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Hello everyone! I’ve been working on overclocking for the first time and wanted to see if anyone has thoughts on my overclock/suggestions. So I have a very old system, Sandy Bridge 2700k i7 paired to an ASROCK P67 Extreme 4 Gen 3 Motherboard. 4x4GB DDR3 1600 Corsair Vengeance RAM. Believe it or not, this computer was given to me free, completely built (minus a GPU) by a teacher when I was in 8th grade (5 years ago). She divorced her husband around that time, and «somehow» Pepsi ended up on his gaming PC’s motherboard. Long story short it wasn’t working and she gave it to me. I carefully cleaned all the soda off the motherboard that I could with Isopropyl alcohol and put in the GPU from my current build to test it (P67 has no onboard graphic support). Incredibly it worked., and the CPU was faster than my locked 6000 series i5 in the rig I had at the time. So, I bought a GTX 1080 for it and have been using it ever since.
It had the stock cooler and always ran pretty hot. Since it was free, I thought nothing of it and decided to see how long I could torture the system. People always say running a CPU at 90+ Celcius will kill it, so I put that to the test. For literally 5 years it’s been doing that with no problem. But as games get more demanding the processor has to work harder to keep up, and it started thermal throttling and running at 99 celsius. So I decided to have mercy, and I got it a 212 Evo. This worked magic, 60-celsius max for 100% Load. But the CPU is still 10 years old and games could run smoother. So I decided to overclock. I set the RAM to 1600 MHz and the timing 9 9 9 24 per manufacturer. And I set the multiplier to 48 for 4.8 GHz, and manually set the voltage at 1.35V. Unstable, crashed right away. Upped Voltage to 1.4 which is like the max for safe running AFAIK. Ran for a while just fine, ran cinebench fine, but Prime95 BSODed fast. Since I didn’t want to increase voltage anymore, I decreased to 4.6 GHz. Prime95 BSODed after 5 minutes of that.
So down to 4.4 GHz. This seems to work fine. I Ran Prime95 for 30 minutes and no issues. Obviously, I should run longer for the full test, but so far so good. I’m willing to bet it would handle 4.8 GHz at 1.4 volts if it wasn’t abused for 10 years lol. Silicone probably degraded by now. Anyway, I’m happy with where it’s at, but I just wanted to see what more experienced people think of my BIOS settings and performance.
Prime95 Temp/Volt
Idle Temp/Volt
OC Settings 1/2
OC Settings 2/2
Advanced CPU Config
Cinebench 4.8 and 4.4 GHz
I know my temps are a bit high during Prime95 but they don’t get nearly that high in real-world use, always under 75 and usually under 60 for games. There’s a lot of BIOS settings I didn’t really understand, so I left most alone besides what I previously mentioned. I did change CLL to 3 from like some sort of auto mode, and I had to turn core voltage from offset to fixed mode to put it at 1.4. The only other thing I changed was the Long Duration Maintained setting from 1 second to «Auto» because that seemed better.
I plan on building a new PC soon, hopefully when PCIE5 and DDR5 specs drop with the 12000 series intel chips. But do y’all think this will work for another year or so? Any feedback or thoughts about BIOS settings/Overclock setup? Thanks in advance!
Intel Core i7 2700k Flagship Showdown Review | Page 3 of 9
Andy Ruffell / 11 years ago
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Overclocking is a joy with the Z68 Sandy Bridge platform, especially on our Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z due to its UEFI BIOS which as you know, we can’t say enough good things about.
We found ourselves going straight in at 4.6GHz for our comparison tests and left all settings on auto and booted with ease and was 100% stable.
Soon after, we started tinkering a bit further and found that adjusting the load-line calibration helped with keeping our voltages stable. We found a max overclock at 5.4/5.5GHz but this required high voltages of around 1.55V which for a 24/7 overclock, isn’t the best due to the sheer heat generated and how the life of the processor will be reduced dramatically.
We also found that it was only around 75% stable, once booted into Windows and in our eyes, that’s just not good enough. Instead, we decided to drop down slightly to 5.3GHz and found that 1.5V was the sweet spot, which is still a bit higher than we’d want to run 24/7 but as we’re running on a H80 Corsair watercooling kit, the temperatures were quite reasonable.
We were able to run the above overclock for a long period of time whilst stressing the processor using Prime95. Looking at the temperatures, they did start to run a bit high, but we believe that tinkering further with settings and voltages, we could possibly bring the VCore voltage down to give slightly better temperatures.
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1. Introduction2. Test Procedure3. Overclocking4. CPU Benchmarks5. Gaming Benchmarks6. System Benchmarks7. Power Consumption8. Temperatures9. Final Thoughts10. View All Pages |
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Intel Core i7-2700K and Core i7-3820 processors
Nearly two years ago, the first six-core mass-purpose Intel processors appeared, and in the summer of 2010 the company released a similar model outside the extreme family. However, the Core i7-970 initially did not meet the expectations of many, because Intel invented a new price position for it: $885, which was too close to $999 for the top. That is, in 2010, the company took advantage of the LGA1366 platform update as an excuse to «compact the ranks» in the segment above $500 — there were two models in it, but there were three. But the recent announcement of LGA2011 led to a completely different effect: there are more processors in the $300-400 segment. Until the last months of 2011, the Core i7-2600 ($294-$305), Core i7-960 ($294-$305) and Core i7-2600K ($317-$326), and now the Core i7-2700K ($332-$342) has been added to them.
This processor is interesting not only for the new price level: please note that it exists only in the «for overclockers» version — with unlocked multipliers.
Why buy one is not clear. If overclocking, then there is no point in paying $15 for an extra 100 MHz, since the 2600K will eventually overclock to the same frequencies. And if not for overclocking, then the processor must be compared with the “regular” 2600, so the fee for these unfortunate 100 MHz automatically rises to $40. But it’s clear why they should release such a thing: 2600/2600K had existed on the market for almost a year by that time, and it was necessary to update the line at least formally. Usually, such updates took place in parallel with the abolition or reduction in price of the former older model, but since in the segment above $ 200 Intel already competes only with itself … Why not increase the degree of this competition? 🙂 Whoever wants to save money will buy 2600 or 2600K (depending on the goals), and for whom this issue is unprincipled, it can bring the company extra money for a «newer processor».
But from a technical point of view, there was nothing interesting in the Core i7-2700K, which is why we were in no hurry to test it — the results could have been predicted in advance.
What has changed now? Finally, a budget processor for the non-budget LGA2011 platform has appeared, namely the Core i7-3820. The liabilities are the low budget of the platform and only four cores (as in the older models for LGA1155), the assets are platform preferences in the form of the number of memory slots and / or PCIe lines and the low price: since the processor de jure replaces the Core i7-960, and it costs the same as the latest or Core i7-2600. At the same time, it has a higher starting frequency than even 2700K, and a cache memory capacity increased to 10 MiB. Well, the blocked multiplier, taking into account the design, is not so terrible: for LGA2011, the possibility of bus overclocking was partially returned. In any case, you can switch it from 100 MHz to 125 MHz on any board, and not every processor can withstand this without lowering the multiplier. That is, in principle, the only thing that can interfere with the new processor is the high cost of motherboards. However, first of all, it turned out to be not so high — Intel estimated one of the models at only $200, which is quite comparable with the top motherboards based on the Z68.
And secondly, the higher price is sometimes easily offset by various LGA2011 improvements. In any case, if there is confidence in the need for two full-fledged PCIe x16 slots — for LGA2011 this is always done (including on boards for $ 200), and for LGA1155 it is implemented only using additional bridges, and all the corresponding boards can be characterized in two words — expensive exotic 🙂 More expensive than the average board with LGA2011.
6/12
003
Testing
Traditionally, we divide all tests into a number of groups and show the average result for a group of tests/applications on the diagrams (for details on the testing methodology, see a separate article).
The results on the diagrams are given in points, the performance of the iXBT.com reference test system of the 2011 sample is taken as 100 points. It is based on the AMD Athlon II X4 620 processor, but the amount of memory (8 GB) and the video card (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1280 MB by Palit) are standard for all tests of the «main line» and can only be changed as part of special studies. Those who are interested in more detailed information are again traditionally invited to download a table in Microsoft Excel format, in which all the results are shown both in converted points and in «natural» form.
Interactive work in 3D packages
A very curious distribution of roles, but easily explained: the Core i7-2700K has a turbo frequency when loading one core of 3.9 GHz, while the rest have only 3.8 GHz. But they are also unequal, since the Core i7-3820 has the highest starting frequency, and boost is a little easier for it than 2600, due to a larger supply of heat pack. And in 3930K, on the contrary, the starting frequency is the lowest of all.
That is, the maximum solves not everything — it can also decrease, for example, due to the migration of threads, even in a formally single-threaded mode. Which explains the good results of the «non-aggressive» Turbo Boost.
Final rendering of 3D scenes
No one disputed the leadership of 3930K here and didn’t try — it’s the only six-core out of the whole four. And the rest lined up almost in order of clock frequency when loading all the cores. With some advantage of the Core i7-2700K in terms of its utilization.
Packing and unpacking
One of the subtests has good multithreading support, all of them have a high need for cache memory, so here the 3820 looks a little better than the 2700K.
Audio encoding
And here the quad-core trio (the results of 3930K, again, you can not comment on) lined up almost exactly in accordance with the clock frequencies. However, it would be strange to see the opposite.
Compilation
But we saw! 🙂 Although here, it seems, cache memory is important, and the speed of working with RAM.
And multithreading is well involved. However, all this did not allow the 3820 to break away far from the 2700K — at least as much as the latter is ahead of the 2600.
Mathematical and engineering calculations
MATLAB is more or less successfully trying to use multithreading, which allows the 3930K to take the lead. But otherwise, everything is almost the same as in the very first group of tests, and for the same reasons.
Raster graphics
The situation is similar to the previous case, although there are a little more multi-threaded tests here. But this only affects the position of the Core i7-3930K, and the rest of the participants are identical in terms of the number of cores, so the clock frequency determines everything.
Vector graphics
And here both applications, on the contrary, are purely single-threaded, and a large cache seems to only interfere with them (which was noticeable on other processors) with all the ensuing consequences — LGA2011 processors turn out to be outsiders, and 3820 is faster than 3930K 🙂
Video encoding
We leave without comment the results of the only six-core model in today’s test, while the others, as expected, lined up in the ranks of clock frequencies in the all-core load mode.
Everything is as in rendering, which could be assumed initially.
Office software
Only FineReader uses a lot of calculation threads, but since this is one of the most «heavy» tests, it was enough to bring 3930K to the first place. And he also helped the 3820 to bypass the 2600 — when loading all the cores, the first one has a slightly higher frequency. And the rest of the tests are single-threaded, so the 2700K managed to climb to the second position.
Java
Testing six-core models, we called the Java machine ideally scalable in terms of the number of threads, which was once again confirmed. And the trio of identical (by this parameter) processors once again lined up in terms of clock frequency.
Games
Just like that: a little more, and everyone would be the same. Only the i7-2600 spoiled our mass a little, although the difference of half a percent can hardly be considered a significant damage 🙂 Conclusion? $300 (and more) processors are way too powerful for a typical gaming PC.
In the unusual (i.e., if you plug in two or three top-end video cards), maybe there will be some other difference, but for one single-chip video card, there will simply be too many of them. All without exception.
Games: low quality
Generally speaking, this experimental group was introduced into the methodology for testing all sorts of integrated graphics cores and other obscenities (from the point of view of an orthodox gamer), but since the processors taken today for research are too productive for a single video card, we decided to look : what will happen if the picture of the game is radically worsened?
And almost nothing has changed! There is some kind of difference, but to call it a «difference» the language turns with great difficulty. However, it is clear that these results cannot be unambiguously transferred to, say, a pair of Radeon HD 7970 in a video mode closer to life — with a decrease in quality, the load not only on the video, but also on the processor decreases, so it’s not worth drawing conclusions about the future based on “low-quality tests” (which many colleagues sin).
The future may turn out to be completely different 🙂
Total
The strength of LGA1155 is the cheapness of the platform. In fact, if you need a powerful processor, and everything else can be left at the average level, then we will get the same results on the cheapest motherboard based on the H61 chipset, which costs only $50. And boards based on P67 are already found for a hundred dollars apiece, so an overclocker can buy one in pair with a Core i7-2600K and enjoy it 🙂
Naturally, nothing like this happens at LGA2011: the bottom bar is around $200, and most boards cost $300 or more. But we still venture to say that the strong point of the Core i7-3820 is also in the cheapness of the platform. Only already a few another in terms of platform functionality. For example, if for some reason you need to have a pair of full-speed PCIe x16 slots or use three video cards, then suitable motherboard models for LGA1155 will cost more than for LGA2011, due to the need for additional (and far from free) bridges.
And if you need 32 GB of memory, then the difference between the cost of four 8 GB modules and eight 4 GB modules can easily eat up at least $ 50 savings on the board. Accordingly, if both are required, the problem of choice in general is reduced to a choice from one item. But a six-core processor may not be in high demand, so the opportunity to purchase a cheaper quad-core processor will come in handy. At the same time, do not forget that the wholesale price of the Core i7-3820 is equal to that of the Core i7-2600, the overclocking capabilities (albeit in a slightly different way) are almost the same as those of the more expensive 2600K / 2700K, and the performance in normal mode is slightly higher on average. than the 2700K (by the way, here’s another minus $50 in savings, if you suddenly needed the fastest quad-core, but you’re not interested in overclocking). Thus, our initial skepticism about the usefulness of releasing such a model turned out to be unjustified. Well, it’s nice to be wrong.
We thank the companies Corsair , G.Skill , Palit and F-Center
for their help in completing the test benches.
March 20, 2012
Andrey Kozhemyako
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How to overclock an Intel Core i5-2500K processor to 4400 MHz?
This manual is addressed to both owners of the ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z motherboard, and any other base based on the Intel P67 or Z68 chipset (say, Sabertooth P67, Maximus IV Extreme and Extreme-Z), because all the recommendations mentioned here are universal .
Moreover, using the method described below, you can overclock not only the Core i5-2500K CPU, but also the Core i7-2600K, as well as the Core i7-2700K (these stones belong to the Sandy Bridge family). The main thing, as you know, is to monitor the temperature of the cores and the power subsystem, do not apply too high voltage to the components and increase the clock frequencies gradually.
Try not to increase the voltage on the CPU above 1.3 V.
For successful and efficient overclocking, you will need a good cooling system (Cooler Master 212+ was used in this material). It does not have to be liquid, a good tower cooler (with one or two fans) will do. With boxed CO, which is bundled with processors from Intel, above 4000 MHz climb definitely will not succeed.
Don’t forget about high-quality power, as the system consumes more power in overclocking mode than in nominal mode. It is advisable to get a powerful PSU from a well-known manufacturer with an 80 Plus Gold certificate.
Before overclocking, it is advisable to update the BIOS of the motherboard. The latest firmware will almost certainly offer additional stability, compatibility (say, with RAM modules), and new options that can come in handy.
The process of overclocking the Intel Core i5-2500K CPU and RAM on the ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z motherboard is as follows:
- enter the BIOS (after turning on the PC, press the Del button)
- move to the Extreme Tweaker tab
- Ai Overclock Tuner option is switched to Manual mode
- BCLK/PEG Frequency parameter fixed at 100 units
- in the Turbo Ratio item, select By All Cores
- for the Maximum Turbo Ratio setting option, set the value 44
- Memory Frequency left in Auto or XMP mode
- CPU Voltage set to Manual mode
- in the CPU Manual Voltage we write 1.250 V (you can use the +/- keys on the keyboard)
- in the DRAM Voltage window, enter the value that is standard for your modules (usually 1.
5 V), or leave the Auto - press F10 and restart the PC
option
Maximum Turbo Ratio setting
BIOS settings
Timings
CPU Voltage
Do not worry if the PC restarts several times or even turns off before entering the OS directly. This is the normal process for applying new settings.
Now it is worth downloading and installing the following programs:
- CPU-Z
- AI Suite, HWiNFO, HWMonitor or CoreTemp
- LinX, Prime95 or OCCT
This is your arsenal for testing your PC for stability. If the system is under load, which is formed by the LinX utilities, Prime95 and OCCT, does not reboot, does not freeze or crash with a BSOD, so everything is in order.
Watch the temperature of « stone» .
Monitor the temperature of stone . An indicator above 65-70 degrees is an alarming factor. It indicates that the current cooling system can not cope with the load.
If the stress tests were not successful, return to the BIOS and set the voltage to the CPU (CPU Manual Voltage parameter).