Core i7 920 D0 3.2GHz vs. 4GHz worth it?

[Go To Sleep]

Hi. I wanted to come here to ask if it's worth pushing my i7 920 D0 further to 4GHz (currently clocked at 3.2GHz)? Also wanted to know if it's worth it in terms of game performance? I'm clocked to 3.2GHz because my ASUS board has an automatic CPU overclock feature so I had 3 options to choose from which was something like 2.8GHz, 3GHz and highest being 3.2GHz then it automatically set every other option. It's only temporary until I can push the CPU more. CPU is watercooled.



Jason.

 

[infrared]

Short answer, definitely worth it! Especially if watercooled. It's getting pretty old and slow now so might as well eek as much useful life out of it as possible.

Keep an eye on north bridge temps, my younger brother's Asus ROG x58 board used to get pretty hot with a 4ghz overclock, we put a small fan on it. Even 4.2ghz was stable with reasonable voltage, that was with an original corsair H100.

Enjoy the extra performance

 

[Go To Sleep]

I'd like to clock it to 4GHz yeah. For 4GHz, I'd imagine the voltage will be somewhere between 1.3-1.4v?

 

[peche]

every MHz you get from it is worth, but you have to put attention to voltages and mostly temps, motherboard itself could get some pretty hot areas, so try look for a cooling solution on them, a simple fan like it was advise on the previous post, and also improve case cooling cause fans of cooler and psu will have a hard work cooling components,

if your sys specs are correct or updated, a little bit moar ram on your triple channel will be another notable and wise upgrade, that brave x58 platform still capable of great performance,

 

[petepete]

Coming from an i7 920 @ 4 ghz to i7 950 @ 4.5 ghz (my cousin gave it to me as he upgraded to Skylake) I can tell you around a 30% fps boost in certain games - But I respectfully disagree that X58 still has plenty of 'juice' left

My 980 TI definitely feels bottlenecked at 1920 res and above no question about it - While I do admit from a 2009 architecture and great soldering on the chips INTEL did really well, but it is definitely time to get a new CPU MOBO RAM - I notice fps isn't nearly as smooth as when I'm playing on a Skylake computer - Its just a way smoother feeling


I would honestly drop X58 by next year the lastest - you can simply spend another 400 bucks or so and get much much better single core performance and an architecture that isn't dated to hell

 

[Tomgang]

hell year you shut. I7 920 DO hits 4 GHz pretty easy and most runs just fine at atleast 4 GHz and since you have water cooling and if you are not afraid to give it high voltage around 4.4-4.5 GHz is also possible. I got my own I7 920 DO on the same motherboard and aircoolling op at 4.4 GHz stable, but for daily use i keep it at 4.1-4.2 GHz cause og heat and to keep it at safe voltage and it is not like the CPU will die in a few days if you oc properly. Mine have running around 4 GHz now the last 4 years on this motherboard and i see no down degrade or other things that my cpu or motherboard is at the brink of dying. A word of advice: dont use auto oc, its crap and tend to overvolt cpu an other components like memory with the result of exstended wear and tear + greater risk of frying your cpu. Performence gain is also pretty good. If your are gaming and still have that GTX 580 in your pc an upgrade (a used GTX 970/980 or GTX 1060 is not bad match at 4 GHz or more. If you want a better card you are then at a point where a new cpu would be good idea cause then the CPU will in some games not have the grunt to transfer data to the GPU fast enoufh) would also help you and make your gaming alot more fun and 6 GB more ram would not hurt also. If your are gaming DX12 titles or want to i can tell that Windows 10 runs great on these old platforms aswell.

As a bonus, here is my settings for 4 GHz on my asus rampage 2 extreme motherboard.

This is how my system runs for every day use.

And as an end to these post a few benchmark of my system. Then you can deside that 4 GHz+ oc is worfh it or not.

Well now you have an idea of how a I7 920 4 GHz+ system can performe. It is now up to you to deside on go 4 GHz or not.

 

[trt740]

That is great of you to post all of this for him.

 

[Tomgang]

That is great of you to post all of this for him.

Well i had most of it ready any way so ditten take to long to post and i hate to see a good X58 system go to waist because its full potential is not fully used yet.

 

[trt740]

I was looking and the i7 980x, which I had at one time, and it is still a total gaming beast because of its 6 cores. Especially when overclocked. I'm shocked at the power of some of the 1366 intel chips to game

 

[infrared]

I was looking and the i7 980x which I had at one time is still a total gaming beast because of its 6 cores. Especially when overclocked.

They're still crazy money, just had a glance on ebay and they're all circa £175 I remember paying £100 for my QX9650 about 2 years ago as well. Top end chips seem to hold their value even when very outdated

 

[Tomgang]

I was looking and the i7 980x, which I had at one time, and it is still a total gaming beast because of its 6 cores. Especially when overclocked. I'm shocked at the power of some of the 1366 intel chips to game

Old dosent always mean its useless. Some people automatic thinks well its old then its for sure also useless. Sure for some people X58 can not give the performence they want because they want every thing maxed out at 4K and hold atleast 100 FPS or more., but for other where 1080P is just fine then X58 is still a proper gaming rig when OC and get the help from newer GPU. Its sadly not all that think this long and change it all to new parts when maybe an oc and a new GPU would had keept then happy for a couple of year more.

 

[brandonwh64]

All of the I7-920's I have owned did 4ghz. The best one I had was my first one and it did it at 1.25V stable. I ran that thing for a long time until I did my 2600K build.

 

[trt740]

Hi. I wanted to come here to ask if it's worth pushing my i7 920 D0 further to 4GHz (currently clocked at 3.2GHz)? Also wanted to know if it's worth it in terms of game performance? I'm clocked to 3.2GHz because my ASUS board has an automatic CPU overclock feature so I had 3 options to choose from which was something like 2.8GHz, 3GHz and highest being 3.2GHz then it automatically set every other option. It's only temporary until I can push the CPU more. CPU is watercooled.



Jason.

This thread will help you big time. It helped me back in the day.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-core-i7-overclocking-and-feedback.76464/

 

[RejZoR]

Of course it's worth it. And the difference is quite significant. Killing Floor 2 was barely playable at stock, at 3.2GHz it was ok-ish, at 4GHz it was perfectly functional. So, yeah, it makes quite a difference.

 

[Capitan Harlock]

I have my Xeon w3520 that is a i7 920 at 4ghz and is worth it for gaming purpose but i hade to upgrade or i could not use the full power of my new r9 fury x .

 

[Outback Bronze]

They're still crazy money, just had a glance on ebay and they're all circa £175 I remember paying £100 for my QX9650 about 2 years ago as well. Top end chips seem to hold their value even when very outdated

I've still got my i7 990x still in the original retail box with all its fruit which is impossible to find on eBay. I can find the CPU's but not the original retail boxes. The retail boxes are the hardest to find out of all the top end CPU's

 

[Good Guru]

I'd say it's worth it for gaming. I seen an i7 920 at 4.131 and at that speed it played GTAV at solid 60+ frames per second

 

[Recon-UK]

Nehalem / Westmere-EP scale massively from clock increases, definitely worth it.

 

[Recon-UK]

The XEON E5640 commands a slight boost in gaming due to cache and slight IPC increase.

Nehalem and Westmere are still extremely capable, and well above what most people have, the 8 threads also are a huge part to it's still strong performance.

Some PS2 emulation with no slowdowns..

Some CPU intensive CSGO...

Can video edit with zero slow down also in Vegas.

Also a head to head.

 

[Komshija]

Nail it to 4 GHz and watch for temperatures, voltages and system stability high-intensity tasks. You'll certainly notice some improvement.

 

[peche]

They're still crazy money, just had a glance on ebay and they're all circa £175 I remember paying £100 for my QX9650 about 2 years ago as well. Top end chips seem to hold their value even when very outdated

most intel unlocked i7 mostly and some i5's chips still expensive, for example 3770k, 3570k and some haswell / devils canyon

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

If i lived in Melton Mowbray i would bake and sell some pork pies and invest £ 60.00 in X5670 and have 12threads @ 4.6ghz

(920's sell for £30.00 ish)

 

[Go To Sleep]

If i lived in Melton Mowbray i would bake and sell some pork pies and invest £ 60.00 in X5670 and have 12threads @ 4.6ghz

(920's sell for £30.00 ish)

Haha I'm just curious actually if I wanted to just boost the CPU to just 3.5GHz, what voltages am I looking at? I'm guessing no higher than 1.3v

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

leave volts on auto....see what the board does by checking CPUZ then try lowering it if you feel the need..( you probly wont)

 

[Go To Sleep]

http://imgur.com/a/g9bhG

That's what it's at now. Is everything all good? I will go ahead and bump it up to 3.5GHz in a tick.