Overclocking the UD5 with 12gb of ram.

JonJ678

JonJ678

JonJ678

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nb/obviously a work in progress, will try to rewrite as a guide if successful.
Most people use 6gb of ram with on the X58 platform. However some people wish to use 12gb, and guides on doing this are scarce. I'm starting this thread to log my progress in the hope that it'll be helpful for someone with a similar system and/or someone will spot me doing something daft. Note that copying anyone else's settings is unlikely to work out as well as doing things from scratch as all hardware is unique.

System is an unmodified Gigabyte UD5 F7 bios, i7 920 D0 stepping (3913B213). Corsair dominator 1600@c8, one set of v3.2, one of v2.1. The processor is clumsily water cooled, ram and chipset on air. Stability testing on an initially clean install of vista 64 using ibt.

Stable settings
Initial, known stable from previous efforts.
Code: 
200x20, turbo off, HT on
6gb v3.2 @ 1600c8
vcore 1.3
qpi 1.295
vdimm 1.64
Code: 
[u]Advanced cpu features[/u]
[b]Clock ratio 20[/b]
Turbo disabled
Cores enabled all
Multi-threading enabled
Enhanced halt (C1E) disabled
C3/C6/C7 state support disabled
CPU thermal monitor enabled
CPU eist function disabled
Virtualization tech enabled
Bi-directional prochot enabled

QPI link speed x36
Uncore frequency x16
Isochronous support enabled

[u]Advanced clock control[/u]
[b]BCLK 200[/b]
PCIe 100
CIA2 disabled
CPU clock drive 700mV
PCIe clock drive 700mV
CPU clock skew 0ps
IOH clock skew 0ps

[u]Ram[/u]
Performance enhance standard
XMP profile1
System memory multiplier 8
DRAM timing auto (8-8-8-24-2)

[u]Advanced voltage control[/u]
Load-line calibration disabled
CPU vcore 1.3
QPI/VTT voltage 1.295
CPU PLL 1.8
PCIe 1.5
QPI pll 1.1
IOH core 1.1
ICH I/O 1.5
ICH core 1.1
DRAM voltage 1.64
DRAM termination/vrefs auto

4.2ghz very nearly stable with 12gb of dominator.
Code: 
210x20, turbo off, HT on
6gb v3.2, 6gb v2.1 @ 1260c8
vcore 1.375
qpi 1.335
vdimm 1.64
Code: 
[u]Advanced cpu features[/u]
[b]Clock ratio 20[/b]
Turbo disabled
Cores enabled all
Multi-threading enabled
Enhanced halt (C1E) disabled
C3/C6/C7 state support disabled
CPU thermal monitor enabled
CPU eist function disabled
Virtualization tech enabled
Bi-directional prochot enabled

QPI link speed x36
Uncore frequency x16
Isochronous support enabled

[u]Advanced clock control[/u]
[b]BCLK 210[/b]
PCIe 100
CIA2 disabled
CPU clock drive 700mV
PCIe clock drive 700mV
CPU clock skew 0ps
IOH clock skew 0ps

[u]Ram[/u]
Performance enhance standard
XMP disabled
System memory multiplier 6
DRAM timing auto (8-8-8-24-2)

[u]Advanced voltage control[/u]
Load-line calibration disabled
CPU vcore 1.375
QPI/VTT voltage 1.355
CPU PLL 1.8
PCIe 1.5
QPI pll 1.1
IOH core 1.14
ICH I/O 1.5
ICH core 1.1
DRAM voltage 1.66
DRAM termination/vrefs auto

4.4ghz settings, 15 passes ibt stable.
Code: 
210x21, turbo on, HT on
12gb v3.2+v2.1 @ 1200c8
vcore 1.4375
qpi 1.375
vdimm 1.70
Code: 
[u]Advanced cpu features[/u]
[b]Clock ratio 20[/b]
Turbo enabled
Cores enabled all
Multi-threading enabled
Enhanced halt (C1E) disabled
C3/C6/C7 state support disabled
CPU thermal monitor disabled
CPU eist function disabled
Virtualization tech enabled
Bi-directional prochot enabled

QPI link speed x36
Uncore frequency x16
Isochronous support enabled

[u]Advanced clock control[/u]
[b]BCLK 210[/b]
PCIe 102
CIA2 disabled
CPU clock drive 800mV
PCIe clock drive 800mV
CPU clock skew 0ps
IOH clock skew 0ps

[u]Ram[/u]
Performance enhance standard
XMP off
System memory multiplier 6
DRAM timing (8-8-8-24-2)
tRFC set to 100 on each channel

[u]Advanced voltage control[/u]
Load-line calibration disabled
CPU vcore 1.4375
QPI/VTT voltage 1.375
CPU PLL 1.7
PCIe 1.5
QPI pll 1.1
IOH core 1.14
ICH I/O 1.5
ICH core 1.1
DRAM voltage 1.70
DRAM termination/vrefs auto


Iterations. (now in code tags as the list is getting quite long)
Code: 
1/Known stable settings, ver 3.2, six loops, passed
2/Known stable settings, ver 2.1, six loops, passed
3/Disabled XMP. Ram multi x6, bsck 180. 12gb installed. No post.
4/Bios auto reset to stock, v2.1 in primary slots, v3.2 in secondary. Three loops passed, not patient enough to run any more at 20 mins a loop. Don't care that much if it's stable at stock speeds. 

Starting from stable settings for 6gb, with ram multi down to x6 and bsck decreased. Aiming to bring bsck back up to 200 then optimise ram. 

5/bsck 140 boots, passes a couple of loops
6/bsck 160 boots, 180 boots, 200 boots. Now on roughly 1200c7. QPI up a notch to hold this, 8 loops passed.

Trying to move to 1600mhz, 

7/Try vcore 1.3, qpi 1.355V, dram 1.66. Ram set to 8-8-8-24-2. Optimistically going to set this to 1600mhz ram. Post, no boot. 
8/Repeat at 10-10-10-24-2. Post, no boot. Repeat at 8-8-8-24-2, 1.325Vcore. Post, no boot. 
9/Vcore 1.325, qpi 1.355 or 1.375, dram 1.68 no signs of getting into windows. Giving up on 1600mhz for a while, something I'm missing here. Clock drive perhaps

Aiming for 210x20 @ 1260mhz

10/210 bsck, vcore 1.3125, qpi 1.315. 1260mhz @ cl8. Froze within a minute of ibt. vcore to 1.325, system locked up. qpi to 1.335, vcore to 1.35 freezes a little bit further in. 
11/Decreasing pll to 1.5 removes all trace of stability. The freezing is similar to 210+turbo with 6gb.
12/increasing IOH, vdimm makes no difference. Trying 1.35V qpi, vcore 1.375V. 10 mins a loop instead of 20 now. XS suggest pcie clock (and possibly TRFC) is the bit I'm missing. Well, it didn't freeze. At about 60 degrees, ten loops at 11052mb stable at the second specified settings.

Pushing for 4.4ghz rather than for 1600mhz.

13/Turbo enabled boots to windows, expecting ibt to freeze shortly. It doesn't, rebooting instead of freezing. Vcore limited instead of qpi I think. 
14/ Regarding pcie. 105 won't post, needed a cmos reset. 102 is working better than 100. With 102 pcie and a notch on vcore ibt crashes but windows stays upright. More vcore perhaps. pcie 103 no better than 102. 
15/pushing more voltage, 1.4V vcore and 1.355 qpi. Managed a pb of one loop of ibt before the program crashed. 
16/Trying +800mV cpu clock drive in the hopes of avoiding more vcore. Marginal improvement. 
17/800mV clock drive + a bit more vcore has got 4 runs ibt stable. 
18/50ps cpu skew stops post and causes freezing in the bios. Recovered with cmos reset, much love to gigabyte for putting a button for this on the back panel.
19/Testing at 900mV clock drive. Seeing 1.35Vcore in windows. 5 passes, not convincingly different to 800mV. 
20/vcore 1.4125, qpi 1.375. Threw a hissy fit, refusing to post. I think coincidence, but maybe tied to the 900mV clock drive. A couple of cmos resets later it's back up and trying one notch more on vcore. System froze after 8 loops rather than ibt crash.
21/More qpi. Hard reboot, oddly. Ran a series of tests at 4.2, think this is my new 24/7 clock. Blaming turbo for the instabilities. 

Increasing bsck beyond 210 with turbo off
22/Tried 215 bsck, vcore 1.4 starting from stable at 4.2 settings. Hangs on post, needs cmos reset.
23/Frustrated. At 212 bsck I can't even get it to fail consistently. Some reboots, some freezes. Seemingly voltage independent. Going to leave it stress testing overnight at the believed stable 4.2ghz settings and pick this up again tomorrow. Discovered my computer had rebooted in the night.  

24/Bios deleted my profiles and pump saw fit to stall. Now trying at 1.4V qpi, don't think I want to go over this. Finally saw cpu temp go over 70. A bit sick of stability testing so I'm going to play with cpu-z validations for a little bit. Concluded from this that I need to set the right pll, trying 1.7.

25/About four loops stable at pll=1.7. Had an interesting blue screen which is either drivers or a broken cpu, installed drivers and not seen it since. Somewhere over 1.4V vcore at present, seeing 1.36V under load. Plan is to find stability then bring this down. Just had a different blue screen, looked like memory failing under my old P5Q so trying more vdimm. Think the higher qpi needs the higher vdimm. Linpack crashed after 2k s, no blue screen. 

26/trying 1.6 pll despite suspicion that vcore is needed. Stable for 600s, so going back to 1.7. Clock skew 50ps, refuse to boot, cmos reset needed. Sense of deja vu. 900mV cpu clock drive, same bluescreen previously blamed on ram. cpu clock drive back to 800mV.  

27/Decreasing qpi a notch, same bluescreen. Trying more pcie clock drive. Rebooted after 5 loops.

28/800mV clock drive on both, touch more Vcore and I'm stable for 15 loops at maximum memory. 

29/cas7 didn't make it into windows, one notch down on qpi or vcore crashes ibt.

30/unstable in normal use, needs one more on vcore or qpi. trying vcore first. 

31/said instability causing trouble. Dropped to 4ghz on fairly basic settings, 1.3V vcore/qpi, x6 ram. Checked stability over a fortnight or so of folding & general use, seems good.

Ram testing
6gb at a time, starting with v3.2. Vdimm <1.7, qpi <1.35 limits. Unclock multi to twice ram multi. Frequencies quoted are as sold, i.e. 1600mhz = 800mhz, I'll halve them all if I see reason to. Settings to auto except for the big five.

Testing frequency limits for diagnostic purposes, only values I'm particularly interested in are tightest timings at 1320 and at 1760 for obvious reasons.

>5 mins Memtest stable, 3x2gb v3.2
1750 c8 t1 pass, boots at 1800 but errors in test
1550 c7 t1 pass, boots at 1600 but many, many errors
1300 c6 t1 pass, boots at 1350, a few errors after a while

>5 mins memtest stable, 3x2gb v2.1
1650 c8 t1 pass but 1700 c8 t1 fails
1550 c7 t1 pass, fails to boot at 1600
1350 c6 t1 pass, multiple errors at 1400 c6

>5 mins memtest stable, v2.1 in primary, v3.2 in secondary slots
1650 c8 t1 pass
oddly 1700 c8 t1 passed 20 minutes even though one set couldn't do this by itself

References
Overvolting courtesy of ocforums
Electromigration from a metallurgy lab.
QPI voltage strongly suggests mismatched ram will be fine if I hit it with 1.45V qpi. Not sure I want to though.
QPI/Vdimm graveyard from xs
DDR3 frequency vs timings by Anandtech, concludes that 1600mhz c6 is ideal but broadly speaking that they don't matter.

Conclusions/theories
1600mhz at 4ghz is very difficult. I suspect the issue is differences in my ram as Paul managed it with matching sets. Need to try this on lower bsck.
Vcore and qpi take you to 200bsck fairly happily with the x6 ram multiplier.
210 bsck seemingly needed more vcore, qpi but nothing else. Suspect ioh increase to be a placebo.
210 bsck with turbo on benefits from pcie of 102 or 103. Needs significantly more vcore.
6gb with turbo gave random freezes at 4.4ghz. Now suspect more qpi would have fixed this.
pll changes can help, mine has to be 1.7 but this seems to be different for each chip. Similarly cpu/pci clock drive.
qpi and vdimm related, increasing one seems to need the other increasing and vice versa.
IBT (v2.3 at least) isn't very conclusive, ibt stability is a lot easier to get than system stability
 
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Wow nice to see some proper testing.

I ran with a TRFC of 72 when ram was at 1600-1643mhz, ran my QPI @ 1.325v for 200x21 though obviously this will vary chip to chip. IOH i have never needed over 1.2v so far but may do when pushing further

I personally never needed to play around with the clock drive values and were left at auto. I have a feeling my board was pushing them a lot though (maybe upto 1000mV) as trying to set manually at something lower and working up usually resulted in instability. Only recently tried playing with the PCI-E clock when was benching 4.5+ghz but never delved further into it, haven't read up enough on it to be honest.

10 loops @ 11gb RAM, test probably took over hour and half? Did you actually sleep last night after all that testing!
 
Cheers. I think theres something to be said for being as thorough as possible, this will probably take me a few weeks. I've had no luck at all pushing 12gb at 1600mhz, not yet pushed them in isolation. YGM btw, I don't want to push high voltages through the ram if it's possible I'm shipping you one of the sets. They're behaving nicely enough at 1260mhz, will put time into ram after I've learnt more about the cpu. There's a fairly convincing argument for 1333mhz c6 online so I may end up going for that.

I think there's something to be said for pci-e frequency, but perhaps not until significantly over 200bsck. I think I'm going to leave it at 102 or 103 for a while. IOH at 1.1 was a problem, but nothing over 1.14 seems to make any difference. TRFC at 100, will tighten it later.

What sort of voltage limits were you working to? I have a suspicion that qpi will have a chip dependent sweet spot around the 1.35V mark but it'll take as much vcore as i'm prepared to offer it.

Oh, not slept yet. Was CS:S good?
 
Nice thorough testng there :D

I have the UD5 with i7 920D0 and 12GB of Patriot Viper @ 1600 (auto) to the CPU @ 200x21 (4.2GHz) all an "Auto" except the RAM @ 1.64v (8-8-24-8). And its solid as a rock - perhaps im just lucky ?!?
 
JonJ678 said:
Cheers. I think theres something to be said for being as thorough as possible, this will probably take me a few weeks. I've had no luck at all pushing 12gb at 1600mhz, not yet pushed them in isolation. YGM btw, I don't want to push high voltages through the ram if it's possible I'm shipping you one of the sets. They're behaving nicely enough at 1260mhz, will put time into ram after I've learnt more about the cpu. There's a fairly convincing argument for 1333mhz c6 online so I may end up going for that.

I think there's something to be said for pci-e frequency, but perhaps not until significantly over 200bsck. I think I'm going to leave it at 102 or 103 for a while. IOH at 1.1 was a problem, but nothing over 1.14 seems to make any difference. TRFC at 100, will tighten it later.

What sort of voltage limits were you working to? I have a suspicion that qpi will have a chip dependent sweet spot around the 1.35V mark but it'll take as much vcore as i'm prepared to offer it.

Oh, not slept yet. Was CS:S good?
Click to expand...

CS:S is always good fun ;)

Didn't think you had slept! :eek:

I was working to 1.4v for vcore and QPI, vDimm i took upto 1.7v for testing, replied to your mail btw.

Most chips do perform nicely around 1.35v, does seem the sweet spot and you do have to manage the relationship between vtt and vdimm to get it working well. Agree on what you say about PCI-E Frequency only when going for the high BCLK, i only started to play around with it at 215.

No problem about TRFC, are you running 1T or 2T?

Will also double check the version of my 6gb at home though im reasonably sure they will be the same 2.1 as remember thinking i was lucky to get a matching set.
 
I don't know if it will help you or not Jon, but I notice that your CPU and PCIE clock drives are both set to 700mV.

When you enable optimized defaults on the UD5, it sets the CPU clock drive to 800mV, and PCIe to 900mV, I'm guessing that you probably already knew this, and have already tried these settings out, but I just thought that it might be worth a mention, as I didn't see you state that you had tried these out..

Nice to see you posting up all your results so far though, it should definitely be of some use to guys running 12GB of RAM, there have been quite a lot of threads recently with people asking about o/cing i7 rigs with 12GB..

Good luck mate, hope you get it sorted soon ;)

::edit::

Regarding PCIE frequency, the UD5 doesn't like anything higher than 103MHz, that's where the hardmod comes into play, but I doubt you want to go atacking tiny resistors with a soldering iron just yet!!! :D
 
@TB that may be a sign that I should start using auto more, or that you have a better imc than me. I'll stick with manual for the time being I think, though some of the settings could doubtless be handled better by the board. Do you happen to know what qpi and vcore it's using for this?

@Paul same voltage limits here, more willing to push vcore than qpi at present if only because I'm drawing an analogy between qpi and P45's nb where excess nb voltage caused me no end of problems. I'm at 2T, I confess ignorance regarding ram though. I have a vague concept of lower = better and that some numbers should add up to some other numbers, got to change that in the near future.

@Dave thank you man, I'd forgotten about that. I'm not using optimised defaults for the simple reason that I don't want it changing things that I don't know about, but clock drive is something I haven't touched yet. Next time I'm on the edge of stability I shall try this. In fact that's now, ibt has just failed on me.

I'll be very happy if someone benefits from this. Possibly more happy in the short term if it would stop failing ibt though.
 
I'l post in my settings as well for you refence. EX58-UD5, 12GB Corsair xms3 RAM, I7 920 D0

Hope its of some use.

CPU Clok ratio 19x
QPI Link speed x36 (7.2GHz)
Baseclock 200
Performance Enhance - standard
XMP disabled
System memory multiplyer SPD - 6.0
Memory frequency - 1200MHz
intel turbo boost - disabled
Cpu cores enabled - all
CPU multithreading - enabled
C1e , C3/c6/c7, thermal, EIST and PROCHOT all disabled
Virtualization - enabled.
Uncore freqency x13 (2600MHz)
Isochronous supprot - enabled
PCI frequency - 100
CIAZ -disabled
CPU clockdrive 800Mv
PIC Express clock drive 900Mc
CPU cliock skew 100ps
IOH clock skew 0ps
DRAM timin schedule selectable - manual
then on all 3 channels set as follows
CAS Latency time 6
tRCD 6
tRP 6
tRAS 19
Command rate 1

Local-line calibration - disabled
CPU Vcore 1.325V
QPI/VTT coltage 1.295v
IOH Core 1.16V
DRAM Voltage 1.640v

everthing else is as at default / auto
 
Thank you spikey, always interested to see what other people are running. Increasing clock skew was ruinous for me, otherwise our results are similar.

Very nice latencies on the ram, 1200cas6 is what I'm hoping for. What's your cpu temperature like, and are you going to try for any higher?
 
JonJ678 said:
@TB that may be a sign that I should start using auto more, or that you have a better imc than me. I'll stick with manual for the time being I think, though some of the settings could doubtless be handled better by the board. Do you happen to know what qpi and vcore it's using for this?
Click to expand...

Ill take a look when im back home and jot them down for you :D
 
Hi,
Re my set up. I've got a Noctua 12up (or something like that model number - can't remember off the top of my head!). Whilst running Sp2004 or Prine95, the CPU seems to be peaking at 46C and the system baord just a few degress higher ~50c. I think these are good figures if the gigabyte 4GHz overclojing guide is anything to go by.
Will I try and increase it more - I may do. Stability is the key thing for me, and so far I've had an issue with this. Given I've tried 4.0GHz (and 4.25 by mistake!) and thye've not worked, I'm guessing I'm pretty close to the limits. I may try though. This is my first overclock so still very much a noobie on this.
posted the value though for peoples reference. that not to say they are the optimum and I guess each person set up is difference.
 
I'm using easytune6 from the gigabyte website . It shows CPU and system temp along with some fan speeds.
Its amzing how quickly the CPU heats up once it is being 'thrashed' and the opposite once you leave to 'idle'
 
Really enjoying this thread Jon, it's nice to see you thoroughly explaining everything you have been trying so far.

Have you tried using more than 1.65v for VDimm to see if that makes any improvement on stability?

There's a good thread over on XS regarding VDimm and Vtt, definitely worth a read if you haven't done so already.
 
while we're talking of temperatures, what is a good temp? Obviously cooler is better but over what temp should you be concerned?
I thought i read somewhere that if teh CPU hits 100c, ti will throttle back or shutdown? Is that true?

I'm also enjoying this thread, interesting. I think there are more people overclocking with 12Gb now by the looks of it.
 
@Paul, that's odd. Account seems to be behaving otherwise, could try through trust or my username @ hotmail.co.uk.

@Dave More than 1.66 vdimm doesn't seem to help, I think because the ram is running so much under spec at present. 1.7V didn't get me 1600mhz stable unfortunately. In truth I'm pretty much ignoring the ram while I mess around with the cpu clock. 4.4ghz is eluding me so far, starting to blame turbo again though it might just be time to play with clock skews. That's a good thread, though it is one I've run into. I think I'll add it to the references. And thank you, trying to explain my thinking. It's making for a very long OP.

@Spikey the general rule is "if it's stable, it's fine" though that's not erring on the side of caution. I think you should increase voltage until you hit diminishing returns then back off a bit, while largely ignoring temperatures. It'll start being much more difficult to get it stable at high temps so it'll mostly look after itself. Otherwise on air people try to stick below 80 in realtemp/coretemp. I'm loading at about 65 using water.
 
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Different temperature being measured, easytune is reading the case temp (bios reads this, keep it below 70 degrees). Software takes an estimate based on distance to tjmax, on i7 this is a different measurement to the bios one. So 70 according to easy tune/bios, 90 according to other software for the sane limit.
 
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