Overclocking my i7 920?

[Steel Jaw]

Was up to 275mv and still locked up under Prime95, so backed off for now, turned vdroop back on dropped the clock to 3300, a 20% o/c at the moment but not risky.

 

Got to find out what kinda max the vtt can go to.

[Teej]

Turned off spread spectrum, hyperthreading, speedstep, turbo mode, etc?

 

I wouldn't put VTT past 250.

[Teej]

It's only money, man.

 

Follow your wife around on the job, record her violating a perp, send me footage, I'll sell it to the tabloids to get the heat off of you and we'll split the $.

 

Problem solved. :D

[Steel Jaw]

Turned off spread spectrum, hyperthreading, speedstep, turbo mode, etc?

 

I wouldn't put VTT past 250.

 

Affirm.

[Teej]

Update...may or may not help Mower....

 

I suddenly realized that with the overclock, Windows was now reading "6GB ram, 3.99GB available". Then I thought...wait a tic...last time I rebooted I saw ~ 4G as well. WTF.

 

Tweaking in the BIOS I found that any host freq over 182 made one of my sticks of RAM unavailable. WTF again.

 

A little searching suggested setting "MCH Strap" to "DRAM Ratio". Did that. All 6G in post. All 6G in windows. Go back in and say, "well...might as well test..." set RAM back to 8-8-8-24 and rebooted. LinX shows a 12% gain in GFLOPS (was running 50-51, now running 57). Burn test continuing at the moment.

[Steel Jaw]

Will try that "MCH Strap" to "DRAM Ratio" gibberish (LOL) and advise. CHeers.

[CarneyUK]

H50 arrived and now installed. Got a friend coming round tonight to help me out :music_whistling:

 

Will be keeping a close eye on you Mower......only coz your spec is similar to mine :thumbup: and looking for some tips.

[Steel Jaw]

Will be keeping a close eye on you Mower.......

 

Last time I heard that the dude had lube in one hand and hope in his eyes...:megalol:

[Teej]

Apparently I fat-fingered my mouse and stress tested the system at 4.159 ghz. I think it's good to go at 4.0 ;)

[Steel Jaw]

Apparently I fat-fingered my mouse

 

What does this mean? :huh:

[Teej]

It has nothing to do with your previous post. :D

 

 

Apparently I was flipping through the pages in e-leet and slid the QPI freq up from 200 to 207.8 without realizing it. I had then gone to the voltage page and taken out a notch or two here and there and clicked 'apply', thus setting the system to 4.159. I then launched LinX and let it churn for a while. No problemo. Heh.

[CarneyUK]

@ Mower PMSL!

 

I have been playing with the settings and have done some changes:

 

Ai overclock = manual

Turbo and speedstep = disabled

CPU Ration = 20

BLCK = 183

 

Dram Freq = 1467Mhz

UCLK = Auto

CPU Volt = 1.15 (advised 1.25 fopr C0 and 1.15 for D0)

 

Getting 3.6Ghz with Prime95 temps never going above 63'c for about an hour. So this seems to me to be stable, but I have had before (not with these settings) an 'Overclock failed on boot up' before. When this happens I go back to standard settings and start again. This is with Voltages set at auto and I don't want to keep starting again each time, but am not sure what sort of things could cause a failed boot when all seems well in the tests?

 

If this happens again what are the sort of things that might cause it....I am thinking more than likely voltage settings or would it be something else?? The voltage for the DRam is set to auto at the moment only the CPU Voltage is changed.

[Teej]

Well, no matter how "stable" my system seemed to test out...I would get weird crashes (by which I mean not simple lockups or BSODs) every now and then when the system wasn't under any kind of stress.

 

Looks like it was my video card. Fortunately it's not even halfway through its warranty. We were doing some VTB flying last night and I had 3 crashes that started with graphic anomalies. This persisted despite taking out all OC changes. This morning, I hadn't pulled my system out of suspend even long enough to check email and it started crashing (while still being stock-clocked).

 

So I bought a replacement/upgrade and I'll have a nice spare when my warranty gets dealt with.

 

Clock was boosted for a while again through a nice session of FC2 & DCS with no anomalies.

[CarneyUK]

@ Teej, not good dude. That's the stuff I'm worried about and why I have taken it so easy. Especially with no warrenty left and not enough dosh to cover a replacement and the fact the wife would put me on radio silence for a year!!!

 

 

The PC did boot fine this morning so no Cold Boot problems (which is what I think it is after reading up on internet.) Gonna leave it as it is for now and see how it runs over Christmas.

 

Guys/Gals, thanks for all the information and advise. Here's looking at 2011....the year of the WARTHOG!!!!:joystick:

[Migo]

Usually it's easy to clock an i7 to 3.8Ghz air cooled and 4-4.2Ghz water cooled. As long as your temperature doesn't reach 75°C it's all good.

[Steel Jaw]

Cant seem to break 3300 stable. Gonna wait for a new vid card and beta 4 b4 I bother anymore.

 

Even so, 3300, is still a tidy 20% o/c. And safe.

Edited December 18, 2010 by Mower

[Teej]

@ Teej, not good dude. That's the stuff I'm worried about and why I have taken it so easy.

 

Well the OC didn't cause the video card to go...the external bus clock / voltage was never touched.

[CarneyUK]

Well the OC didn't cause the video card to go...the external bus clock / voltage was never touched.

 

It's all them hours flying dude....it's tired your GPU out.....may even use it as an excuse to get a new GPU from the wife :lol:

[Migo]

Can't seem to break 3300 stable

What settings, voltage, cooler do you use ?

 

That's the stuff I'm worried about and why I have taken it so easy.

Don't be afraid of overclocking, you really can't damage anything if you're not acting totally stupid.

Also you can't damage your graphics card by overclocking your cpu or changing bios settings. The only way to damage your graphics card is by raising the amount of voltage on the card like crazy. I overclocked tons of cpus and as long as the temperature doesn't exceed 75°C or the vcore is higher then 1.5V you're fine. Even if the cpu reaches 100°C once it won't be damaged unless it runs a few hours with that temperature.

 

greetz Migo

Edited December 18, 2010 by Migo

[Steel Jaw]

cpu core 3.1

vtt +200

ram 9-9-9-25/74, 2:8

cooler cooler master v8

[goldfinger35]

I see there are some knowledgeable people here so how about some help?

 

I have i7-920 overclocked to 3.45 ghz with stock cooling and slight increase of voltage. Everything is super-stable. I also have 6gb of 1333 Mhz RAM.

 

How much could I overclock my i7-920 if I install Corsair H50 cooling and would my 1333 Mhz RAM be a problem? Thanks.

[CarneyUK]

I see there are some knowledgeable people here so how about some help?

 

I have i7-920 overclocked to 3.45 ghz with stock cooling and slight increase of voltage. Everything is super-stable. I also have 6gb of 1333 Mhz RAM.

 

How much could I overclock my i7-920 if I install Corsair H50 cooling and would my 1333 Mhz RAM be a problem? Thanks.

 

I am no expert but it sounds like you have good cooling in your case already. I couldn't get to 3.2Ghz without the extra cooling. My H50 drops about 25-30'c of my CPU temp at 100% load with Prime 95. I have 3.6Ghz at the mo and it runs under 70'c at 100% load so I reckon you would be good for 4Ghz+.

 

As for RAM, someone with some knowledge on here will know.

[Kuky]

I see there are some knowledgeable people here so how about some help?

 

I have i7-920 overclocked to 3.45 ghz with stock cooling and slight increase of voltage. Everything is super-stable. I also have 6gb of 1333 Mhz RAM.

 

How much could I overclock my i7-920 if I install Corsair H50 cooling and would my 1333 Mhz RAM be a problem? Thanks.

 

i7 920 has 20 multi and 21 with turbo on, right? If so with 1333MHz DDR3 you can go up to 166 bclock and 21 multi and you are already on your Max overclock of 3.486MHz. RAM normally does not overclock well at all so I would not go any higher... if you have good motherboard you could get 1600MHz DDR3 and your bclock could go as high as 200 so you could reach 4GHz but you will need better cooling, preferably water cooling. Maybe to spend money on all the extras is not worth for you the extra 0.5Ghz

[RSharpe]

Guys having problems with overclocking i7s should check this out.

 

http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/overclocking/22106-core-i7-overclocking-guide-beginners.html

[Steel Jaw]

Great beginner link dude, thanx.