Burn in" - Does make it sense? OC-experience with P4?

[aths]

Some people tell me, I can almost every Northie 1.6 or 1.8 (in my case, 1.8) clock with 133 MHz FSB.

Other people recommend a so called "Burn in". One group recommend to rise the vcore, the others say: In the first weeks, stress your CPU with pure calculations (seti@home and so on.)

My questions are:

- How should this burn in works? (What exactly happend with the CPU beside the fact, the CPU became hotter than under normal circumstances.)

- Can you recommend a burn in, and if so, with higher vcore or overload?

- Are there possible problem to clock a new P4 1.8A instantly to 2.4 GHz (and adjust the vcore, if needed.)? Is a slow raise of the FSB clock better? (I.e. 5 MHz per week or so?)

- Did you have some (general) hints for me?

 

[Saem]

I believe the burn in process doesn't do anything (note worthy) to the processor really to allow for a better overclock.

I believe what really happens is that the intense heat liquifies the thermal grease and the HSF retenion mechanism thins it out a little bit more and it improves thermal contact, also over time the CPU settles in it's socket and likely forms a better connection.

As for P4 1.6A and 1.8A over clocking they do so very very well, even the willie 1.5 and below are very good overclockers, the P4's pipeline is simply doing what it was designed to do scale to insane clock speeds. It should overclock better than it does, but memory and the fact that it's largely a straight shrink versus any real revision to the layout (willie -> northwood) all the benifits of 0.13u process haven't been realized, a new Northwood stepping is due out soon which will be even smaller than the current one, by about 10% or so.

 

[BenM]

The "burn-in" period for a new computer should be used to find possible defects that wouldn't normally show up in light usage. The idea is to get it fixed/returned before the warranty runs out or causes more headaches later.


Beyond catching defects, it also catches instabilities in overclocks.


For burning in, try SuperPi, 3DMark 2001, and MemTest. Run SuperPi a lot (I'd suggest for a day or so if you can...errors in calculating Pi to it's highest setting in SuperPi usually means something is wrong somewhere), and run MemTest for a few hours too. After all that, run 3DMark.

 

[PC-Engine]

I've found from trial and error that Serene Screen Aquarium screensaver always gets my laptop's fan to come on within a minute.