5 ms·

Yep, the Celeron 300A: https://www.anandtech.com/show/174/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/174/3

by smcl 4y ago

vasac 4y ago
Especially those manufactured in Malaysia, as they could be overclocked more successfully than the 300As made in Costa Rica. Fun times.
- ableal 4y ago
  I seem to remember that the 300A overclock was first published by Tom's Hardware - a site started by a German medical doctor, as implausible as that sounds. I was trying to confirm this, but he didn't claim credit for that in this interview: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/20-year-anniversary,4552-7.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/20-year-anniversary,455... P.S. Also, some twenty years ago another MD rewrote the Linux scheduler, because he wanted better interactive performance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Kolivas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Kolivas
  - AnotherGoodName 4y ago
    The first to do it was probably the first to touch the CPU given how established over clocking was by that era. So it could be tom but it's just not that significant if it was or wasn't.
    - jghn 4y ago
      Yeah, "let's see if I can overclock this a bit" was the first thing many people did as soon as they got any new chip. The 300A was notable both because of how far they could be pushed but also how it worked for basically all of them & not outliers.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- rasz 4y ago
  a myth, Malaysia/Costa Rica was packaging plant designation and had nothing to do with binning or actual fabs.
jghn 4y ago
The Celeron 300A might still be the best bargain in CPU history. I put together a bunch of PCs with them for myself & friends/family. Not all of them could get to 450mhz, but all of them were able to clocked much higher than 300. And with the L2 cache on the chip, it already was better clock-for-clock than contemporary products. While from an objective amount 50-150mhz is peanuts in today's terms, that was a huge step up relative to the original speed.
- paulmd 4y ago
  5820K and 5960X have hit nearly similar overclocks in recent memory - chips with 3.4 and 3.3 GHz all-core turbo had a majority of chips (~75-79%) going to 4.5 GHz. 4.5/3.3 = 36% overclock, which is quite high by modern standards. Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge-E were fantastic overclockers too with many samples going to 4.7 GHz (even on HEDT!). Broadwell-E, too, could hit some solid clocks if you were willing to push more voltage... a lot of people got later samples to 4.7 GHz despite the numbers being closer to 4.3 in SiliconLottery's tests. Probably an uncomfortable amount of voltage and heat, but, Broadwell itself wasn't as bad as people took it to be, just the prices, and the L4 cache on Broadwell-C limiting the core clocks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_processors#%22Haswell-E%22_(22_nm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_processo... https://siliconlottery.com/pages/statistics https://siliconlottery.com/pages/statistics This is somewhat of a function of Intel not really pushing clocks in those days. 3.3 GHz all-core turbo is nowhere near what the silicon could deliver - generally I would punch in 4.1 GHz all-core on my 5820K and that would be stable without any other (explicit) settings adjustments. And that is a factor of the TDPs - in those days TDP on desktop was expected to cover your max boost under a (reasonably) worst-case load. It has been a thing for a long time in laptops, but the desktop market was different. AMD was actually the one who introduced the "boost TDP is higher than box TDP" concept (aka PPT) to the desktop market with Ryzen 1000 - and then Intel started following suit once they started ramping up core counts and clocks with the 8700K/9900K. But 140W is actually plenty for a hexacore or even octocore running at 3.3 GHz and even under a worst-case load scenario... and 91W is plenty for a quad-core running at max turbo too. The numbers weren't as phony back then. https://www.anandtech.com/show/10968/the-intel-core-i7-7700k-91w-review-the-new-stock-performance-champion/11 https://www.anandtech.com/show/10968/the-intel-core-i7-7700k... https://www.anandtech.com/show/8426/the-intel-haswell-e-cpu-review-core-i7-5960x-i7-5930k-i7-5820k-tested/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/8426/the-intel-haswell-e-cpu-...
perbu 4y ago
No. It was a proper Pentium II chip, originally binned as a 450Mhz chip. There was a shortage of the low end chip and they re-badged a bunch of high end chips to fill a whole in the market. Tells you a lot of CPU production economics.

Yep, the Celeron 300A: https://www.anandtech.com/show/174/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/174/3

by smcl 4y ago

Yep, the Celeron 300A: https://www.anandtech.com/show/174/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/174/3

Especially those manufactured in Malaysia, as they could be overclocked more successfully than the 300As made in Costa Rica. Fun times.

ableal 4y ago
I seem to remember that the 300A overclock was first published by Tom's Hardware - a site started by a German medical doctor, as implausible as that sounds. I was trying to confirm this, but he didn't claim credit for that in this interview: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/20-year-anniversary,4552-7.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/20-year-anniversary,455... P.S. Also, some twenty years ago another MD rewrote the Linux scheduler, because he wanted better interactive performance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Kolivas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Kolivas
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  The first to do it was probably the first to touch the CPU given how established over clocking was by that era. So it could be tom but it's just not that significant if it was or wasn't.
  - jghn 4y ago
    Yeah, "let's see if I can overclock this a bit" was the first thing many people did as soon as they got any new chip. The 300A was notable both because of how far they could be pushed but also how it worked for basically all of them & not outliers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rasz 4y ago
a myth, Malaysia/Costa Rica was packaging plant designation and had nothing to do with binning or actual fabs.

jghn 4y ago

The Celeron 300A might still be the best bargain in CPU history. I put together a bunch of PCs with them for myself & friends/family. Not all of them could get to 450mhz, but all of them were able to clocked much higher than 300. And with the L2 cache on the chip, it already was better clock-for-clock than contemporary products. While from an objective amount 50-150mhz is peanuts in today's terms, that was a huge step up relative to the original speed.

paulmd 4y ago
5820K and 5960X have hit nearly similar overclocks in recent memory - chips with 3.4 and 3.3 GHz all-core turbo had a majority of chips (~75-79%) going to 4.5 GHz. 4.5/3.3 = 36% overclock, which is quite high by modern standards. Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge-E were fantastic overclockers too with many samples going to 4.7 GHz (even on HEDT!). Broadwell-E, too, could hit some solid clocks if you were willing to push more voltage... a lot of people got later samples to 4.7 GHz despite the numbers being closer to 4.3 in SiliconLottery's tests. Probably an uncomfortable amount of voltage and heat, but, Broadwell itself wasn't as bad as people took it to be, just the prices, and the L4 cache on Broadwell-C limiting the core clocks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_processors#%22Haswell-E%22_(22_nm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i7_processo... https://siliconlottery.com/pages/statistics https://siliconlottery.com/pages/statistics This is somewhat of a function of Intel not really pushing clocks in those days. 3.3 GHz all-core turbo is nowhere near what the silicon could deliver - generally I would punch in 4.1 GHz all-core on my 5820K and that would be stable without any other (explicit) settings adjustments. And that is a factor of the TDPs - in those days TDP on desktop was expected to cover your max boost under a (reasonably) worst-case load. It has been a thing for a long time in laptops, but the desktop market was different. AMD was actually the one who introduced the "boost TDP is higher than box TDP" concept (aka PPT) to the desktop market with Ryzen 1000 - and then Intel started following suit once they started ramping up core counts and clocks with the 8700K/9900K. But 140W is actually plenty for a hexacore or even octocore running at 3.3 GHz and even under a worst-case load scenario... and 91W is plenty for a quad-core running at max turbo too. The numbers weren't as phony back then. https://www.anandtech.com/show/10968/the-intel-core-i7-7700k-91w-review-the-new-stock-performance-champion/11 https://www.anandtech.com/show/10968/the-intel-core-i7-7700k... https://www.anandtech.com/show/8426/the-intel-haswell-e-cpu-review-core-i7-5960x-i7-5930k-i7-5820k-tested/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/8426/the-intel-haswell-e-cpu-...

perbu 4y ago

No. It was a proper Pentium II chip, originally binned as a 450Mhz chip. There was a shortage of the low end chip and they re-badged a bunch of high end chips to fill a whole in the market. Tells you a lot of CPU production economics.