

Thats not too bad.

The Extreme can be OC'd to > 3.0 ghz though can't it?