Overclocking an i7 4770K

[Lange_666]

Got me new system with a 4770K with the idea to do a bit of overclocking in the upcoming winter.

But after 2 weeks of reading, i can't see the forest through the trees anymore.

Been visiting the major overclocking websites/forums but i'm completely overwhelmed with all the available info.

Only sorting the terms and find a match for what i see in my BIOS seems an impossible task.

- Core (i know what this is)

- CPU voltage (and i know what this is)

- But then it starts... uncore, CPU input voltage, CPU ratio, CPU cache ratio, CPU VCore voltage, VCore overide voltage, VCore Voltage aditional offset, CPU cache voltage mode, CPU cache override voltage, CPU cache voltage offset, System agent voltage offset, CPU analog IO voltage offset, Ring bus etc...

And reading through the various articles i found doesn't help much because they sometimes use other words or abreviations for the same thing.

 

Now, where do i start and how do i sort all that stuff?

Edited October 24, 2013 by Lange_666

[Erforce]

are you looking for extreme overclocking ?

if not, limit yourself to basics.

 

multiplier to 4.3 Ghz

Cpu voltage to maybe 4.8Ghz.

 

after that, you want to be careful.

 

Note : i don't know haswell very much

[Lange_666]

Thanks there buddy.

 

are you looking for extreme overclocking ?

if not, limit yourself to basics.

Depends on what the overall outcome will be in the end. I will not start out of the blue whit extreme overclocking, that's for sure. So i'll keep it basic for starters...

 

From here on you contribute to my problem and it's getting confusing...

multiplier to 4.3 Ghz

Mmm, should a multiplier value not be a number instead of frequency (but i guess i know what you mean)?

 

Cpu voltage to maybe 4.8Ghz.

Same here, i've never seen a voltage value set in Ghz...?

 

Don't want to be rude and i appreciate your reply but if i start with your info... regarding the errors you make above... where do i end up?

See what i mean when i say it gets confusing?

[PondLife]

this is a good link:

http://www.overclockersclub.com/guides/overclock_intel_4770k_guide/

 

Haswells can run hot so be careful to stress test the overclock using "afterburner" or similar and ensure the tmp doesn't go over around 85c at 100% CPU usage. It took me around 6 hours to come to a "reasonable understanding" with my i5 4670K and I managed to get 4.8 Ghz stable reasonably easily. It's not that hard if you concentrate on core and voltage as Erforce suggests.

 

Basic:

CPU core voltage to 1.2

Clock multiplier to 42

reboot, check Ghz speed stability and core tmp using cpu stress tool

 

increase voltage in small amounts, then clock multiplier, reboot....check stability etc etc.

 

When you get to a point where the system crashes, roll back the changes to the last stable values and use them.

Edited October 24, 2013 by PondLife

[Paganus]

The ability for 4770K to overclock is luck of the draw. Some chips clock up well and others very little due to changes in the thermal binding design in use for Haswell.

 

Beyond that there are two kinds of overclock.

 

1. is the easy way when you just fiddle with the freq and multiplier to squeeze a little more out of it. You can't expect more than 10 -15% doing this.

 

2. is the hard or "real" way when you set everything stable and then set and stability test each setting to see what your hardware will tolerate. For this you need to find a good guide and be very careful.

 

overclockers.net is not a bad place to start.

[Phantom88]

Congrats on your New Rig...........Sorry I can't be of help.

[Lange_666]

 

Basic:

CPU core voltage to 1.2

Clock multiplier to 42

reboot, check Ghz speed stability and core tmp using cpu stress tool

 

increase voltage in small amounts, then clock multiplier, reboot....check stability etc etc.

 

Already had been on the link you provided.

 

Just a few more things:

What about the separate settings per core?

If i set the multiplier to let's say 40, i get 40 for the 1st and 2nd core, 39 for the 3th and 38 for the 4th. This happens when it set the overall multiplier. I can manually set all these to 40 if needed.

So i don't need to bother with all the other settings?

 

Also, i have CPU ratio (stock 35) and CPU cache ratio (stock also 35). These can be set seperatly. Some say both have to match, others say you have to leave the CPU cache ratio at least less then the CPU ratio when going for an overclock. Things like these mess up my brain....

 

I can leave all other voltage settings at stock?

[Lange_666]

Looked through some OC guides and left every setting on which i could not find much or no info on on Auto. Tweaked the rest.

Got it stable right now @4.5GHz. 1.24v

Will leave it for a couple of days and gather some extra info, then i'll see if i can get it higher (first 2 attempts today on 4.6Ghz didn't work).

[Rangi]

How is that beast running DCS?

[Lange_666]

Depends on what you're after.

Settings: all on HIGH except civil traffic & Heat Blur set to OFF, screen @ 1920x1200, cockpit displays @ 512, MSAA: 8x, HDR set to OFF, Tree shadows OFF, Cockpit Shadows ON and TSSAA ticked, Tree visibility 5000, Preload Radius 75000, No lua's tweaked.

 

As a current test i run the A-10C Free Flight Black Sea Air Start mission, roll inverted and then dive and fly towards the Kutaisi airport. When i get near Kutaisi, FPS stays just above 60 (there isn't much going on but there are a lot of objects to be rendered, certainly if you look to the right).

It ain't bad but i expected more then a bit more to be honest. 3 years ago, when i got A-10C Beta, i did build me new computer (i7 950 @ 3.07 = stock speed with a GTX480) and i had the same performance with a few settings set to medium instead of high right now and no TSSAA. With DCS World coming into play, performance degraded a lot without much extra eye-candy except for maybe cockpit shadows. In the end i was forced to run at 30FPS fixed to make it look smooth.

So yeah it runs OK but it only shows how bad the current DCS World engine is (TZeer has done a nice work to point out the rendering problems)

And i'm not holding my breath for EDGE either, it might be a new engine but the detail will be a lot bigger so i'm already happy if we stay on par when it's integrated. Also, if i look at some of Wags latest EDGE video's, i'm not convinced it will be the performance solution everybody is hoping for.

 

PS: My normal graphics settings are not that high as in my test. I don't use TSSAA and much of the fancy stuff because "for me" it doesn't bring much visual improvement (not that i see) or doesn't add anything to the overall pleasure of playing it. But then that's just my 2 cents on that.

 

PPS: Although sitting at stable 4.5GHz, i'm not entirely happy with the settings i use. Therefore the information i find are way to much contradictionary. Some say Core and Uncore multiplier must set to the same value, some say Uncore must be 100Mhz lower, others say 200 or 300. If i look at the default overclocking pre-load settings provided by AsRock, they keep it 3.9Ghz no matter what they set the core to above 4.0GHz.

Same goes for some voltage settings. Hard to find good info on it. Stuff like System Agent Voltage Offset and CPU Cache Override Voltage (amongst them) are still a big mistery to me.

Another thing that bugs me are the core temps. Even with all cores set to the same multiplier, while testing, the first core runs hotter then the rest, the 2nd hotter then 3 and 4 and 3 hotter then 4. But they all go to full load...

 

PPPS: Just did a benchmark test with DCS to see how hot the CPU would get when running DCS. The max temp was 59°C where i see 79-81°C when running Prime95 and just over 90°C when running IntelBurnTest (@ 4.5GHz that is). I also lowered the CPU Cache Voltage to 1.220v instead of 1.300v when it's on auto (CPU Core Voltage is still 1.240v), this lowered the max CPU temp when running Prime95 with around 8°C. So i guess 4.6Ghz will not be much of a problem.

Edited October 27, 2013 by Lange_666

[Rangi]

Thanks for the info, I am looking at getting pretty much the same rig (when we pay off the house, only 5G to go) so will be interested to see how yours runs EDGE.