Dee's new i5 system

Computer Hardware
#1

Hi all :slight_smile:
It was getting near that time to update the review PC, things get very quickly out of date these days. :rolleyes:
My parents to the rescue with some new hot hardware (an early Christmas present).

The motherboard: GigaByte GA-P55A-UD4 (P55 chipset)
Other features of this board:

[ul]
[li]Onboard SATA 6Gb/s via a Marvell SE-9128 controller.
[/li][li]Onboard USB3 via an NEC controller.
[/li][/ul]

The CPU: Intel Core i5 750 with an Artic cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev2

The RAM: GEIL Ultra line 2133MHz DDR3 (4GB dual channel kit)

The CPU will overclock to 4GHz quite easily, but does get a bit hot for my liking, and i’ll need to experiment with the core voltage to see if can reduce it a little. :slight_smile:

Here it is at 4GHz[/LEFT]

I reduced the Multiplier to x19, which reduced the core speed to 3.8GHz, but found it didn’t require nearly as much Vcore to get it stable, and produces a lot less heat.

Now at 3.8GHz

Now for some quick Everest benchmarks.

CPU PhotoWorxx

Not bad at all, its faster than the i7 at this clock speed.

CPU AES

[LEFT]Again it beats the i7. :slight_smile:

FPU Julia

Not bad at all, from a CPU that is about half the price of the i7.

Now the RAM, and i have only every once had GEIL ram, and although it was stable, it wasn’t exactly fast.
This Ultra series is a totally different beast. It is mighty fast. :D[/left]

RAM read

Impressive. :wink:

RAM write

[LEFT]It is easily the fastest again.

RAM latency

[LEFT]Nice low latency as well.
[/LEFT]

#2

Impressive Dee.
Congratulations.

What’s the approximate price tag on that combo?

#3

Bling Bling Dee :clap:

That’s some impressive RAM indeed.

I had the same experience with Geil and vowed never to get that brand again. Glad to see they’ve improved.

#4

@Nemesys
£385 from OCUK, or if you don’t intend to overclock, the GigaByte GA-P55A-UD3 has the same features as the UD4, but the power pump to the CPU is not as powerful or as well cooled, but you can save £40. :slight_smile:

@Eric
Yeah my heart sort of sunk when i seen the ram, but i’m really impressed with its speed. I haven’t had it long enough to say if its stable, but it seems to be.
A very pleasant surprise. :slight_smile:

#5

Very nice.:iagree:

I think I spy 2 IDE channels on the motherboard.:cool: What controller chip(s) do they use?

#6

[QUOTE=Ibex;2477287]I think I spy 2 IDE channels on the motherboard.:cool: What controller chip(s) do they use?[/QUOTE][B]ITC[/B], they work fine with optical drives, i have the same controller on a EP45-UD3P board (P45 chipset). No problems with PATA optical drives, as long as you use the standard MS drivers.

[edit] i just realised that the layout of my board is different from the one in the first picture. I’ll see if i can get an upto date pic. :slight_smile:

#7

Nice system Dee, but i will have to choose the P55A-UD3R and slower ram to save some extra money.

The question is: is the sata 3 any faster than sata2 with a SSD drive? I’m guessing that with an 7200rpm it would be the same as sata2.

#8

It’s limited by the SATA2 host controller on the SSD i tried it with, but the burst rate shows the potential. :slight_smile:
But even with the SATA2 host controller on the SSD having its limits, the drive feels faster on SATA3.

HDTune_Benchmark_OCZ-VERTEX.png580Ă—505 32.9 KB

#9

I guess Dee wasn’t on Santa’s naughty list this year. Nice hardware and impressive numbers. I find getting a good overclock quite satisfying. Sort of like getting something good for nothing.

#10

[QUOTE=Dee;2477289][B]ITC[/B], they work fine with optical drives, i have the same controller on a EP45-UD3P board (P45 chipset). No problems with PATA optical drives, as long as you use the standard MS drivers.[/QUOTE]
No need for a Silicon Image IDE card. Thanks Gigabyte.:clap::bow:

Out of curiosity, have you tried an optical drive on the Marvell SE-9128 controller?

And are you still running striped SSD drives on a proper RAID card?

P.S.
I am still using my 9 year old 900MHz Athlon Thunderbird.:sad:
Having anti virus software installed slows it to a crawl, but without any it is not bad at all.
Too bad I never believed in you know who…:doh:

#11

@UTR
I just love beating the system, and getting something for nothing (extra speed) just suits me just fine. :slight_smile:

@ibex
I just checked the PATA chip again, and me bad. It is in fact a GBB363 controller, which i suspect is JMicron. Still it works perfectly with optical drives with the standard MS drivers.

I haven’t tried an optical drive on the SATA3 controller and probably never will, there is only 2 SATA3 ports and they are huge overkill for optical, in fact SATA2 is huge overkill for optical :slight_smile:

RE the hardware RAID card. I use it on PC2 which has older gen1 SSD. For gen 2 SSD like Vertex and its clones, you don’t really need hardware RAID. In fact, you don’t really need RAID at all with gen2 SSD.

An interesting thing about the Marvell SATA3 controller is, it has 2.7GB/s bandwidth, and it appears this bandwidth is allocated dynamically. If this is the case, it’s a nice solution, as if the bandwidth isn’t required it can be allocated to other tasks.

#12

That’s fantastic Dee and glad to hear you’re so pleased with it.

Those benchmarks are impressive though so it’s not a bit of wonder you’re happy. :slight_smile:

I’m insanely jealous now! :bigsmile:

Planning to get an i7 system soon though.

[B]Wombler[/B]

#13

I am soooooooo jealous, now I have to upgrade. My old socket 775 Quad 9550 is old hat :wink:

#14

I’ll buy that 9550 off you Alan :slight_smile:

Dee, I remember reading that the current USB3.0 solution uses lanes from the PCIx16 slots. It sounded like it would impact gaming but I haven’t looked for any reviews to confirm any performance impact.

#15

[QUOTE=eric93se;2477530]Dee, I remember reading that the current USB3.0 solution uses lanes from the PCIx16 slots. It sounded like it would impact gaming but I haven’t looked for any reviews to confirm any performance impact.[/QUOTE]Yes it does use PCIe x16 lanes, but it depends how you configure both USB3 and SATA3 in the BIOS of this GigaByte board.
In normal mode, which has 500MBytes per second bandwidth for each SATA3 and USB3 then graphics stay at x16.
If you select “turbo” mode which has 2.7Gbytes per second shared between SATA3 and USB3, then graphics (PCIe2 x16 socket), then yes the PCIe2 x16 is reduced to PCIe2 x8.

I’m not much of a game player, although i do have a fairly high end graphics card. So far i haven’t noticed a difference in gameplay when the graphics are reduced to PCIe2 x8, but i’m sure hardened game players with disagree with me. :slight_smile:


#16

I’ve been doing some experimenting :slight_smile:
The CPU will do 4Ghz without to much effort, but i’ve decided to clock it down just slightly to 3.8GHz and tweak from there.

It’s Prime stable with a VCore 1.184V, but i have now enabled all the CPU power saving features, which means it only hits 3.8GHz when it needs to.
Temps are good at idle and full load.

I’m a happy camper. :smiley:



#17

Really great Dee :clap:

I have been reading that the i5 was a better bang for your buck than the i7

I think your stats verify that :iagree: , Thanks :smiley:

Now just to find a way to get one :rolleyes:

#18

And the set won’t be “old stuff” for a good while since the whole 32nm Nehalem line won’t offer any 4-core cpus. Only 2 and 6. Only the next “tick” (Sandy Bridge) will offer 4-cores again. P55+i5-750 is a great choice at the moment!

#19

Well if someone want a new pc he or she should consider the i5.

CPU: i5 (stock cooling) 2.66@3.2
RAM: Corsair Dominator 2x2G @ 1600Mhz DDR3
MOBO: Gigabity P55A-UD4

Here are the same test that Dee did but with stock cooling and slower ram.

1)cpu aes
2)fpu julia
3)photoworks
4)memory latency
5)memory read
6)memory write

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ram latency.jpg800Ă—568 85 KB

ram read.jpg800Ă—567 85.9 KB

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ram write.png796Ă—571 45.3 KB

#20

That’s very impressive for the stock cooling, [B]vroom[/B] :iagree:
The stock cooler is tiny, i would think you could reach 3.8Ghz with better cooling, which would be the sweet spot for that Corsair RAM.
BCLK 200 - x19 CPU multipier - RAM multipier x8 = 1600MHz, and if XMP is correct on that RAM 8-8-8-24 C1 timings.
But better cooling will for sure be required to reach that speed.