Looking for new processor.

I have up to $400 to spend on a new processor for my 7811. I'm a little hesitant to buy though. Will $400 get me a significant upgrade? And as I have a 7811, I'm looking at some potential heating problems. Mine specifically seems to be more prone than most to the TZS0 spike, and a faster processor will probably exacerbate that problem. So I will have to undervolt for sure, which means I will also lose some speed (unless it's different than with the p8400).

 

With 400 you can get any of the top 3 CPU's
p9700 (2.8gHz with the still low 25watt TDP)
t9900 (3.06gHz with 35watt TDP)
x9100 (3.06gHz Extreme CPU with 44watt TDP)

The p9700 and the t9900 are probably the best to to get, but the x9100 will save you some money at the cost of running hotter (and not actually being overclockable)

 

Can you post some links to where I can find those prices? I thought all of those were all out of my price range. And forget the x9100. No way I'm sticking that in there, something might catch on fire ;P

 

Ebay.

Just p9700 i see 3 all under 400
t9900... well there everything is over 400. So maybe not the t9900, but somewhere should have a pretty decent deal to get below 400. I guess you'd have to keep checking

I could have sworn the t9900 was below 400 already, maybe i was just wrong and making stuff up though

 

I found the X9100 for $310, but I can't get that. The T9800 is $350. The speed difference is only .13 Ghz. Doesn't seem like the price difference should be that high between it and the T9900. How long do you think it would take for the T9900 to go below $400?

 

You might want to check out this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=398737

 

I got lucky and found a T9800 for my P-7805u on eBay for $210 shipped. It's an engineering sample but I forsee no problems with the swap.

I can't imagine .13Ghz making any kind of discernible difference except for maybe the bucks wasted on going with a T9900 and possibly a little more heat output. The X9100 has two things going against it -- it's TEN more watts and it's kind of a waste of potential because you can't o/c it on a P78XX anyways!

 

$210? Wow, I'd be all over that. So P9700 or T9800. They're about the same price, similar speed. I really don't know. I remember reading that thread, although I don't see anything there that will influence my decision. The P9700 is 28 watt TDP, which is very attractive, but only because it's close to what I have now. I'm not actually worried about my CPU temp. My p8400 is around 40C under load, which is nothing. It could go up 20 degrees and I wouldn't care. What I am worried about is that pesky TZS0 issue. But, if I undervolt, the TZS0 problem will go away. That makes the t9800 look pretty good to me. Undervolting with the p8400 takes about 100 MHz away, so that's why I don't do it. I guess I'll have to look for some undervolting/overclocking threads, and keep my eye on the T9800 then. Thanks guys.

 

The t9800 is a good CPU. Its one of the "sweet spot" CPU's in the 78xx laptops i think. The t9600 and t9800 are generally the best bang for the buck CPU's in this generation of FX (much like the t9300 in the previous generation)

 

Ok, the p9700 has a 10.5x multiplier, while the t9800 is a 11x multiplier. That pretty much seals the deal for me, in favor of the t9800. So no matter what I do, I can undervolt (which will probably turn out to be absolutely necessary) without losing speed and without needing to overclock the FSB (can you even do that on a 7811?) to make up for the loss. That makes me feel good.

 

why is everyone afraid of the x9100? mine idles at 33c and at load never goes above 64c this is at 1.24 core voltage which is what the 7805u decided to run it at so im not undervolting. this is about the same voltage my p8400 ran at. of course the p8400 had the stock thermal compound and the x9100 has artic cooling mx2 on it so that might be why it runs cool . i have had no probelms with the x9100 at all i even played crysis warhead for about 30 mins (thats how long it took me to get bored)

i have run a little short test of how running the x9100 at 1.1 voltage with the 3.06 ghz speed and it came out stable i just dont like to have to use cpugenie. rmclock doesnt work for me for some reason.

 

Why is everyone afraid? Probably has something to do with that number 45. For me, personally, it's that the 7811 has enough heating issues as it is. I'm not afraid of what will happen to the CPU, I'm afraid of what it will do to the motherboard. And for me, it doesn't even really make sense to get it. The x9100 has an 11.5 multiplier. I don't know how to undervolt and keep that .5 multiplier. Some people say it's possible, but I haven't seen proof, and none of their methods have worked for me. Since I have a 7811, I'm prone to the TZS0 spike problem, and sticking in even a 35 watt CPU has the potential to cause spikes. So if I undervolt with a x9100 (which I will almost definitely have to), I turn it into a t9800, except hotter. And it's not even that undervolting will necessarily stop the spike, it's that it screws with power management and stops the full system throttle that goes along with the spike.

Just out of curiosity, what are your chipset temps? Mine idle at about 42C, and can get into the 60s under load. The trigger temperature for the spike varies depending on what the GPU clocks are, but it seems to be somewhere around 60C.

 

Here's a question. If I do buy, which I probably will, will there be any buyers for my p8400? I'd love to sell, but it's not like the p8400 is top of the line. I mean, there coming out with random web browsing laptops that have p8400s. It's not going to affect my decision to buy, but it would be nice to get some money back.

 

You should post it up on the Marketplace. That would tell you if anyone would like to buy it.
If nothing else you can post a Price Check to see what people will offer for it.

 

I didn't know about the marketplace. I'll post a price check then. I honestly don't expect anything though. I mean, if you have a laptop with access to the CPU, I'm guessing you have at least a p8400. But you never know, maybe someone will want one.

 

you can sell it on ebay for between $120 and $130.

 

what?! a screenshot would be great. My x9100 idles at 48C and that's with undervolting @ 1.075V + modded Cryo LX running @ 12V + generous application of ICD7 on CPU & northbridge!

I have a hard time comprehending why there is a 15C difference between your p7805u and mine.

 

My TZS0 hit 74C after running Wprime 3 times consecutively and running fluidmark at the same time. I have never had any issues playing games or anything. What exactly is the issue that occurs in the 60's?

 

yeah that sounds about right. My TZS0 hovers around 75C-76C under load and goes as high as 82C during my marathon (8hour-overnight) stress testing sessions.

I cant believe ryokowashu's X9100 idles @ 33C. I'm envious!!

 

You're on a 7805, don't worry about it

 

Use CPUGenie. I switched over from RMClock to this and it allows me to undervolt to 1.075V @ 3.06GHz.

CPUGenie is not free but it does pretty much everything RMClock did in a noob-friendly manner (just how i like it to be )

 

Oh yeah, I was talking with Capper5016 about that program. I wish I had known about it earlier. But I can deal with RMClock if I have to. I don't use any of that extra functionality. If I just follow the guide letter by letter, I end up OK.


Oh, important thing! I found a t9800 for $328, free shipping to US. It ships out of the UK. It's the lowest price I can find, when you figure in shipping. I'm getting it.

 

Congratulations. Enjoy the new CPU goodness

 

is it legal to openly sell ES CPUs on ebay?

cos that's what the seller is doing.

 

Its a bit of a grayish area. (well not really i guess)
Alot of people sell ES CPU's on ebay (my x9000 is one). Intel "can" stop the sells of these CPU's because of their Engineering Sample policies, but i have honestly never see it happen. (but it is still very much their right to do so)

On the other hand we (NBR) don't allow for selling them in the marketplace to stay away from the appearance of impropriety

 

If Intel doesn't care, neither do I.

 

Just some info to share. I ran a few benchmarks between the p8400 and X9100. Got some interesting results.

Crysis:
8400 Avg. FPS= 30 X9100=31 ??? Odd huh?

RE5 Benchmark
8400 Avg. FPS= 34 X9100= 46

Wprime 32
8400= 32 sec X9100= 25 sec

FarCry 2
8400 Avg. FPS= 33 X9100= 36

Fluidmark
8400 Avg. FPS= 74 X9100= 96

I am dumbfounded by the Crysis results, and the FC2 dosent seem great either. What do you guys think?

 

Thats because those games are largely GPU bound. You're not going to get a huge FPS boost with a better processor.

 

lol, 3 fps in FC2 is all I need. I'm constantly trying to raise it just by a little. I run at 25fps with shadows on high and most stuff on high/very high. I hate 25fps. Oddly enough, decreasing resolution doesn't do much in that game. The only thing that seems to affect anything is shadow quality, which sucks, because high shadows look great, and medium shadows look... broken.

But I'm going to be playing a lot of TF2 and Morrowind, which apparently don't even use the GPU, so I'll be looking at some pretty significant increases.

 

well sry i took so long to reply but ive been at work all day lol. anyway heres a screen shot of my temps
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/9532/88327080.jpg

as for the tzs0 i dont have an app that lets me check that sensor so i dunno what its at but if i had to guess by just feel alone i would say about 70-75c while gaming.

i just noticed that coretemp says its an x9000 lol wonder what thats all about

 

why would you ever buy the T9800?

I got a P9700 for my 7805u abd I am loving it.

look at the chart, the p9700 stands above the t9800. also remember that in certain scenarios (not all of course) the p9700 with intel turbo boost gets the same freq of the t9800.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Duo+P9700+@+2.80GHz

 

I use the x9100 as well and my temps are about 41c at idle and 68c - 70c at full load. I'm running RMClock with the undervolt at 1.05. Haven't had any stability problems. However, I haven't switched to an aftermarket thermal compound as yet, so I'm sure that would bring my temps down even more. I was thinking of ordering some of that ICD7 compound. Anyone have a link?

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Innovation-Co...2?hash=item3ca2cd647f&_trksid=p3286.m63.l1177

seller is based in Canada; same dude i got mine from.

 

I never looked at any chart, just their specs. They seemed similar to me. And the t9800 has an integer multiplier. I can undervolt w/o losing speed or buying an additional program.

 

I got mine at FrozenCPU.com - very fast service and an amazing online catalog of geek goodies. I mean very geek (in a good way!).

 

hi,

you are right, the p9700 doesn't have an integer multiplier, but a 10.5x plus 11x (IDA only), but I am able to undervolt anyway with either RMClock and Crystal CPUID.

you can hack the RMclck registry so that it recognizes non integer multipliers.
this way you don't lose speed and can undervolt easily.

I use Crystal CPU ID because is able to isolate the multipliers much better than RMclock (although RMclock has much easier and accurate undervolting capabilities).

I am abe to isolate the multiplier 10.5x to 1.025 V which is closest to the maximum, beyond that I get a BSOD after about 6 minutes of ORTHOS.

pretty stable, cool and I don't lose speed. the CPU is runnig at 2796.93 GHz

 

That's pretty good. I never figured out how to do that though. It would always move my multiplier to 8x.

 

I actually never knew that bebore the P9700.

I always set the P8400 to 8x mult with RM clock and always thought that it was right.

only when performing the Windows Index Rating though I noticed that the CPU score would be 5.1 with RMclock enabled and 5.2 without RMclock.

I can't believe that never really bothered me.

but when I saw that the P9700 was running at 2.66GHz undervolted, I knew I couldn't live with that, so I googled up and I found a thread on how to fix RMclock.

 

I got an email from the guy I bought the CPU from. He told me he sold out, but has some t9800 OEMs left. He then asked if I wanted to upgrade to one of those for an additional $16. That sounds kind of suspicious. Should I do it?

Actually, here's the text of the email:

I also never heard of OEMs being more stable. What does that even mean?

Edit: Oh that's right. I ordered an ES. So I guess that makes a little more sense. Still, should I go through with the order?

Ah man, how the hell would I know if it is an OEM, and not an ES?

 

ES chips are pretty well-marked. The chip reads ES in the serial number and has "Intel Confidential" on it.

 

So I can see if it's ES? Ok, that's good. I think I'm going to go through with it then. He has 100% positive feedback from like 200 people.

 

Yeah, some say "Intel Confidential" on them, but ALL of them have an "ES" on them if they're Engineering Samples.

 

I got my new CPU. I put about a centimeter bead of ICD on the cpu and northbridge. When I pressed down on the heatsink, I realized that was probably overkill on the CPU. I'll run some benchmarks and stress tests to see if everything went OK.

And my CPU is now 5.7 on that Windows thing. I never really paid any attention to that in the first place, but I like seeing numbers go up.

Idle temps on CPU are a lot higher. That's to be expected I guess, not everything can idle at 20C. Chipset is the same. Not surprised there either. On to tests I guess.

 

5.7? I manage 5.9 across the board, w stock p8400, but maybe thats bc im on W7. I wonder where itll end up when i get a X9100

 

Ha, are you kidding? That's crazy. Did they change the scale or something? It's 5.2 on Vista. I've heard that Win7 also rates your HDD very low no matter what, although maybe not anymore.

 

Yes the scale is changed. Win7 is out of 7.9

 

the scale has not changed, only the highest possible score has increased from 5.9 to 7.9, but no lie, i used to have all 5.9 except 5.2 on the CPU, upgraded to W7 now its 5.9 all across

http://sharrief.com/wp-content/random/5.9desktop.png

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Hard...-the-Perfect-7-9-Windows-7-Score-102349.shtml

 

Yeah, so that implies that the scale has changed. At least on the CPU. It should have stayed the same if it was below 5.9. Or maybe it implies that the new scale has some bugs in it. A p8400 is definitely no 5.9. Does any mobile CPU even get that, like the t9900 or the x9100?

 

Not according to them. I agree with you tho. Don't know why it happened. Wonder if i can break 6.0 with the X9100

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/experience-index.aspx

 

my X9100 is rated @ 5.7 in WEI. Everything else is 5.9.