Kinc and Crotale and Conroe @ 4.95GHz at DH

During DreamHack our overclocking gurus Kinc and Crotale have done everything to take Intel’s coming processor architecture to new heights, with this article we will summarize the last two days to show you what they managed to achieve

DreamHack Summer 2006 has come to and end and most of us from NordicHardware has just arrived at home or are on the verge of it at least. Some of the people who kept going to the very last minute at DH in NordicHardware’s booth was Kinc and Crotale which seemed impossible to separate from their bench system, which actually didn’t receive its final ingredients until Monday evening, an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 and a cooler ambience after moving into Elmia’s C hall. The last hours were used solely to pressure the system to the outmost limits and already during Monday we could report that they’d reached 4.8GHz with SuperPi 1M by using a compressor cascade cooler with about -100°C on the processor. This speed was enough to achieve the second best SuperPi 1M time in the world at 10.735 seconds, a very impressive achievement.

NordicHardware’s OC gurus together with Intel’s Thomas Melzer

They didn’t settle for just running SuperPi during the first tests using the cascade but also did some 3Dmark benchmarking, which had already seen some new world records with a Core 2 Duo E6600 at 4.0GHz. It turned out that Core 2 Extreme X6800 had no problems with running 3Dmark at incredible 4.73GHz with cascade cooling which after just two runs shattered Kyosen’s world record with 3Dmark05, which he reclaimed just hours after Kinc and crotale set a new one on Saturday. The old world record with 3Dmark05 by Kinc and crotale was 23954 points, which Kyosen later improved to a whopping 24881 points with the help of an E6700 clocked at 4.5GHz. Kinc and Crotale reached quite incredible 26 278 points (!!) during Monday night at the following speeds.

3DMark05 – 26 278 points
Core 2 Extreme X6800 @ 4730MHz (11x430MHz)
ATI Radeon X1900 Crossfire 843MHz/927MHz
ASUS P5W HD Deluxe (i975X)
Corsair XMS2-PC5400UL 430MHz 4-3-2-5 1:1
OCZ 520W + OCZ 600W
Processor cooling: Natrium cascade
Graphics card cooling: Overklokk cascade and LN2

Core 2 Extreme X6800 @ 4.73GHz

A complete slaughter of the 3DMark05 world record which has been improved several times the last couple of days. Worth mentioning is that they managed to reach 100.0 fps with Game Test 1, something that may not say much to most mortals but it is simply a proof of the incredible performance the system has to offer.
They later tested both 3Dmark2001 and 3Dmark06, even though they were extremely close to reaching new milestones with 3Dmark2001 they had to terminate the benchmarking as the condensation became too much and crashed the system. After some pondering they decided to disassemble the whole system and go with liquid nitrogen instead to see how far the X6800 would go.

After careful inspections of the motherboard, graphics card and processor, which involved drying up condensated water and installing new isolation pads the time had come to use the heavy stuff. Even if the cascade cooler they used on the processor makes truly low temperatures possible and since Conroe is quite cool to being with it’s a completely different situation using liquid nitrogen. They mounted the mousepot on the processor and started to overclock with the LN2. Unfortunately it turned out that the graphics cards in the Crossfire configuration, especially the Master card, did not work as they were suppose to. Therefore Kinc and Crotale focused entirely on overclocking the processor and here the nitrogen really got to show what its worth. They had no problem with running the processor at 4.95GHz, which ironically is the highest possible frequency with the ASUS P5W HD motherboard they used. The motherboard, which has turned out to be very potent, has 450MHz as he highest possible FSB setting while the current BIOS doesn’t allow the multiplier to be changed.

The result from this was that the processor simply could not be pushed any higher than 4.95GHz, a frequency which Kinc thought were ”3DMarkable” if the graphics cards had been working. What kind of score this would’ve resulted in we do not dare guess, but we’re eagerly awaiting more reports th upcoming days. What they could do at 4.95GHz was running SuperPi 1M and man did it run, 10,375 seconds was the time it took to complete the test, the second fastest time in the world, with a good margin to. It’s only the Japanese overclocker TAM which has been faster (10.140 sec) with an X6800 processor at 5.0GHz, also cooled with liquid nitrogen.

SuperPi 1M – 10.375 sekunder
Core 2 Extreme X6800 @ 4950MHz (11x450MHz)
ATI Radeon X1900 Crossfire
ASUS P5W DH Deluxe (i975X)
Corsair XMS2-PC5400UL 450MHz 4-3-2-5 1:1
OCZ 520W + OCZ 600W
Processor cooling: Mousepot LN2
Graphics card cooling: Overklokk cascade and LN2

Core 2 Extreme X6800 @ 4.95GHz

After this result, where the motherboard made it once again impossible to reach higher frequencies and the graphics cards didn’t want to play along, Kinc and Crotale shut down the rig as the days that had passed had been more exciting than we could’ve ever hoped for. Intel has a truly well performing processor coming and even if these are mainly synthetic tests we can assure you that they will perform well otherwise as well. We can also assure you that Kinc and Crotale will not leave you hanging and that Intel’s latest flagship will be put under more pressure the coming days and we will also publish a more extensive article covering Kinc and crotale’s escapades during DreamHack Summer 2006.

– More pictures from DreamHack can be found over at our Swedish site