Intel Core i5 & i7 Sandy Bridge Overclocking and Feedback

[PaulieG]

I have been binning a few here are some results

http://i53.tinypic.com/so8ffr.png

http://i52.tinypic.com/r8cyzm.png

http://i56.tinypic.com/241lcnp.png

Nice clocks, but damn that's a ton of vcore for a 32nm chip.

 

[PolRoger]

Here is a screen shot of my current daily o.c...
Cooling is TR Archon with push/pull on an open air test bench.
~ 65+ hrs Rosetta 8 threads (load).
I also sometimes like to bench higher multi(s).

 

[l0ud_sil3nc3]

Nice clocks, but damn that's a ton of vcore for a 30nm chip.

those voltages were used for those benches only, for my 24/7 setup I usually keep it right at 1.38-1.4, and I have never had any problems with any 32nm chips dying on me.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Yeah it's interesting for all the worry about degradation I haven't actually seen any reports, even from people pushing 1.5v 24/7. Where before on early 45nm chips there were plenty of reports, I even ran into it on that shitty QX9650. Damn thing degraded even at 4ghz. These sandybridge chips are way tougher than people give them credit for.

 

[l0ud_sil3nc3]

Yeah it's interesting for all the worry about degradation I haven't actually seen any reports, even from people pushing 1.5v 24/7. Where before on early 45nm chips there were plenty of reports, I even ran into it on that shitty QX9650. Damn thing degraded even at 4ghz. These sandybridge chips are way tougher than people give them credit for.

truth, I have seen people running linx with 1.53v and they chips are still clocking the same speed as before with the same volts.

I am sure like most Intel, chips VCCIO/VTT/Termination voltage is what kills these guys, but it is nice that every chip I have had has not even needed 1.1v to run the memory at 2133 stable.

 

[LifeOnMars]

What are the limits on those voltages loud?

 

[l0ud_sil3nc3]

What are the limits on those voltages loud?

not sure as there is no literature from Intel on Vccio however I have found that usually anywhere from 1.05-1.08 is fine for high cpu and ram clocks.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Asus claims 1.2 is max safe for vccio, but that no more than 1.1v would ever be necessary. I've seen some people need 1.125-1.15 to run 8gbs at 2133. For me though 8gs just won't happen at 2133.

 

[LifeOnMars]

I'm currently running 1600Mhz sticks, everything seems blazing fast. Any real world difference when running 2133? I'm thinking my next addition will be a nice fast SSD, would it be more beneficial to get the faster RAM then?

 

[PaulieG]

I'm currently running 1600Mhz sticks, everything seems blazing fast. Any real world difference when running 2133? I'm thinking my next addition will be a nice fast SSD, would it be more beneficial to get the faster RAM then?

On Sandy Bridge, the sweet spot seems to be 1866. There seems to be quickly diminishing returns on anything higher than that. Your question about the SSD is confusing. Will an upgrade to an SSD be a better investment than switching from 1600 to 2133? Yes, absolutely. If that's not the question, please clarify.

 

[LifeOnMars]

On Sandy Bridge, the sweet spot seems to be 1866. There seems to be quickly diminishing returns on anything higher than that. You question about the SSD is confusing. Will an upgrade to an SSD be a better investment than switching from 1600 to 2133? Yes, absolutely. If that's not the question, please clarify.

Sorry about the confusion. What I meant was, I'm guessing there would be a much bigger benefit to buying and running the faster memory once I have purchased an SSD. Otherwise I'm guessing my HDD would be a slight bottleneck or not? But yes I'm thinking SSD first and then memory.

In other news today - My Sandy pushed my newly acquired second hand, el cheapo HD 5870 to a 30,000 3D Mark 06 score today. Had to run it at 5GHz though.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Just got done building a 2500k + msi P67A-G45 system. Nice board except for two rather crippling issues. No internal pll control which would have really helped with this cooler. The other is LLC. It has two LLC options, high and low. The way it's phrased I'm not even sure which is supposed to overvolt more, but it doesn't matter because both actually have identical values. If you're at 1.3v idle, it will ramp up to 1.336, then 1.368-1.378 depending on the extent of the load. So to really be stable at 4.5ghz idle on this build it may end up going into the 1.4s. Fixing both those issues could lead to a much more efficient overclock.

 

[LagunaX]

I have a B3 Asus P8P67 Vanilla from Newegg.com RMA.

It's a nice board - I haven't had any cold boot issues or resume from sleep issues (PLL overvoltage off).

It came with bios 1305.

Running 4.8ghz 24/7 with an i7-2600k, 1.32v set in bios:

 

[mudkip]

Nice to see this thread is living. Waiting for mITX board and then I'll upgrade to sandy bridge.. stuck with i5 750 for now

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Heh, for a moment I just had a craving for my old P6X58D. For anything under 1.3v it had ZERO voltage fluctuation. Idle, load, never budged. It was frankly pretty amazing. It was like that from launch, really doubtful bios updates will nab the same stability on my EVO. Wonder what the technical reason is for this big move backwards. I mean once they cracked perfect voltage stability you'd figure they'd carry that on to all successive models...

 

[da20valve]

2600k

All 2600K's will do 4.8GHZ striaght out of the box just upgrade your cooler and set the multi to 48. I over clock these for a living and there is NO need to adjust voltages. Just Bang up the multi and you will be looking at around 170s for Wprime.

 

[Frizz]

All 2600K's will do 4.8GHZ striaght out of the box just upgrade your cooler and set the multi to 48. I over clock these for a living and there is NO need to adjust voltages. Just Bang up the multi and you will be looking at around 170s for Wprime.

So how many 2600k chips have you OC'd?

 

[da20valve]

2600k

Probably 30 2600K's and like 15 2500K's both on the original mainboard and the new B3 stepping

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

All 2600K's will do 4.8GHZ striaght out of the box just upgrade your cooler and set the multi to 48. I over clock these for a living and there is NO need to adjust voltages. Just Bang up the multi and you will be looking at around 170s for Wprime.

And what magic motherboard are you using for this? It must be one that automatically enables ppl overvoltage which is something I have yet to encounter. If it doesn't, you must have gotten a magic batch for all of those.... because that basically contradicts the experiences of every user I've encountered. Highest I've seen stable for auto is 4.4ghz, and it can be a pretty epic fight for that extra 400mhz. Are you stability testing these?

 

[cadaveca]

You know, I did mention earlier that maybe there was something fishy about 4.7GHz...


Max multi that is available is a function of temperature and power consumption. If you cool the chip better, you can get higher multis.

Liek I said, I run low volts, and increase curret instead of voltage. I mean, my volts are abit higher, but I did that to match the higher memcontrol volts.

I had no fight, whatsoever, all the way up to 48. I do NOT have any "PLL override" or any of that stuff you guys have...I have just cpu volts, mem controller volts, dram volts, chipset volts. The rest I do via software.

When I move on to the next board, I'll really get to see if any of these "tweaks" have an real tangible benefit, or if it's placebos from brute-forcing it.


So funny, you guys were all wondering what magic I had, yet here's someone else with kind of the same story. Maybe it's time to re-evalute how you are clocking your chips...Sandbridge is not like previous chips, IMHO.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

That may for whatever reason be your experience but again that's not what people are experiencing en masse. And your experiences on a single chip make a lot more sense than him making those claims for every single chip. And I'm not really seeing huge temperature variations on these. High end air people have been ranging 60s-70s. So that doesn't really seem to hold well for an explanation.

 

[Deleted member 74752]

SB is so easy I don't even classify it as overclocking...

 

[cadaveca]

That may for whatever reason be your experience but again that's not what people are experiencing en masse. And your experiences on a single chip make a lot more sense than him making those claims for every single chip. And I'm not really seeing huge temperature variations on these. High end air people have been ranging 60s-70s. So that doesn't really seem to hold well for an explanation.

I have had parts since before christmas. I've played with more boards than you know, and more chips, too. Don't take my experience as a one-off...it isn't. I've got at least a month head-start on clocking these chips, and I'm not really saying that YOU GUYS specifically are doing it wrong, but more that the tools provided for you aren't always the best option.

Don't take it personally, and listen a bit; I'm just trying to help you out. SandyBridge is NOT like other chips..AT ALL...so traditional approaches for clocking don't work.

Temps don't matter, really, except to unlock multis. A long time ago, when these chips were first in design, if you go back to forums posts of mine...you'll see me specifically asking Intel employees that they give us 5GHz on air.

They did it. There are some caveats to getting 5GHz, sure, but as far as I can tell, every sandybridge will hit that.


Volts aren't the answer, always. Increasing volts should not be used to provide additional power, but to bring frequency swings back into "spec".

I'm slowly going through CPUs...i think quite a few of us here are already into binning chips...


I'm going slow through mine though, because I've only got one arm. It's gonna take some time still yet, as I'm not just after max multi like these guys who go for benchmarking...I awnt to paly with lots of chips to learn more about the chip itself.

That said, I know, 100%, that max multi is a function of temps. Getting the cpu to open up teh extra multis can be an issue, but when I've got it figured out, I'll post info. Maybe I won't figure nothing out, but I do not think current bioses are helping much.

Rember many boards didn't even ship with proper EFI bioses. What we have now is kinda a Hybrid bios, and it shows itself hard, if you ask me. I juat need OEMs to send me more boards to I can start going sub-zero, as I won't do that on a board I've purchased at this point.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

We're not talking about extreme conditions, unless every system he's building has the best possible water cooling solution installed in it. I'm talking about the typical temp range for high end air, mid 60s-70s. Are you saying I'll get a 3x higher multi at 60c than I will at 70c?

Asus' findings on D2 chips seem to mesh up pretty well with what I've seen people report on forums. This is before PLL overvoltage is applied.

1. Approximately 50% of CPUs can go up to 4.4~4.5 GHz
2. Approximately 40% of CPUs can go up to 4.6~4.7 GHz
3. Approximately 10% of CPUs can go up to 4.8~5 GHz (50+ multipliers are about 2% of this group)

So this guy must be pretty lucky getting those top 10% of chips. Not even that really, as those needed to be tweaked for that speed. Then again maybe there is a board out with really incredible auto settings. On that note, what tools are you referring to?

 

[cadaveca]

Asus' findings on D2 chips seem to mesh up pretty well with that I've seen people report on forums. This is before PLL overvoltage is applied.

"ASUS" did not test with retail chips, as well, which are a different stepping. If we go with "PLL overvoltage" option giving +6 or +7 on multis, each cpu that ASUS tested does 5GHz.

But that's the issue...people are using PLL overvoltage option, but aren't getting the higher multis....why?

Then, if we take Bclk lower than 100mhz, we also get higher multis. When that data was posted, basically 58 was the max. Now way over 60 has been "seen" in the public domain.

It's not about "magical" settings. There's not a "magic" auto config...every board has the same basic stock stuff that will allow this to work well.

Then, they modded it.

There are distinct differences in boards...PWM design(very important), bios(next), and added features. We are locked @ 100mhz Bclk, because signal integrity is of the utmost importance when pushing clocks. Intel has built-in features to help maintain that integrity.

You've gone, and quite simply, turned alot of stuff Intel built in, off. You don't need loadline calibration, really. If you are getting high droop, you're very simply not giving enough current. Things like changing PWM frequency or allowed current to known working values can do so much more than loadline calibration can.

You've turned off eist, C-states, and turbo...:shadedshu

Try clocking with what Intel, who made the chip, gave you. When you hit a wall, then, maybe, enable ONE of those options....but not all at once. And just because one option helps...doesn't mean it's the best one, and you should discount the others...


There's so much more to overclocking than just the chip.