Date:
Sunday , June 12, 2005
Author:
Chris Morley
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Velocity Micro ProMagix DCX Evaluation

Velocity Micro kicks off our Systems Evaluation Program, sending us a hot off the press Pentium D Extreme Edition system that's overclocked, watercooled, and fully loaded. Join us as we take a hard look at this ambitious machine and whether or not its bite matches its bark.

continued...

I'll Be There For You...

Rounding up our Company Overview section is probably one of the most important aspects of the HardOCP Systems Evaluation Program. Support. Instead of cutting and pasting what is said on a company's website, we'll put them to the test.

Velocity Micro's tech support is very accessible via their website. Their tech support contact information is very easy to find. They advertise 24/7 tech support, so I decided to put this to the test. One thing that you should be aware of is that in most cases companies like this will outsource their on-site and off-hour tech support. While some companies find outsourcing their support, others find that it isn't fiscally viable to; A: pay a dedicated workforce to man the phones all night; or B: pay a tech to be stationed in every major city and suburb to be on call at a moment's notice. Interestingly enough, Velocity Micro has done the former, to an extent.

Burning The Midnight Oil

I placed a call to Velocity Micro on a Friday night at 11:30PM. What better time to test out 24/7 tech support? Ok, so Sunday morning at 3AM may be a better time, but there's only so much I'm willing to do for guys. Regardless, I was on hold for an hour without speaking to a soul. I was not impressed. The following Tuesday I called during regular business hours and spoke to a live human being at Velocity Micro. He assured me that normally one of their techs will have a cell phone that is passed around from week to week for off-hour support. Perhaps my tech was in the bathroom….for an hour.

Besides not being able to get through to someone, I must say that the prospect of being able to talk to someone who is employed directly by VM and has their hands-on VM computers every day is enticing. Velocity Micro techs are authorized to issue RMA's, and the one you talk to on the phone is the guy who actually fixes the machines when they come in. You do not have to deal with Level I headset jockeys. I consider this a strong mark in their favor. Being able to deal directly with the people that are physically working on your machine is one of the best things you could hope for when dealing with an OEM. It can save hours of headaches and miscommunication.

She Can't Take Much More, Captain!

During my initial testing of various video games on the ProMagix DCX, I noticed that there was texture corruption after about 10 to 15 minutes of gameplay in games like Doom 3 and Far Cry. So naturally I figured that this was the perfect issue to test their tech support with. The tech that I spoke to at Velocity Micro was able to come to the conclusion that my video card was clocked too high. Velocity Micro as an option will 'optimize' your video card, which includes core and memory adjustments. My ATI Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition was clocked at 560/560 core/memory, which is 20 MHz higher for the core and 30 MHz lower for the memory than what a stock X850XT PE should come clocked at.

Further investigation, which included the very sleuthful act of hitting the 'default' button in the ATI Catalyst Control Center brought the clock speed down to 520/540, which is what a non-Platinum Edition X850XT would be clocked at. Now, Velocity Micro doesn't sell a non-Platinum Edition X850XT, and we were sent a spec list via email that stated we were going to receive a X850XT Platinum Edition, so I was a little concerned. I had also previously failed to note that the Platinum Edition card that Velocity Micro sells comes with two DVI connectors, whereas my card only had one DVI and one VGA.

I emailed Velocity Micro about this and Randy assured me that the X850XT was just for testing purposes, and it should not have shipped that way. I can now easily see how VM’s overclocks didn't hold up to real world gaming.

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that

After I got a warm and fuzzy feeling from their tech support, I thought it would be smooth sailing from here on out. I ran several games and metric-driven tests and was well pleased. Then I decided to torture it. I ran four instances of Prime95, and was giggling about how I could still surf the Internet with 4 logical processors at 4Ghz pegging at 90% when all of a sudden I heard a 'whoomp' and the machine died. My heart sunk and I sent VM an email explaining the situation. Randy Copeland, founder of VM, got involved personally. He made sure that their lead validation tech called me on Monday.

Velocity Micro overnighted me a new PSU and motherboard. With the new parts in the machine, we were back up and running, but I had some concerns about the temperatures I was seeing. Obviously after the system failure we started looking a bit deeper into what exactly was going on with our performance system in the temperature department. The Pentium Extreme Edition, stock at 3.2GHz, was running at 83c idle at its overclocked 4GHz. Surely this couldn't be correct, I thought, so I notified Randy about it. Here is the first email I received from him.

I wonder if we should clock it back down for a torture test? 3.6GHz maybe? With such a new product, and very few samples on this planet, what do you think? We have not done this kind of stress test, just looped 3DMark and SysMark05 for 48 hours. I'm not trying to be a sissy, but just thinking out loud. Instead, maybe just run everything else you need first. I think the CPU can make it, but the motherboard voltage regulators are going to have a tough time, I expect.

What bothers me is that Velocity Micro advertised 4Ghz, they sent 4Ghz, but they don't want me to test at 4Ghz. If a customer had a situation where they were utilizing 90% of the machine's processing power, be it folding, rendering video, or playing games, you aren't guaranteed a stable machine at these speeds. Well, it's a good thing that you can get the ProMagix DCX at stock speeds and save some money if you wish. Another email from Randy addressed the heat issue:

I'm very cool with 83c. (pardon the pun, but it's late) It's the v-regs I worry about in a torture test environment. I'll look into another harness - no problem there. Please go forward with your testing if you want.

I still wasn't convinced that 83c was acceptable, so I reapplied some thermal paste and reseated the watercooling block. It now idles at 73c. After conversing with Kyle and referring to his overclocking tests with the same processor, and double checking Intel design papers, 70c is right around where you would expect it to be at this clock speed without some kind of extreme cooling. That doesn't necessarily make that temperature OK, but I must say that Velocity Micro has chosen a fairly effective mass-market water cooling solution.