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i5 2500K overclocking...still not safe to push vcore above 1.38v?

Marine-RX179

Marine-RX179

Marine-RX179

Soldato
Joined
6 Feb 2010
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At the moment I have my i5 2500K overclocked to 4.6GHz with 1.38v vcore and PLL 1.9v. With Guild Wars 2 and 120Hz monitor, I could really do with some extra speed but not sure if I should risk pushing vcore any higher than it already is. I see some people disregard the warning on the stickied thread and use 1.4v or above in the more recent post...so I was wonder if there's anything changed about the safe voltage to use, or just some people decided to brave it?
 
I doubt any games would see a performance increase in pushing a 2500k above 4.6Ghz. Your GPU is the limiting factor here for sluggish performance in GW2.
 
HankScorpio said:
I doubt any games would see a performance increase in pushing a 2500k above 4.6Ghz. Your GPU is the limiting factor here for sluggish performance in GW2.
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No. When I'm actually running at medium graphic settings and the 5850 can actually push average of 90-120fps (minimum around 70-75fps)...but when killing dragon or in WvW with an army of people, CPU usage is being pushed to close to max, and GPU usage actually drop from 99% down to 50-80%.
 
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No way is a 5850 being throttled by a 2500k @ 4.6. Maybe a dodgy network connection causing slowdown with massive stuff going on?

I had a pair of 5770s with a 955 and they would never bottleneck.

Oh also a GPU isn't at 100% at all times in games.
 
HankScorpio said:
No way is a 5850 being throttled by a 2500k @ 4.6. Maybe a dodgy network connection causing slowdown with massive stuff going on?

I had a pair of 5770s with a 955 and they would never bottleneck.

Oh also a GPU isn't at 100% at all times in games.
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I appreciate you are trying to help, but I think you don't know how CPU intensive mmos can be. In GW2 when fighting the Dragon, there can easily be be 50 or more people on screen at the same time engaging into battles, and that's not even including the enemy mobs yet...

And if you actually think GPU is not at 99% is normal (not counting the time the frame rate hitting the monitor refresh rate), then you are already experiencing CPU bottleneck without realising. But then again crossfire unlike single GPU setup, it could be driver performance issue rather than CPU bottleneck...
 
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Well I mostly play games like starcraft 2 and CS:GO and gpu monitor shows my 7970 activity as being around 30-40% at most with the fps into the stratosphere.

The reason I'm suspect to blame the cpu is on most GPU benchmarking software I've tried my overclocks make absolutely no difference to the score. But you are probably correct in that mmos are very cpu intensive so maybe a higher clock will net you better performance.

Have you tried 4.7-9 Ghz? I would not exceed 1.4vcore, and always keep an eye on temps. If you haven't pushed this so far, go for it as you current high volts might be adequate enough.

I played WoW for about 5 years on a 2004 imac and my fps would be never above 20fps and at worse 1-5fps in major events.... on lowest settings! So its not all bad dipping below 120fps..
 
The new maximum safe limit is 1.425v Marine.

Personally i don't like going over 1.4 though, however if you don't mind taking the risk and can keep it cool enough then why not.

Does this game benefit from more than four cores? If so you could sell your i5 and upgrade to an i7 to make use of hyper threading.
 
Sounds like the only avenues open to you are

1. Buy a CPU with more cores. Expensive.
2. Lower the graphics quality/resolution.
3. Live with it.
 
joeyjojo said:
Sounds like the only avenues open to you are

1. Buy a CPU with more cores. Expensive.
2. Lower the graphics quality/resolution.
3. Live with it.
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1. GW2 doesn't scale beyond 4 cores.
2. Lowering graphic quality/resolution does nothing when limitation is with CPU side (CPU to near max usage and GPU usage dipping down to 50-70% is a clear indication)..
3. Or I could try overclocking the CPU higher, but as the purpose of this thread I'm trying to do some risk assessment.
LtMatt said:
The new maximum safe limit is 1.425v Marine.

Personally i don't like going over 1.4 though, however if you don't mind taking the risk and can keep it cool enough then why not.

Does this game benefit from more than four cores? If so you could sell your i5 and upgrade to an i7 to make use of hyper threading.
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Yea I recall reading the so-called new max safe limit...but I was wondering what was the cause for that, when the CPU and boards remain unchanged?
 
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True.

Asking for a definite value to stick to only makes sense if you add assuming you want it to have x chance of surviving y years, as the relationship between overvolting and reduced lifetime is smooth. Add 0.1 V, maybe it goes kaput in 5 years instead of 5 and a month. At this point you're operating it so far outside of its design params that I doubt Intel have done much testing/lifetime estimates.

If it makes you happy keep going until temps are the limiting factor, or you see such diminishing returns that you stop.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
1. GW2 doesn't scale beyond 4 cores.
2. Lowering graphic quality/resolution does nothing when limitation is with CPU side (CPU to near max usage and GPU usage dipping down to 50-70% is a clear indication)..
3. Or I could try overclocking the CPU higher, but as the purpose of this thread I'm trying to do some risk assessment.

Yea I recall reading the so-called new max safe limit...but I was wondering what was the cause for that, when the CPU and boards remain unchanged?
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I think the previous limits were imposed by intel after there were reports of chips degrading early doors.

Once the hype died down the limits were raised.

I'm pretty sure 1.425 and below are fairly safe as long as you can keep everyday temps below 75c and benching temps below 85c. Throttling occurs around 95-98c.
 
+1 for there being no way in hell a 4.6 GHz quad core is causing a bottleneck


is it possible that your graphics card usage is dropping because the card is overheating..?


o wait 120Hz hmmm
still don't know if that would cause the cpu to bottleneck? :S
 
shot in the dark also but could it be running out of vram causing the slow downs. i know my 560ti does when i mod the hell outta skyrim
 
Marine-RX179 said:
At the moment I have my i5 2500K overclocked to 4.6GHz with 1.38v vcore and PLL 1.9v. With Guild Wars 2 and 120Hz monitor, I could really do with some extra speed but not sure if I should risk pushing vcore any higher than it already is. I see some people disregard the warning on the stickied thread and use 1.4v or above in the more recent post...so I was wonder if there's anything changed about the safe voltage to use, or just some people decided to brave it?
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on mine [email protected](hoover between 1.41-1.42v) been running almost a yr now no problems play bf3 all maxed out, i also got [email protected] stable but am happy at 4.9 which i found a sweet spot

up the 1.38v to 1.40 you should get around 4.7-4.8 but all this depends on how good your chip is.it is also all down to trial and error and cooling
 
I remember seeing techpowerup say that they'd had some test beds that degraded above 1.38v and that over 1.4v was almost certain to affect lifespan. I'd like to see a source for this 1.425v limit before I went pushing that amount of voltage through my chip.
 
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