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"Breaking records with the Maximus X Apex and i7-8700K"

Korth
Level 14
Breaking records with the Maximus X Apex and i7-8700K
Rog is obsessed with chasing the highest overclocks and fastest performance, and Coffee Lake is our latest muse on the new Maximus X Apex!

"The overclocking capabilities of CPUs and memory modules vary from sample to sample, so the hardware needs to be hand-picked."
...
"The first step involves binning CPUs by using air cooling and subjecting them to a multi-threaded benchmark (Cinebench) at a frequency and voltage (Vcore) that weeds out the stragglers. This process nets the top 10-15% of samples, which are then re-tested to check how Vcore requirements scale as clock frequencies increase."
...
"The data we obtain from the binning process is also of interest for ambient cooling. Our Coffee Lake testing revealed that 50% of early 6-core CPUs can achieve 5GHz with water cooling. If retail CPUs achieve the same, it shows Intel's mastery of the 14-nm process."

So the parameters in this preliminary binning seem very high ... what were the air cooled frequency and voltage thresholds?
- Only the "top 10-15%" of samples (2-3 pieces in a 21 CPU tray) meet these frequency/voltage requirements.
- The remaining 85-90% of samples (18-19 pieces in a 21 CPU tray) are "stragglers".
- The photo with "a handful of promising CPUs" shows 8 pasted CPUs and 5 upside-down CPUs, suggesting ASUS binned 2-5 full trays and rejected 29-92 pieces.

And can we reasonably expect about "50% of early 6-core CPUs" to meet these performance parameters?
"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." - Douglas Adams

[/Korth]
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1 REPLY 1

jab383
Level 13
The silicon lottery is just that. Manufacturing outcome varies within a batch and between batches. Mask stepping, diffusion concentrations, temperature and a lot of other things can cause differences between batches. Because they mean so much to Intel, the engineering sample and batches used for pre-release records get extra attention in manufacturing. Likewise with ASUS and their sponsored overclockers - the records mean enough to them buy many CPUs to go through the binning trouble. After that, it's just luck. There may be batches with over 50% at 5GHz on ambient water cooling, but not all.

Other people's stragglers may be some people's gems. For what I do on HWBOT, I'm looking for 5.4 - 5.7 GHz on water cooling. Those are rare an any CPU family. Someone looking for snappy performance in a gaming rig could settle for 4.8 - 5.0 GHz off the shelf and save a lot of money and time rather than buying dozens and doing binning runs for weeks.

Then there's http://siliconlottery.com , the e-business that bins processors for a living. It's telling that top-binned CPUs sell for about double the price of unsorted retail. Top bin CPUs are rare, in demand and take some trouble to find. Again, settling for 3rd or 4th bin can save coins.