Procedure for overclocking core i7 920 ?

[GunRunner]

Here we go! This basic guide is written for the Gigabyte EX58-UD5 with BIOS revision F5 with the following:

intel i7 920 2.66Ghz (Akasa AK -967 Nero Cooler)
G.Skill 6GB DDR3 NQ PC3-10666C9 1333Mhz Tripple channel RAM
BFG Geforce GTX 295 1792MB
Corsair HX 1000 W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Power Supply.

The PC is a general work horse PC that is also used to play the Flight Simulator game Forgotten Battles IL2 (OpenGL 2).

Procedure:

1. Into BIOS and intelligent Tweaker (MIT)

2. CPU clock 20X

3. Into Advanced CPU Features
a. Turbo Boost [Disabled]
b. CPU Multithreading [Disabled] leave rest as they were.

4. Uncore & QPI features
a. QPI link speed [Auto] or x36 = (7.02)
b. Uncore frequency (x15) = 2.925Mhz (I have some doubt about this and it appears it can go higher but less than the main frequency..comments any reader?)

5.BCLK [enabled]
a. BLCK Frequency [195]

6. Advanced Clock Control [Enter]
a. BCLK Frequency [195]
b. PCI Express Freq [Auto] (I have read that this might need setting to 100)
c. C.I.A.2 [Disabled]

7. Performance Enhance [Standard]

8. System memory multiplier (SPD) [6] (This is set so that ram frequency is at 1333 or lower)

9. DRAM Timetable Selectable (SPD) [Manual]

10. Advanced DRAM Features
a. Performance Enhance [Standard]
b. System Memory Multiplier [6]
c. DRAM Timing Selectable [Manual]

11. Load Line Calibration [ENABLE]

12. CPU Core [1.3875] (This set for testing and going on to 4.0ghz) (Is it too high anyone?)

13. QPI/VTT Voltage 1.150 [Auto]

14. IOH Core 1.100v [Auto]

15. DRAM Voltage 1.500v [1.600v]

Note 1. I have found that by running the processor with Turbo Boost and multithreading disabled, and the Performance Enhance as Standard, I do NOT get the nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered error when playing the Flight Simulator Game IL2.

Note 2. Please remember this is my first stab at this procedure. If anyone wishes to comment on it, please do. Also if anyone wishes to refine it and add to it then please be my guest. My intention is to help anyone as much as I can. I will be using it to move up to 4.0Ghz and higher if possible. Although it appears that on air 4.0Ghz is probably the highest it will go!

Note 3. Whilst typing this procedure Prime95 has been running and the highest temperature recorded on any one core is 68 degrees C.

 

[sithlord]

Is the whole purpose of overclocking to get more of your current CPU without spending money.

So why are people disabling features like Hyper threading, why not go and disable all the cache as well to get more MHz but less overall speed ? :/

 

[GunRunner]

Is the whole purpose of overclocking to get more of your current CPU without spending money.

So why are people disabling features like Hyper threading, why not go and disable all the cache as well to get more MHz but less overall speed ? :/

OK...plain and simple in my case! The game IL2 Forgotten Battles, only uses one core and only one thread. So when playing that, I have a profile in the BIOS to disable hyperthreading. I also have another profile to enable it for other applications if I need it on. Eventually, I will leave it on all the time, at the moment it is off for testing.

 

[sithlord]

OK...plain and simple in my case! The game IL2 Forgotten Battles, only uses one core and only one thread. So when playing that, I have a profile in the BIOS to disable hyperthreading. I also have another profile to enable it for other applications if I need it on. Eventually, I will leave it on all the time, at the moment it is off for testing.

Thats fair enough. I prefer to push the CPU to the MAX, Overclocking is also a kind of game to some of us and Hyper-threading on is part of the challenge.

 

[GunRunner]

Thats fair enough. I prefer to push the CPU to the MAX, Overclocking is also a kind of game to some of us and Hyper-threading on is part of the challenge.

OK...I carried out some experimenting today, and this is what I managed.

I did not expect it be stable using 211x19 giving 4.0ghz. Only time will tell. My signature gives the 3dmark06 for what its worth. The TDP is only 114w as opposed to using the 20 x multi and getting TDP of 130W @ 3.8ghz and 3.9ghz. I could not get 4.0ghz using 200 x 20 that is why I used 211 x 19. Rather strange!

 

[sithlord]

OK...I carried out some experimenting today, and this is what I managed.

I did not expect it be stable using 211x19 giving 4.0ghz. Only time will tell. My signature gives the 3dmark06 for what its worth. The TDP is only 114w as opposed to using the 20 x multi and getting TDP of 130W @ 3.8ghz and 3.9ghz. I could not get 4.0ghz using 200 x 20 that is why I used 211 x 19. Rather strange!

Cool, yeah its well know they like an odd multiplier. What happens if you enable Hyperthreading and what are the temperatures doing ?

 

[GunRunner]

Funny thing happened this morning. It would not boot at the above settings. It came up in the bios saying that there was an over clocking problem and it would default to 2.66ghz. Once it started to load the default, I hit delete and loaded my 3.8ghz settings and went into Windows Vista x64. I ran that for 5 minutes and then rebooted it back into the 4.0ghz configuration, and all is fine. Very confusing!

 

[SirConfused]

Thats fair enough. I prefer to push the CPU to the MAX, Overclocking is also a kind of game to some of us and Hyper-threading on is part of the challenge.

It really does depend a lot on what you use your pc for. Personally I mostly use my pc for gaming and virtually none of the games that I play have true multi-threaded support. The Source engine has a vague, fairly sketchy dual-thread command which often causes serious crashes a lot of the time . Other games I have don't have any multi-thread support at all currently so having 8 threads for that is completely un-necessary whereas a single core running at just over 1GHz faster than stock makes a huge difference .

Also, if I need the HT support I have a different BIOS profile I can boot to for when i'm re-encoding video and the like.

 

[dmx07]

Good thread Gunrunner and thanks for sharing ure settings. I have a Gigabyte UD4P & will be trying to increase my current 3.5GHz o/c at the weekend, maybe get it closer to 3.9.

I do use a lot of Hyper-threaded apps so will be interesting to see how I get on with this enabled.