2600k under xp 64 is very slow

[Tommy L]

So I went out and bought a cheap-ass up grade for one of my nodes to see if its going to work across all the machines.

I switched out a Q6600 on an old asus board and put in a i7 2600k on a Gigabyte P67 w/ 8G ram. I'm still running XP64 on the farm.

I am now rendering an animation, the 2600k (stock clock) is slower than the Q6600's! I was expecting a ~300% increase in speed.

Oh dear, is it because I haven't upgraded the OS? Surely not. I dont want to give Microsoft a bunch of money for nothing.

Any help much needed.

Thanks,

Tom.

EDIT: I just checked the EasyTune6 software that comes with it. The temp guage is reading 87C (188F) when rendering. That sounds hot to me. Is it possible I didnt install the cpu fan and heat sink correctly?

EDIT 2: Fan not spinning on cpu....How could I have got that wrong? Well, its late, Ill post a photo tomorrow.

EDIT 3: Doh! I had the fan power cable wrapped against a fan blade. Nearly fried my cpu. What a noob. Temp now 62C. Still seems hot... Ill check rendertimes in the morning.

Edited April 26, 2011 by Tommy L

[F J]

did u check to make sure that the CPU load was at 100% ?

cuz if u'r rendering the same scene that was originally created on a Q6600 i dont think that Max automatically picks this up..

so since the 2600K is an 8-threaded CPU (as opposed to the Q6600's 4) u'll have to switch off ur render engine n then back to it again to pick up the remaining threads..

at least thats what happened to me with my Q6600 -> i7 switch..

[AJLynn]

Sounds like the CPU throttled itself due to overheating.

[Tommy L]

Think you're right Andy. Its now rendering around the same speed as my i7 940. Is the speed / temp curve a constant? If I upgrade the cooling will it get faster? Overclocking looks easy, I dont know anything about whats an acceptable temp though.

[AJLynn]

It should be faster than that. Look at CPU percent and get the clock speed from CPU-Z while rendering...