Overclocking an i7 920 D0 - 4.7GHz

today i have been busy giving my chip a thrashing

after the untimley demise of my p6t deluxe [RIP] and with it my old 920 and memory

i decided to use a new setup

Biostar TPower X58 motherboard
i7 920 D0 stepping
OCZ 6GB 1866MHz Reaper HPC

along with my existing GTX 280 SLI

the D0 chip is already a massive improvement over my old chip
although the memory and board were holding me back before
my memory would only go to 1600 and nothing more
my board was bclk limited at 200

the chip is being cooled by a thermochill triple radiator
all of the overclocks have hyperthreading enabled- this is because hyperthreading is made of actual win



STARTING OUT

i started out at 3.8GHz using stupidly low volts - easy enough

4GHz was a breeze - using 1.25v

PRIME STABLE

4.2GHz @ 1.298v passed prime for 8 hours



4.3GHz @ 1.328v also passed prime for 8 hours and will be used as my 24/7 profile using speedstep

BENCHMARK STABLE

seeing how far the chip could go in prime left me at 4.3ghz
i tried 4.4ghz @ 1.4v but got errors after a few minutes



being intreagued at how far i could go with this before the BCLK limited me
i pushed for 4.5GHz @1.4v
whilst not prime stable - it did a damn good job in 3Dmark Vantage



PUSHING FURTHER

i couldnt get stability in vantage after 4.58GHz
but i was eager to see what the maximum BCLK i could get out of the board was. turns out the BIOSTAR X58 goes all the way to 222 BCLK!

something i have yet to see even a Rampage Extreme II obtain!!!

so i had to try the next test using super pi as Vantage crashed on the third test no matter what i did.

4.66GHz @ 1.456v
super pi wouldnt do a 32m run - but the rest of the entries are impressive enough


i managed to get into windows at 4.73GHz but it crashed when any application loaded

here are my HWBOT submissions with these overclocks

SuperPI @ 4.66GHz
CPUZ @ 4.66GHz


EDIT***

after trying to get it past 4.66 i have given up

it wont do it - looks like 222 is my bclk wall

shame

cant wait to see a 950/975 in action if this is the standard of the

Pretty sweet.

I have the same RAM and I managed to get the timings to 8/8/9/24/1T @1600mhz without really trying. I'm sure you could easily beat that.

If you're push ur cpu that hard might as well whip everything else in ur build until it falls dead on its back

wow! Makes me sad i don't have one. Make good use of it!

Sweet

Very nice!

Awesome! I am selling my regular 920 now and buying a D0 stepping one! I don't care about the fact I'll loose out on £60

Definately worth seeking one of these out over any other stepping then, i7 gets more and more tempting as time goes by.

Very nice

killari said:

Pretty sweet.

I have the same RAM and I managed to get the timings to 8/8/9/24/1T @1600mhz without really trying. I'm sure you could easily beat that.

If you're push ur cpu that hard might as well whip everything else in ur build until it falls dead on its back

Click to expand...

i did that last time and my rig died!

however - this ocz 1866 reaper beats my old 1600mhz dominator hands down
i pushed it to 2000mhz at stock timings and it sat there all day laughing at memtest!!!

not bad for £100 memory considering i paid £200 for the dominator 1600 on release!

i had to slacken the memory off on this occasion in order to eliminate it from the overclock - that way i could concentrate my efforts on my chip

dmarcisz said:

Awesome! I am selling my regular 920 now and buying a D0 stepping one! I don't care about the fact I'll loose out on £60

Click to expand...

its worth it - without a shadow of a doubt
i may have got lucky - but in the right board - these chips are monsters

Geckovich said:

Definately worth seeking one of these out over any other stepping then, i7 gets more and more tempting as time goes by.

Click to expand...

i would agree
personally i wasnt sold - but the low voltage requirements compared to my old C0 stepping chip is just great
im pretty sure 4.66GHz is the highest im going with HT on

ive overclocked a lot of the 965's at work and the best one i saw did 4.3GHz

im liking this Biostar more and more
its on par with gigabyte's fantastic UD5
and beats the p6t deluxe hands down in my opinion

also - futuremark ORB system seems to pick my chip up as a 975 when its overclocked past 4.5GHz

hope they fix this

Wow, VERY NICE...... You saved me some work, I am happy to stick with 4.2 at really low volts...

Good work mate.

@ rjkoneill

What CPU PLL voltage are you using m8? I have to use 1.8952 to get 4.2Ghz stable.

In addition, I have to use 1.35V for QPI/DRAM. Everything else is set to AUTO. Other than the 1.312Vcore of course.

My Asus R2E also seems to be BCLK limited to around 200-205Mhz for some reason

that Biostar TPower X58 motherboard is a beauty!

cpu pll is two notches above auto
sorry i dont know the exact amount [on my phone at the moment/ not at the pc]
my old p6t deluxe used to need 1.325 QPI/DRAM to get stable over 4ghz

i noticed that bclk limits rampages

its stupid how a £300 extreme overclocking board gets bclk limited at 205
whereas the original 775 rampage had the highest fsb out of all the x48's

my biostar posts at 4.8GHz [230 BCLK] but BSOD's on the windows loading bar

rjkoneill said:

cpu pll is two notches above auto
sorry i dont know the exact amount [on my phone at the moment/ not at the pc]
my old p6t deluxe used to need 1.325 QPI/DRAM to get stable over 4ghz

i noticed that bclk limits rampages

its stupid how a £300 extreme overclocking board gets bclk limited at 205
whereas the original 775 rampage had the highest fsb out of all the x48's

my biostar posts at 4.8GHz [230 BCLK] but BSOD's on the windows loading bar

Click to expand...

Nice one thanks. I'm thinking about the EVGA Classified for my next board.

I like the R2E, however, it's not as good as they (Asus) say it is.

no, I agree. The gigabyte extreme is an all round better board in my opinion

Mikeey44 said:

that Biostar TPower X58 motherboard is a beauty!

Click to expand...

It sure is, I've had mine since release and it's been good .

I have the REII and with my C0 i could easily run at 215 BCLK....ran at 19 x 215.
Not tried with my current D0 yet.

rjkoneill....is that prime small fft's or blend stable??

I might tempt to buy Biostar TPower X58 motherboard and fit my new i7 920 D0 cpu and domino A.L.C coolit and I reckon it might do well 5Ghz ! Do u think it can get to 5Ghz ?

bulldog147 said:

I might tempt to buy Biostar TPower X58 motherboard and fit my new i7 920 D0 cpu and domino A.L.C coolit and I reckon it might do well 5Ghz ! Do u think it can get to 5Ghz ?

Click to expand...

Doubt it as most boards would be limited to around 222mhz bclk if you're lucky (although I've seen 230 on a DFI) with a max multi of 21x. That would only give you about 4.6ghz. I would have thought that what Rjkoneill got is pretty much the maximum you can get on an i7 920.