Overclocking benefits? How much?

[trickson]

A man after my own heart, that's what I do with all my processors. I either run them at stock speed with the voltage so far down it's laughable or leave them at stock speed and see how high I can set the clock. I don't really put much effort into finding out what the max voltage is I can use to get the highest super clock as it's just wasteful for me.

Since the newegg price drop I picked up an X4 955 and I'm working now on finding it's limits. So far on air I was able to set it to 3.9Ghz in AOD on stock voltage and get in a few SuperPi runs before it decided that's enough. I also bumped it down to only 2 cores (in bios) just to see if 4Ghz had a chance and it did it with relative ease on 1.4v running SuperPi a few times before it finally had a hiccup. All testing is on my usual super silent fan settings of roughly 400-490rpm (out of 2000rpm+ 110cfm 120mm fan) so I'm super impressed.

Working now on knocking the voltage down at the stock speed to see what happens. I had it down to 1.30v (stock 1.35v) and was still able to run at 3.4Ghz passing stability tests (all four cores) no problem so now I'm on 1.25v at stock 3.2Ghz speed for a few hours no problems....now to knock it down even further.

Great to see I'm not alone out there in my thinking.

My last two processors got the same treatment and yielded fantastic results...

Phenom I 9850 X4 2.5Ghz @ 1.062v (freakin insane)
Phenom II 920 X4 2.8Ghz @ 1.200v
Phenom II 955 X4 3.2Ghz @ 1.25v and dropping lol

Kei

(I've got one of those Kill-A-Watt too plugged in 24/7)

Those whom are afraid to crank the volts and fsb are never going to attain E-Peen status !

 

[Kei]

lol, I do still check out the relative max speed of my stuff though so my e-peen should be safe I hope.

Update: I've been running 3.2Ghz @ 1.232v for just shy 1 hour and 20 minutes so far. I ran 20 minutes stability test in AOD and then immediately 45 minutes with Everest Stress test (harder) and now just enjoying myself for a bit and no problems so far. I'll go for more later, but so far I'm run through the street naked kinda happy.

(pics attatched...look at the fan speed and temps)

Kei

 

[BraveSoul]

this thread is called "Overclocking benefits? How much?" but all i see is underclocking benefits, how much u may ask? 20watts crunching at 2.8ghz 1.2v 'kill a watt' is showing 20watts less power consumption greattttt

 

[Kei]

Under also shows a potential benefit to what he's asking, we're just showing him that if he has to go through much (if any) more voltage that it's not really worth it. Even more so if he can drop the voltage he's using now or maybe the clock a little bit and reap the other side of the benefit tree so many people forget about on the quest to beat everyone else's clocks.

Kei

 

[BraveSoul]

ahhh it just gives me a peace of mind when i know that crunching all night will only draw 170watts instead of 195watts ,,, craving to go lower now,, downclocked the ram too 1.9v 800mhz

 

[BraveSoul]

higher NB frequency ups cpu voltage requirement, true?

 

[Kei]

Have you already done all the power saving features availalbe in the bios for your board? Those are great numbers still, I've never done any folding so I don't know my power consumption numbers for that.

Does that use the gpu as well as the cpu or no? My idle wattages with my 5770 (w/o bios changes for lower power on the gpu) still rocked out at an awesome 113W with the processor running 2.8Ghz 1.2v (the 920 I had).

I'm hoping that when I get the daily setting for my new 955 it's at near the same or lower wattage at idle. The 100% cpu load numbers so far without doing anything but dropping the cpu volts were 171W in AOD and 178W in Everest Ultimate. I haven't done any other mods literally to the system so everything else is still on stock volts so it's got a big chunk to come off still when I get done testing the processor.

Kei

 

[BraveSoul]

power saving features availalbe in the bios????? plz give a few examples im very interested
pss just passed 10mins of prime at 2.8ghz 1.15v

 

[Kei]

Go through your bios and look at the options for the Chipset to see what power savings features you may or may not have. On my ASUS board there are options for the North and South bridges as well as the HTT and Memory which may help you out if you have them.

There are usually options that people never even realise are in the bios that help a lot at times.

Awesome clock even if it's not 100% stable in the end....just being able to start stress testing at the voltage is awesome. Reminds me of my Phenom 9850 which ran at 2.5Ghz @ 1.062v (stock speed down from 1.30v stock)

Kei

Still rockin away at 3.2Ghz @ 1.23v haven't tried to go lower yet just enjoying some music and chatting for now. It's been through multiple stability tests and running for hours now though. I think there is still more to come

 

[BraveSoul]

Phenom II 955 at 3.2Ghz @ 1.23v running for hours? sounds very promising

 

[Kei]

I'm hoping it will go a bit further still as I haven't even had so much as a hiccup yet, then again the board I have seems to be the greatest board ever made.

I'm afraid that when I finally decide to hang it on the wall the new board won't be as good lol.

Kei

 

[BraveSoul]

it seems to me that downclocking from 1.20 to 1.15 saves another 7watts or so,,,

 

[BraveSoul]

downclocked some more 2.6ghz at 1.1v 30mins prime stable
and guess what, kill a watt shows 153watts while crunching, doing prime showed 164watts
loving it

 

[Kei]

Awesome Brave, I ran a test earlier at 2.7Ghz @ 1.07v which gave me something like 155W or so which is awesome. I'll give it the hard test in a little bit when I turn on my 360 and play some Call of Duty with my brother...I hope it passes the looong test.

Keep at it, do you know what the lowest voltage you could run the stock 3.2Ghz at was? Mine was 1.20v (didn't test 1.18v yet but 1.17v wasn't stable enough) which I've been running since yesterday without any hiccups even during long stress tests.

Kei

 

[BraveSoul]

stock 3.2 no clue,,but if i can run 940stock of 3.0 at 1.2v i would be happy ,, i only tested it at 1.30v (stock 1.35v) im wondering ,, 955 u got has to be a different revision vs 940 that i got when it just came out

 

[Chicken Patty]

Guys, if you want a pretty decent comparison of stock vs overclock, this chart pretty much has most CPU's at stock and overclocked. Take a look and see how it helps


Click Here

 

[BraveSoul]

thanks for the link,, looks like Intel i7 is the clear winner with its hyper threading exceeding its rivals by as much as 66% HUGE

 

[Chicken Patty]

thanks for the link,, looks like Intel i7 is the clear winner with its hyper threading exceeding its rivals by as much as 66% HUGE

When it comes to crunching, they are monsters because they can do 8 tasks at once bro.

 

[Kei]

stock 3.2 no clue,,but if i can run 940stock of 3.0 at 1.2v i would be happy ,, i only tested it at 1.30v (stock 1.35v) im wondering ,, 955 u got has to be a different revision vs 940 that i got when it just came out

Sorry missed this post, yea I'm using the 955 not the 940 although I DID have a 920 that I bought when they (920 and 940) first came out. My 920 did it's stock 2.8Ghz @ 1.21v which is pretty awesome for a non black edition cpu.

My 955 will do the stock 3.2Ghz @ 1.20v, and even more impressive 3.0Ghz @ 1.104v.

Kei

 

[BraveSoul]

3.0ghz at 1.1volts

 

[BraveSoul]

When it comes to crunching, they are monsters because they can do 8 tasks at once bro.

monsters yeah so wana get that i7 860,, but got a questions
8 tasks only give 30% boost in WCG instead of theoretical 100% right?

 

[DrPepper]

monsters yeah so wana get that i7 860,, but got a questions
8 tasks only give 30% boost in WCG instead of theoretical 100% right?

Well 8 threads doesn't mean twice the performance of 4 threads. What Hyperthreading does is it holds lower priority code until the processor has spare time to process it. Something like that anyway.

 

[Kei]

3.0ghz at 1.1volts

Ahem...my 24/7 setup passed every test I threw at it (OCCT, LinX, Everest Ultimate, and AOD) and uses very very little power.

Here's a quick shot of a LinX run during stress testing to see if it was stable or not. Also a fun shot of my usual ridiculii (new word from me...definition: multiple levels or instances of ridiculousness) stress testing a quad core at 0.928v which is the lowest my motherboard likes to play around with. That one really shocked me what I could actually get to be stable...

Kei

 

[Chicken Patty]

Dr pepper, thanks for elaborating on my previous post you are correct

 

[Kei]

Dr pepper, thanks for elaborating on my previous post you are correct

....he's a doctor...of course he's right.