9262 w/ Quadcore Extreme QX9650 3.0GHz CPU!

Listed as an official Clevo retailer in Germany ( www.mycizmo.com), I came accross their 9262 offering that to my amazement is offered confirgured with a QX9650 3.0GHz Quad-Core Extreme Processor:

www.mycizmo.com/?main_page=product_info&cPath=72&products_id=181&action=configure

Since I speak German (though I realized they aslo speak fluet English), I decided to call them to double-check their configuration options.

They were adament that POSITIVELY, the Clevo 9262 works flawlessly with the QX9650 and that it can be easily overcloked to over 3.4GHz by changing the multiplier via software (it is not offered via the BIOS).

The QX9770 3.2GHz is also supposed to be available soon.

OK, so, how is this possible? With a thermal rating of 135W (far above the official 9262's specs) and with all vendors of Clevo machines in the US confirming that the QX9650 is not supported, how can these German guys be selling such configuration?

Oh, and they offer up to a 3-year back-to-back warranty and claims that the machines are burned-in tested before shipping and that they've sold many of them without ever having any problem?

Amazement! IS this simply not possible or are we all missing something regarding the true capabilities of Clevo's (and amazing) venerable 9262?

 

Generally, when Clevo says something is not supported, that means that you're on your own and have no-one but your reseller to fall back on if the thing goes belly up - more particularly, it means that the reseller is assuming all of the risk of any warranty claims, and will not be able to fall back on any warranties Clevo might have made to the reseller.

However, so long as you and the reseller are willing to assume that risk, there's nothing to stop your reseller from putting whatever they think will fit in the system and running with it. Of course, they would also have to have the rights to modify the BIOS as well.

Clevo seems to be generally fairly conservative about what they will, and will not, publicly state as being supported in their systems - a wise business move on their part, as I don't think Clevo could withstand the sort of disasters that _Dell seems to regularly bring on itself - so there frequently seems to be some extra room for informal, unauthorized (by Clevo, that is) expansion of the specs on their equipment.

In this case, given that the D901C runs rather cool for a notebook when it's set to Clevo's specs, I would suspect that there's a little more leeway left in the thermal budget; however, that being said, going from a 95W CPU to a 135W CPU may be stretching that leeway more than is justified, at least in the long-run. I suspect that, if the system actually works with a 135W CPU, that it's only if it's also given a very robust supplemental cooling system - possibly by replacing one or more of the three drives with additional fans or other cooling components.

 

I totally agree with you and surely I understand Clevo's position as far as its standing on playing it within safety margins of the products they manufacture. The thing is, the strides and headcahes so many of us in these forums went thru hoping and trying (unsuccessfully) to overclock via FSB the D901C only to be faced with the reality that it possibly supports a higher frequency CPU that on top of that is multiplier unlocked... it just seems crazy! And you are also right on that, going from a 95W CPU to a 135W is not a "small matter". Its almost a 40% increase in PRocessor generated heat and stress on power drain, etc. I am just very surprised about this as the German folks told me they do not use any supplemental cooling, just what the machines standard fans and heatsinks comes with from Clevo !

 

whoa is it possible to get this software so that we may overclock our exisiting CPU's since our bios are locked.??

 

I have a QX9650 on my D901C. I don't make any bench yet but it seems to work well.

With a good notebook cooler the temperature don't raise over 70°C on the four core.

You have to know that the QX9650 become less hot than a normal QuadCore when he recieves a lot of power.

 

Well since you have a Sager. NONE FOR YOU!

Sager is known by conservative. You have a safe system. Be happy.

 

There are several software packages that allow you to set different multipliers directly from a Windows session but they only work with a CPU with unlocked multipliers such as Extreme Edition CPUs, not standard processors.Let me gather a few links of a few available software apps later tonite and I'll post them here.

 

Did you buy your D901C pre-configured with the QX9650 or did you install the CPU yourself after the purchase? Have you ran any burn-in tests for a few hours to check of full stability of the system?

 

Oh yes, for sure! I love my system as it is. I am just (happily) surprised to know that the 9262 has such available large safe-operating margins to be able to handle a 135W processor! That means my 2.83GHz 90W piece should actually run very cool inside! This is great news

 

I received my pc one week ago.
It was pre-configured with the QX9650.

I've played UT3 and AgeOfConan for hours and everything is allright. No downclock and not to much heat (max 70 or 75°C) with a Zalman NC2000 middle fans speed.

 

Can someone explain to me the differences between standard and Extreme Edition Quad-Core Processors (aside from the locked/unlocked multiplier)? What are the internal processing differences and what makes the Extreme Editions run so much hotter?

Thanks in advance!

 

I think that the unlocked multiplier is the only difference....

 

No there is some other differences, for exemple with the heat behaviour.
Someone gave a link on this forum a few days ago.
I'm going to try to find it..

[edit] I find it :

Take a look at pages 78 and 79 it's not really hard to understand the graph ^^.

 

No, there must be other differences, otherwise, that alone would NOT make the chip run hotter... I think...

 

That was a good read, thanks.

 

the quoted link isn't a full link - would you be able to link us to the original post that contained that link?

 

It's fixed.

 

Thanks for the link

 

Thanks; that's quite a good find, even if the reading is ... less than beach material. Also, thanks for the page references.

 

Thanks to Neil@Kobalt ^^.

You can see that a Q9XXX is hotter at 90W than a QX9650 at 130W. And if you give more power (OC) the QX9650 seems to have a better thermal behaviour.

 

It's not of course quite as straight forward as it seems though

Just because a QX9650 is 130W TDP that doesn't mean it will be pumping 130W of heat out at full load, in the same way that a Q9550 will definately pump out 95W of heat at full load. If it did then you'd be seeing silly temps for QX9650s on desktops, let alone notebooks - you could argue that a QX9650 at full load will run 37% hotter than a Q9550 (130W vs 95W) but it doesn't.

The Q9650s will be out soon, as has been mentioned before, which is not the same stepping as a QX9650 so it will have a better thermal performance i.e.they will both run at the same speed at stock but you can expect the Q9650 to run cooler than the QX9650.

I personally don't think spending £600+ on an extreme CPU is worth is when you don't have multiplier support in the BIOS and also when the Q9650 is around the corner. True the QX9650 will still be the best ultimate overclocker (in the desktop world and excluding the QX9770) but with the thermal capacity of the D901C chassis you're not going to be able to utilise the multiplier to it's full potential - overclocking quads means lots of heat quickly.......

 

I've heard that Pentium 4's run at 119W almost all the time as they have no real cooling or idle systems.

So how is it that a quad core processor is gonna be booming more than this when the technology to allow it to run at considerable rates is present?

 

can I ask you where you bought your system from and what type of standard warranty did it come with?

Thanks!

 

Thanks for the info. Am I correct in assuming that only at full load will the CPU generate maximum heat? In most operations, CPUs rarely are on full continuous load and, even when they reach it, its usually momentarily and typically not for extended periods of time. So, even when overcloked, lets say being used when applying a complex filter under Adobe Photoshop, only during the few seconds the filters is being applied, will the CPU generate additional heat. Past that it will be close to idle, meaning, much less heat generation. Is this correct?

I believe you are correct. I have an older Sager D900 running a 3.8GHz Pentium 4 Hyperthreading dissipating about 115W of heat:
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL7Z3
I never had a problem in over 3 years of using this older system ususally under constant straing in video rendering. I can only assume that a newer D901C (Sager 9262) should have a better cooling design capable of handling without much effort the added 20W extra for the QX9650 processor.

 

Well theoretically that's correct but you have to take into account what the system is used for, what the thermal design of the chassis is like and the fact that it's being sold as a product to a customer. For example one of our owners tested a D901C by "running 3dmark06 + all 4 Cores taxed on BOINC AND Mass Effect in ultra AND running 7 virtual CISCO routers". Of course he won't be doing that all day every day but if this sort of work crashes a system due to the CPU overheating then the wrong CPU is in the system.


In most "general" operations a CPU won't reach 100% but lots of people use programs that do load a CPU like this - audio editing, video encoding and at the extreme scale fluid dynamics programs etc etc. So for example if you have a hotter running CPU and you are using the notebook in an environment such as a recording studio you won't want the fans up full blast.

 

I smell something burning...

 

I bought my PC on http://www.pcw.fr (yes I'm French).

I've got a 2 years warranty and a 0 dead pixel at shipping for 79Euro.
The D901C cost me 4000Euro.

 

If you don't mind my saying it, HOLEY SMOKES!

That converts out to about US$6,361.40 (I'll round up to US$6,400 just to have a nice neat number). What specs did you get?

 

My specs:

- GPU 2x nVidia GeForce Go 8800M GTX SLI
- screen WUXGA 1920 x 1200 TFT (Glare-type SmartView) (zero dead pixel granted)
- CPU Intel® Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9650 - 3GHz 12Mo cache - Bus 1333MHz - 64bits - 45nm
- RAM 4Go SO-DIMM RAM DDR-2 / 800 MHz (2 x 2048 Mo)
- DVD-RW 24/8/4/2x Burner & Blue-ray Reader
- Hard Drive 200 Go - 7200 tr/mn - Cache 16 Mo - SATA 300 x 2 (RAID 0)
- OS Microsoft® Windows® VISTA Ultimate 64 Bits + Service Packs
- WIFI Intel PRO/Wireless 4965ABN 802.11N
- WEBCAM 2.0M

 

Very nice specs. Still, it does bear out the point that things are generally more expensive in Europe, even factoring in exchange rate foibles. I believe the QX9650 is wholesaling at about $1,000 per unit, so that should have added about US$700 to US$800 to the price of a baseline 9262 in the US (i.e., over and above the config with the E8400), and the blu-ray drive would have added another couple of hundred USD.

Nonetheless, please don't let my meandering thoughts deprive you of any of your well-deserved joy, you have a system that I am very envious of!

 

remember our dollar is worthless over there....my two cents..

 

what's funny is their "Edge" CX15 laptop only goes as far as 2.5 one the CPU side and NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX 512 MB ...

""Sager has confirmed with Clevo that the M860TU will not support 44W+ processors or the 9800M GTX because of the thermal budget! ""

 

I'm afraid I don't quite understand the reference.

 

sorry was a bit quick there, this vendor who apparently manages to go way behind the normal spec on Sager has only listed a 2.5 cpu as an option for their M860TU and a 8800 gfx card option, so if they are this good surly they would be up there with PCmicroworks.. but they are not.. so that makes me 100% sure that PCmicroworks are full of them self..

the reference was more towards that if a vendor is willing to support their own insane config... this seemed like a good bet for quad core and 9800 GFX for the M860TU....

 

Aah. In terms of the M860TU, however, if Clevo has decided that it won't get a 9xxx series GPU, then there's not much that an inventive reseller can do about that because, unlike the CPUs, which are largely fungible and depend mostly on Intel for compatibility, the GPUs are, in essence, custom-made - that is, notwithstanding the MXM pseudo-standard, if a certain GPU wasn't customized for a particular model, then there's no way one is going to fit in there, and the sort of inventive reseller we're talking about does not have the infrastructure or financial wherewithal to have their own GPUs custom-made.

Other than that little quibble, your point stands and I agree with you.