Finaly finished the upgrade. (well nearly)

[Shambles1980]

ok so it started off with my poor old q6600 getting retired.
I got an fx-8120 with a lame mother board that could only just run it at stock speeds.
turned out the 8120 really was not any faster than the over clocked q6600 in my system so i sold that.

i got an i5 and some lame old msi board. (board was DOA) that went back and got replaced with an asus board p65 chipset, which worked and after some basic tests the i5-2500k was about 50% faster in real world scenarios at stock speeds.. This made me happy and decide i was keeping the i5.
So i decided to buy an Intel DZ77SL 50K board (z77) Still a pretty basic board compared to what im used to but it has what i wanted. "oc facility"
just playing about a bit nothing serious and have the i5-stable on air at 4.669Ghz (45x 103.8) "i did ask for 104 but thats what it gave me"
one of the cores will touch 80c under heavy load stress testing. but i havent tweaked voltages yet let alone fan settings. So thats not bothering me any.

I have 8gb 2x4 Gskill ripjaws on the way. Which should have the upgrade finished. (currently only running 2x2Gb)

All in all i am pretty happy with the i5-2500k.
it made a BIG difference in thief 4. in the bench test of that the q6600 averaged about 27fps. with tweaked settings, the 8120 did the same. the i5-2500k at stock managed 67 average.
So if you have a q6600 over clocked and wonder well is it worth upgrading..
id say yes aslong as its i5-2500k or better (probably 3rd gen if you want pci-e 3.0)

 

[rtwjunkie]

Good job Shambles! Glad to see you are so happy with your upgrade! I was the same way for a long time. I had a QX-9650 and didn't think there was any reason to upgrade...the new stuff couldn't be THAT much faster, could it? Then in 2012, right as Ivy came out, I got a 2600k SB. I was blown away! It's hard to describe until you experience it like you did!

 

[FreedomEclipse]

80'c at 4.66ghz is kinda hot. Are you running with the stock cooler?

I used to get 60'c tops with my 2500k running at 4.9ghz even after 6-8hrs of prime95, though i was using an Antec 920 closed loop watercooler. Temps did hit about 70c when i used a thermaltake frio though.

 

[Shambles1980]

after market cooler, but i will need to tweak voltages and fan speeds its just set up really roughly for now. like 1.48 vcore which is probably a whole bunch more than needed. and the fans arent running over 50% so i could drop those temps if i wanted more noise.
probably could just see how much more speed i can get out of it at these voltages and temps. but im pretty happy with the speed so will tune it down to this lowest voltage stable 1st. then see what i can do.
didnt really have the time to mess with it yesterday havent messed with these new oc ways yet. coming from lga 775 its a little bit different, but im sure it wont be to bad.

 

[Vario]

60-70*C is a good temp for Sandy, by reputation it is not as heat tolerant as Ivy. Usually thats kind of the sweet spot range. Ivy usually its 70-80*C. Typically above these ranges the chips require more and more power with limited headroom for more clock speed.

(I re-overclocked my Ivy yesterday and got to 4.5 at 1.20v, the temps top out at 80*C on Intel Burn Test, gaming it hits a max of 60*C, so thats pretty much ideal.)

I would not overclock with the base clock, just use the multiplier. On 1155, the base clock controls other components such as Sata, USB, PCI-E, speeds and so you can fry other equipment or ports doing too much base clock. You're safe with a +4 base clock probably, but the gains are so few you are better off running default base clock and running a memory overclock instead if you want more speed.

You will probably be more stable with default base clock anyway, so you may be running more voltage than needed to compensate.

Are you using offset voltage or fixed voltages?


http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=38867

 

[BarbaricSoul]

While it's nice to get the speed out of your 2500k, you are hurting it with 1.48 volts going though it. I highly suggest starting to lower your voltage immediately or return the 2500k to stock speed until you can start to work on the voltage. Keep your voltage under 1.4 volts for any longer term OC'ing.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Ouch! that's alot of volts! Go just below 1.4, and then test. After each success, lower it more, in small increments, until you get to the point it is no longer stable. Then set it at .02 or so over and test to verify. IIRC, Sandy should never go above 1.43. Andf although they overclock very easily and run cooler than Ivy, they also can't go as far on heat as Ivy can.

 

[brandonwh64]

That voltage will kill it running 24/7! You should back down quite a bit. My 2600K will do 4.5ghz 1.32V and temps are in the 70's full load.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

That voltage will kill it running 24/7! You should back down quite a bit. My 2600K will do 4.5ghz 1.32V and temps are in the 70's full load.

mine is about the same (IIRC, I'm running 1.34 volts for 4.5ghz on my 2600k)

 

[Shambles1980]

mean while..
i been tweaking the voltages a bit. "still room to tweak more, i usually spend quite a long time getting this stuff right, just dont have the time to dedicate to it. also the board annoys me with its intel theme music when it boots up lol"
any way few tweaks of the voltages, has one core occasional touching 67c mostly its at about 65c So thats not that bad really.
still have fans running at 50% max so i have room to drop those temps a few C just with the fan speeds.

at the moment its running 1.6 0.95v and 4.66 at 1.35v no turbo mode though. so its 4.66 on all 4 cores when in use or 1.6 when not. and no stupid boosts depending on cores in use and stuff.
im pretty sure i could run it stable at 1.3 if i take the time to configure it properly, but this bios is a bit strange. took me a while to find where i could adjust everything i needed to adjust.
still reasonably happy with the 65c at 100% with 50% fan speed. idle is around 33c on all cores.
I may crank the fans up to 60% but if the noise gets annoying then i dont mind 65c under heavy stress tests, as i dont think anything in every day tasks will ever get it to those temps.

p.s
Intel rated the i5-2500k as 1.52v safe max voltage.. so i didnt really worry about 1.48

 

[BarbaricSoul]

Those are A LOT BETTER settings for your OC. You are in the "safe zone" now.

 

[Shambles1980]

one thing i have noticed is i have droped 2-3 fps from my max fps in 3dmark gpu tests with this board. this really annoys me lol. and taking the gou to a faster clock speed isnt changing that. so it makes me wonder about the pci-e on the intel boards.
In real life the 2-3 max fps from 3d mark really isnt going to affect anything. but it is dissapointing.
I cant seem to find any way to improve that either, and i dont want to go above the +4 on base frequency either (the reason i added 4 to it was to try and get the gpu to perform the same as it did on other boards with this cpu)

i guess really i should just let it go and not let it bother me. but its just one of those things that will drive me nuts lol. (im wondering if some setting some where has me at pcie x16 @1.1 instead of 2.0 (think i will investigate)


-=edit=-

never mind think i figured it out, i had upped the gddr speeds which seemd to have the effect of slowing the card down.
tweaked them some more and now its all nice and ballanced here in my world of OC

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8375977

going from the scores it looks like a nice balance of numbers to me.
-=-------------------=-
3DMark Score
7790
Graphics Score
7788
Physics Score
7791
Combined Score
7806
Graphics Test 1
32.84 fps
Graphics Test 2
37.17 fps
Graphics Test 3
51.11 fps
Graphics Test 4
24.27 fps
Physics Test
24.73 fps
Combined Test
36.31 fps
-=-------------------=-

 

[rtwjunkie]

@Shambles1980: The motherboard probably indeed has you at 1.1 when in low use mode. It will go to 2.0 when the need arises, i.e. a significant load such as a game is played. With GPU-z, if you click on the little picture of the GPU on the right, it will load the gpu, and you should see it jump to PCIe 2.0 displayed.

 

[Vario]

one thing i have noticed is i have droped 2-3 fps from my max fps in 3dmark gpu tests with this board. this really annoys me lol. and taking the gou to a faster clock speed isnt changing that. so it makes me wonder about the pci-e on the intel boards.
In real life the 2-3 max fps from 3d mark really isnt going to affect anything. but it is dissapointing.
I cant seem to find any way to improve that either, and i dont want to go above the +4 on base frequency either (the reason i added 4 to it was to try and get the gpu to perform the same as it did on other boards with this cpu)

i guess really i should just let it go and not let it bother me. but its just one of those things that will drive me nuts lol. (im wondering if some setting some where has me at pcie x16 @1.1 instead of 2.0 (think i will investigate)


-=edit=-

never mind think i figured it out, i had upped the gddr speeds which seemd to have the effect of slowing the card down.
tweaked them some more and now its all nice and ballanced here in my world of OC

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8375977

going from the scores it looks like a nice balance of numbers to me.
-=-------------------=-
3DMark Score
7790
Graphics Score
7788
Physics Score
7791
Combined Score
7806
Graphics Test 1
32.84 fps
Graphics Test 2
37.17 fps
Graphics Test 3
51.11 fps
Graphics Test 4
24.27 fps
Physics Test
24.73 fps
Combined Test
36.31 fps
-=-------------------=-

That score is spot on with my own score.
(4.8 ghz / 1050 core / 2133 ram oc'd)
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8305634
P7445 with AMD Radeon HD 7850(1x) and Intel Core i5-2550K Processor
Graphics Score
7140
Physics Score
9138
Combined Score
7778
I wonder if more and faster ram will bring your physics up to my level.

http://techreport.com/news/19321/sandy-bridge-overclocking-complicated-by-common-base-clock
Enthusiasts hoping to wring a substantial overclock from Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge CPUs by raising the base clock frequency might be out of luck. A YouTube video posted by HKEPC includes a number of official-looking Intel slides claiming that users will only be able to push the base clock of Sandy Bridge systems by 2-3%. We've had little problem increasing the base clock of current Intel CPUs by as much as 100%, so what's up with Sandy Bridge?
"Full clock integration mode," according to one of the slides. Intel's next-gen processor platform puts its only clock generator on the chipset, and that clock drives everything in the system, including the CPU cores, the memory controller, PCI Express connectivity, and even Serial ATA and USB controllers. CPU cores with plenty of headroom may have no problem handling sizable increases in the base clock frequency, but the chipset's peripheral controllers and other interfaces apparently won't be as cooperative.

^^^Try running base clock 100 and see if it really matters, I would suggest again not running a higher base clock.

p.s
Intel rated the i5-2500k as 1.52v safe max voltage.. so i didnt really worry about 1.48

^^^The 1.52 refers to a vid chart that is floating around the internet and it is bogus, don't rely on that. For a 24/7 setting, I'd run default settings on most things and try for 1.25v cpu core, get whatever clock is stable at that (probably 4.4 for you) and leave it at that. You could do up to 1.35v also, I just personally like to leave my chips in the stock voltage range.

see here for clarification on 1.52 http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...is-NOT-the-correct-VID-range-for-sandy-bridge

 

[Shambles1980]

ram is very useless in this set up but i do have some ripjaws on the way should help.
but i think the thing holding back the system the most would be mechanical hard disks.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Also, in CoreTemp, you can see what your chips actual VID is, to get an idea of it's abilities. The lower the better.

 

[Vario]

Also, in CoreTemp, you can see what your chips actual VID is, to get an idea of it's abilities. The lower the better.

as an addendum the default clock vid tells you a ton about the chip's potential when you first boot it up before ever tinkering with it. If you are doing offset overclock the voltage is very roughly vid +/- offset amount.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

like previously mentioned, leave the bclk at 100 and only increase the multiplier. Depending on the chip, bclk increases can cause issues.

 

[Shambles1980]

ok so went to play a bit more in the bios.
decided to stick like this..
quite a few settings to play with that im not really used to at all. so im doing what i can with what i know lol.

 

[Vario]

If I read the picture right, 4.6 and 1.35v is good, of course try for lower voltages as much as possible but thats pretty decent to start with.

 

[Shambles1980]

have it running a longer stability test right now.
im thinking 1.35 is probably as low as i can get 4.6 on this chip and still be stable for my stress tests.

still not sure how 200mhz can get you so much better physics score though.
Wonder what im missing.

 

[Vario]

have it running a longer stability test right now.
im thinking 1.35 is probably as low as i can get 4.6 on this chip and still be stable for my stress tests.

still not sure how 200mhz can get you so much better physics score though.
Wonder what im missing.

I have ram overclocked to 2133. Green rams overclock like crazy. That might be the culprit. Lets see how you do when you get the Gskills.

If it were me I'd drop to 4.5 and get a bit lower voltage, that extra 100 mhz won't be noticeable. Chip will be a lot cooler.

 

[Trompochi]

Very nice Shambles . I know the feeling of going from LGA775 to 1155, I was using a core 2 duo E6700 and 4gb ram, 4 months ago I finished getting the parts for my current build (i5 3470, asrock z77 mobo, 16gb ram) and the difference in performance was HUGE. At the time of buying ram 8gb kit was going for $65-70, I found 4x4gb on ebay for $80, so why not?

I have it overclocked to 3.8ghz (max it can go on all 4 cores), I also tried x40 multi and the idle/load temps are the same compared to x38, maybe because not all cores can run at 4ghz, not sure. I'll probably try leaving it on x40, max temps on prime95 and intel burn test never go over 68c, while gaming 55-58c on all cores, room temp is usually around 26-30c

 

[Shambles1980]

not to dissapointed with the oc to be honest, dropped the gskills in yesterday and bumped up physics score a bit in 3dmark ~600 points or so, still not as high as vario's though
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8396005
my combined score is higher, but im not sure why the physics score would be lower unless i just need to tighten up the ram a bit.

also this chip doesn't look to be that great. it seems to tell coretemp that it wants 1.5012v to run at stock under load.
To me that could mean a couple of things.
1. its a bad cpu and wants a lot of voltage to do anything.
2. its a good cpu that can handle 1.5v no worries because that's what inlet guarantee it to run at and out last its warranty.

either way 1.35v at 4.73ghz seems to be well within the safe range, temps stay in the mid to high 60's under full load (stress test. occt/prime etcetera) So generally given what the chip says it needs to run at stock speeds stable and what i have it running at at 4.7 also the temps are within my happy range, im pretty content with it. next il tighten up the ram a bit.

 

[Vario]

Its a good cpu if its running 4.73 at 1.35. The vid is total bullshit just ignore it.