I7 920 @ 4 GHz and GTX 970 SLI. great/bad idea?

[Tomgang]

Thats one of the other reasons apart from having 6 cores 12 threads that I moved over to the x5660 for.
95watt TDP.

yeah but when your cpu is OC to 4.4 GHz it will also eat away pretty much the same. You have 6 cores to feed at 4.4 GHz. That will also take its turn. On the ohter hand you do get more power from the same power use.
But i can still use alot of power from the cost of an upgrade that wount give that much more power any way. No i keep my 920. It have served me well and it deserves to do it a year or two more. Unless it dies offcause.

 

[Schmuckley]

bah..Westmere-EP> Bloomfield.
..says the guy with several Westmeres,a Gulftown, an just bought a Bloomfield

 

[Nullifier]

yeah but when your cpu is OC to 4.4 GHz it will also eat away pretty much the same. You have 6 cores to feed at 4.4 GHz. That will also take its turn. On the ohter hand you do get more power from the same power use.
But i can still use alot of power from the cost of an upgrade that wount give that much more power any way. No i keep my 920. It have served me well and it deserves to do it a year or two more. Unless it dies offcause.

My CPU is still only pulling 95w I checked.

 

[Tomgang]

idk..going from Westmere to Haswell n back..
Haswell makes for better gaming.
Does one really need 2 GTX 970s?

It depend on what games you play and resolution you use.

Take a look here. metro last ligt at 2560x1440 destroys even 2 GTX 970 or for that matter 2 GTX 980 i sli

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...-nvidia-gtx-970-sli-performance-review-7.html

If you play games like metro last ligt as i do or other demanding games like crysis 3, BF4 and so on. 2 GTX 970 is not overkill at all.

 

[Tomgang]

My CPU is still only pulling 95w I checked.

Iven when it is stresset max out whit programs like prime95 or Intel burntest. I must say i have it very hard to belive it dosent eat more power at 4.4 GHz than at stock speed.
If true, this will be the first.

To all its about my bed time so i have to go. Will be back tomorrow.

 

[Nullifier]

I've never seen it go above 95 on any speed.
my powerbill is thanking me very much for my recent upgrades to 970s and lower tdp processor.
amd gpus were sucking my wallet dry.

 

[kniaugaudiskis]

As a fellow X58 user, I'm really glad to see even the 6 year-old i7 920 is capable of handling two GTX970s in SLI at full HD resolution just fine. Thank you OP for the benchmarks!

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Thats one of the other reasons apart from having 6 cores 12 threads that I moved over to the x5660 for.
95watt TDP.

Sorry, not picking on you. However your xeon is not running at 95watts at 4+Ghz. Once you decide to overclock TDP is worthless because you're going to choke as much power down it's throat as it will take. lol.

 

[Schmuckley]

Sorry, not picking on you. However your xeon is not running at 95watts at 4+Ghz. Once you decide to overclock TDP is worthless because you're going to choke as much power down it's throat as it will take. lol.

I wouldn't be so sure about that with those CPUs..They seem to self-throttle/ramp up.
..If you set it up right.

 

[Nullifier]

Sorry, not picking on you. However your xeon is not running at 95watts at 4+Ghz. Once you decide to overclock TDP is worthless because you're going to choke as much power down it's throat as it will take. lol.

I'm operating at up to 4,4ghz below max stock VID.
(intel always puts their stock voltages way too high)

Ok I shouldn't say it never went above 95w since it went up to 105w when I did my 5ghz test.
Remember these were originaly 1k-2k $/€ server processors.
(they are also 32nm not 45)

 

[kniaugaudiskis]

I've never seen it go above 95 on any speed.
my powerbill is thanking me very much for my recent upgrades to 970s and lower tdp processor.
amd gpus were sucking my wallet dry.

It's physically impossible for a CPU not to draw more power when it's heavily overclocked, let alone overvolted. I know there's a formula for a quick maximum power consumption approximation: (OC Speed / Stock Speed) * (OC Voltage ^ 2) / (Stock Voltage ^ 2) = factor increase over default CPU power consumption. If I plug in my X5670 numbers into the formula, I get the following: (4.2GHz / 2.93GHz) * (1.28v^2)/(1.06v^2) = 2.09 factor increase over the reported 95W TDP which is approximately ~199 watts. Then again, the formula is not a perfect representation of total power because it ignores leakage power, but still gets you in the neighborhood. This has been confirmed by a few guys on another forum, however, I haven't checked it myself as I don't own a power meter.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Sorry, not picking on you. However your xeon is not running at 95watts at 4+Ghz. Once you decide to overclock TDP is worthless because you're going to choke as much power down it's throat as it will take. lol.

Also TDP != Power Consumption

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Also TDP != Power Consumption

This is true. TDP is the max heat a component will output, with manufacture stock settings, under 100% load that you need to deal with. Meaning your CPU at stock settings dissipates 95w of heat/energy that needs to be actively cooled/removed.

Man, we are so far off topic, but at least it's all good stuff.

 

[Nullifier]

I guess I'm going to have to buy a meter since from what you guys are saying software is inaccurate.

Either way I'm noticing the difference on my powerbill from switching a house full of 130w TDP proccessors over to 70ish-95w tdp.
Along with switching out older power hungry AMD cards to GTX 970s.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Well I have no doubt you are correct. Since all your systems aren't running at 100%, 100% of the time. At idle your systems will draw far less power then a i7 9xx at idle. And yeah the AMD cards are power hungry...although I am in same boat with my 780ti. The 970s are much more efficient.

Honestly though as someone who knows they are going to overclock, power use is a non-issue for me. That to me is like buying a lambo and worrying about MPG.

 

[Schmuckley]

So true..Who cares about 1-200w? Either you want to run beast mode on your comp or you don't..it's pretty much as simple as that.

 

[Nullifier]

Ok I just talked with my friend who was here when I did my 5ghz run,
He said from the meter my PC was pulling 145w when running OCCT, and to consider thats all components together. minus GPU since they were not under load.
Thats roughly what i'm seeing in the software as well at 4,4ghz. 95 from the cpu, and 45 from the rest of the system.

Blah, I really need to get my own meter.

 

[kniaugaudiskis]

Ok I just talked with my friend who was here when I did my 5ghz run,
He said from the meter my PC was pulling 145w when running OCCT, and to consider thats all components together. minus GPU since they were not under load.
Thats roughly what i'm seeing in the software as well at 4,4ghz. 95 from the cpu, and 45 from the rest of the system.

Blah, I really need to get my own meter.

That's some interesting numbers man. I think I'll be getting my own power meter after all!

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Ok I just talked with my friend who was here when I did my 5ghz run,
He said from the meter my PC was pulling 145w when running OCCT, and to consider thats all components together. minus GPU since they were not under load.
Thats roughly what i'm seeing in the software as well at 4,4ghz. 95 from the cpu, and 45 from the rest of the system.

Blah, I really need to get my own meter.

No, lol. Not in the slightest. Your CPU is pulling much more then 95w if its at 4.4GHZ. You need to get a meter and figure out how much is being pulled from the 8pin EPS in the system to gauge CPU power consumption alone. Again you have a 95w TDP chip, that does not mean its consuming 95w. You should get a Kill-a-watt as well too see how much your whole system is pulling from the wall outlet.

 

[Nullifier]

No, lol. Not in the slightest. Your CPU is pulling much more then 95w if its at 4.4GHZ. You need to get a meter and figure out how much is being pulled from the 8pin EPS in the system to gauge CPU power consumption alone. Again you have a 95w TDP chip, that does not mean its consuming 95w. You should get a Kill-a-watt as well too see how much your whole system is pulling from the wall outlet.

I'm no expert at all when it comes to power consumption.
That reading was from a killawat. plugged into the wall with the pc power cabled plugged right into it. 145w

What should I get to be able to measure the power on the 8pin?

Measurements on the 4770k @4,8ghz which is a 84w tdp and 22nm chip are producing roughly the same results "from the wall" as what we saw on my 5ghz run. So it can't be that far off.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I'm no expert at all when it comes to power consumption.
That reading was from a killawat. plugged into the wall with the pc power cabled plugged right into it. 145w

What should I get to be able to measure the power on the 8pin?

Measurements on the 4770k @4,8ghz which is a 84w tdp and 22nm chip are producing roughly the same results "from the wall" as what we saw on my 5ghz run. So it can't be that far off.

your two GPUs at idle will consume all of like 20w (10w if the 2nd GPU isn't pulling any at all. Im not sure how SLI deals with idling GPUs, but I think the 2nd one isn't being used at all, so the amount of power itll consume is very little, less then the first GPU at idle), and the rest of your system isn't going to consume much at all (SSD like 2-5w). id estimate that your CPU alone is consuming ~120w. Probably more.

At stock your CPU at idle and load will likely consume less power then 95w TDP. But once you start OC and increasing voltage and all that power consumption will shoot up beyond it.

Also just so you know TDP = Thermal Design Power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, is the maximum amount of heat generated by the CPU that the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate in typical operation. Rather than specifying CPU's real power dissipation, TDP serves as the nominal value for designing CPU cooling systems.[1]

 

[Nullifier]

your two GPUs at idle will consume all of like 20w (10w if the 2nd GPU isn't pulling any at all. Im not sure how SLI deals with idling GPUs, but I think the 2nd one isn't being used at all, so the amount of power itll consume is very little, less then the first GPU at idle), and the rest of your system isn't going to consume much at all (SSD like 2-5w). id estimate that your CPU alone is consuming ~120w. Probably more.

At stock your CPU at idle and load will likely consume less power then 95w TDP. But once you start OC and increasing voltage and all that power consumption will shoot up beyond it.

Also just so you know TDP = Thermal Design Power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

Thanks for that, I roughly got the idea about how it works / know what TDP stands for.

Like I was saying before about the 4ghz-4.4ghz OC, I'm actually running below stock Max VID on the chip, how much of a power increase would that imply?

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Thanks for that, I roughly got the idea about how it works / know what TDP stands for.

Like I was saying before about the 4ghz-4.4ghz OC, I'm actually running below stock Max VID on the chip, how much of a power increase would that imply?

So your undervolting then?

 

[Nullifier]

So your undervolting then?

I guess you could technically say that.
Since @ stock speed everything on auto the Vcore will spike up to 1.35
And I run normal OC at adaptive 1.3vcore.
(my sapphire board was strange it would let me get 4,4 turbo on 1.2vcore....)

Here is a reading from software on the cpu power consumption not the TDP reading. while running OCCT stress test.
4ghz with HT off

left current, mid min, right peak

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I guess you could technically say that.
Since @ stock speed everything on auto the Vcore will spike up to 1.35
And I run normal OC at adaptive 1.3vcore.
(my sapphire board was strange it would let me get 4,4 turbo on 1.2vcore....)

Here is a reading from software on the cpu power consumption not the TDP reading. while running OCCT stress test.
4ghz with HT off

left current, mid min, right peak
View attachment 61431

Software really isn't accurate at all for power consumption.