Nehalem 101 part1 - 1366 and X58

[Kensek]

Have you tried R2E 0602 Bios version.

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/mb/LG...ageII_Extreme/



P6T is 0804 ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1366/P6T_Deluxe/

[G.Foyle]

Have you tried R2E 0602 Bios version.

I tried it today. No difference whatsoever in max BCLK, max clock or SuperPI performance. OC settings from onboard switches seem to apply faster, but thats just my impression.

[bmg]

Gary Key's (bingo13 on this site I believe) blogpost on Anandtech addresses the voltage isssue http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=521

To quote the key paragraph: "Keeping VCore, VDimm, and VQPI in proper sync is the key to a stable overclock at voltages that will not shorten your processor's lifespan, well not by that much from what we can tell at this point. Intel's guidance continues to be not setting VCore past 1.55V, VDimm past 1.65V and VQPI (uncore to us) past 1.315V when overclocking. Kris will go over this in detail shortly, but in my experiences so far, getting these three voltages too far out of sync will quickly cause problems as one of our i965 processors can attest to now. Keeping them in sync and tweaking a few other settings will result in a finely tuned system that is capable of running settings higher than Intel's guidance although it is a warranty buster. At this point we like to keep VCore and VQPI within 0.0250~0.0375V of each other as you clock up, generally speaking, once you exceed about 1.3V on VCore it is time to start syncing these settings and others in the BIOS. "

[slash777]

Thx man for the infos !

[saaya]

great thread man

i emailed Richard over at bit-tech about his claim to keep uncore within 0.5v of vdimm which will keep the CPU safe

Richard confirmed on email that Francois from Intel told him this about uncore & vdimm relationship during his interview

maybe something you should add in first post
here is what Richard wrote about it

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...-core-i7-920/3

yeah ive seen that, but... hes got quite a few things wrong so i didnt really want to quote any of that and dont see that as a reliable source :P

I take it that "uncore voltage" means VTT or QPI voltage? Pretty messed up naming =/ Intel should have published a "Nehalem naming and functions for dummys"-article. Seeing mainboard manufacturers using different wording, I am pretty sure, I am not the only one being a little confused here

they actually did and its called the white papers/yellow papers
the problem is that asus and others invent new names for those voltages instead of using the voltages that are common in all the technical documents...

But it seems Richard is wrong about one thing:
"BCLK Frequency - 200(MHz): BCLK = Base clock. This affects the QPI and uncore (L3 cache, northbridge) frequency too - some motherboards like the Intel Smackover allow the ratios to be adjusted, but the Asus does not. Here the ratio is 18x for the QPI and 16x for the uncore (northbridge/L3 cache). The uncore frequency must also always be below the QPI, we’re told."

Either he was using a different BIOS or he was testing the Intel Smack Over with a 965, because with anything non-XE, QPI and uncore cannot be changed with any board I have tested so far.

Edit: Might be a BIOS issue. The beta BIOS of the X58-Extreme also alows QPI and uncore clock changes on a 920.

hes wrong with several things he wrote. there is no limitation between qpi, uncore, and cpu clock.
they can all be higher or lower than the other, there seems to be no limitation whatsoever. i didnt test stability though so maybe one is unstable or x has to be higher than y to push it to higher clocks...

and yes, its just a bios thing if you can change uncore and mem multipliers and qpi multipliers or not. im sure everybody will add it soon...

[Charles Wirth]

To correct Gary "VQPI (uncore to us)"

Yes, Vdimm and uclk are directly related and raising vqpi doesnt scale uclk, vdimm does. That is the secret to free performance, that is how I hit 25K and 18.9ns latency.

they can all be higher or lower than the other

true

Ill disclose the voltages I am running at on each board.

[Charles Wirth]

Rampage/EX58/EX58 Extreme/Smackover/P6T
3 Stage cascade -100c
Corsair 2133 and 1866 Dominator DDR3 - Samsung Rev E

Voltages

vcore ~1.5v, this is a "leaky" high IDV chip, scaling up with higher voltage is possible at a cost of runaway amp phenomena.
vmem ~2.2v for benching 2v on Vapo, compensate voltage with cooling to be safe.
vqpi ~1.35v depending on the board/bclock, upwards of 1.55v if I am pushing bclock, I run a low bclock so I usually leave it on stock.
vmem is the secret to uclk, 2.2v gets you 4.7Ghz ulck. uclk is also known as uncore.

general ratios

Stock QPI on i7 965 is x48 @ 133 bclock, if you raise the bclock to 160ish you would need to drop qpi ratio to X44 to continue raising the bclock to 180ish, drop qpi again to X36 again and that will get you out the theoretic max bclock of 220. That is not set in stone, some chips/board combos have exceeded these numbers but this rule is pretty close to what you will see on C stepping.

The uclk ratio I prefer to use is (the lowest possible) 1:2 of my ram speed (uclk runs at twice the speed of memory) and at lower speeds there are plenty more ratios to scale higher without running the sick memory speeds that I do, this is a huge gain in performance but for me it requires a lot of vmem and high end memory to run upwards of 2300Mhz (4700Mhz uclk) the memory controller has exceptional is its stability at this speed, I have not reached top speed and it will take even faster ram and more vmem to achieve that.

Runaway amp phenomena, I hook an amp meter to the four yellow wires on eight pin power cable that connects near the CPU. Watching this you will see that yes you can keep scaling up with more voltage but your chip has a limit with all cores loaded that it will runaway on amps till it crashes. I know exactly what range to stay in with cores loaded to know not to hit this runaway threshold. Keeping vcore down and disabling HT lets me run at the chips max speed, HT has an added power load on the CPU, disabling it helps gain critical Mhz.

[saaya]

Ill disclose the voltages I am running at on each board.

cool, thanks

is more leaky better like with netburst or does it have no impact?

vdimm is needed for high uncore clocks, cause the imc is limiting, not the L3 cache or anything else. But whats the performance gain of 200mhz uncore clock more or less in your experience? it only helps for mem bandwidth, right?

Stock QPI on i7 965 is x48 @ 133 bclock, if you raise the bclock to 160ish you would need to drop qpi ratio to X44 to continue raising the bclock to 180ish, drop qpi again to X36 again and that will get you out the theoretic max bclock of 220. That is not set in stone, some chips/board combos have exceeded these numbers but this rule is pretty close to what you will see on C stepping.

the actual qpi speed is half of he GT/s so the multipliers are 24, 22 and 18, but yeah... weird thing is intel told me lower than 18x qpi multis can be used, but if you read the register values for lowest qpi multiplier even on retail 965xe cpus it says lowest is 18x... :/

Runaway amp phenomena, I hook an amp meter to the four yellow wires on eight pin power cable that connects near the CPU. Watching this you will see that yes you can keep scaling up with more voltage but your chip has a limit with all cores loaded that it will runaway on amps till it crashes. I know exactly what range to stay in with cores loaded to know not to hit this runaway threshold. Keeping vcore down and disabling HT lets me run at the chips max speed, HT has an added power load on the CPU, disabling it helps gain critical Mhz.

yeah, i wonder what actually happens inside the cpu at that point, when current suddenly increases more and more...

[LinusTech]

Hey Saaya,

Here's that video I said I would do up loosely based on your guide (tuned for beginners more than anything else). Hopefully you like

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=3445555#post3445555

Linus

[Marco André]

Hey Saaya,

Here's that video I said I would do up loosely based on your guide (tuned for beginners more than anything else). Hopefully you like

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=3445555#post3445555

Linus

Nice video but very superficial imo

[Xello]

That's a great video, it might only go over the basics but this is what a lot of people will need just to get the ball rolling.

Well done mate

[saaya]

updated the first post with some more infos:

Once you boot at a certain Bclock you will only be able to bump it up by around 25Mhz before the board gets unstable.
Most likely its caused by the chipset and memory training during bootup, core i7 has a built in routine that automatically fine tunes the chipset and memory during bootup.

high uncore and memory clocks are possible without high vdimm, we hit ddr3 2200 with 1.7v vdimm on BloodRage a few days ago

[[EvQ]RheA]

2200 Mhz @ 1.7v is almost unconceivable :O

[boblemagnifique]

updated the first post with some more infos:

Once you boot at a certain Bclock you will only be able to bump it up by around 25Mhz before the board gets unstable.
Most likely its caused by the chipset and memory training during bootup, core i7 has a built in routine that automatically fine tunes the chipset and memory during bootup.

high uncore and memory clocks are possible without high vdimm, we hit ddr3 2200 with 1.7v vdimm on BloodRage a few days ago

Yes i have see the screen , impressive !!!

Chips Samsung (low voltage) ? or Micron D9JNL ? or Elpida Or ....

[msgclb]

Fr3ak asked this

What voltage do you refer to as VTT? Voltage of the integrated memory controller labeled as QPI/Vdimm on some boards?"

saaya your answer was this

only asus calls it that and its pretty confusing...
i think they call it that cause it helps clocking up qpi and memory...
but its not the voltage of the memory controller, its the entire uncore supply voltage.
it powers the memory controller AND the L3 cache and i think also a part of the qpi controller since more vtt helps to clock to higher qpi speeds.

Maybe Fr3ak understood your answer but I'm still confused. So on the Asus P6T Deluxe is the QPI/DRAM the VTT voltage that's so often mentioned? From your answer I got the impression it's ...

[saaya]

Yes i have see the screen , impressive !!!

Chips Samsung (low voltage) ? or Micron D9JNL ? or Elpida Or ....

i just checed and removed the heatspreader, its samsung!
K4B1G0846D

So on the Asus P6T Deluxe is the QPI/DRAM the VTT voltage that's so often mentioned? From your answer I got the impression it's ...

yes, qpi/dram voltage on asus boards is VTT, which is the uncore voltage.
they called it that way cause more vtt helps reaching higher memory and qpi clocks... somewhat...

thats very common, many engineers what a voltage actually is called like and give it their own name based on what they either KNOW or THINK it helps with... so if a certain voltage gets you higher pciE clocks some engineer might call it pciE voltage even though its actually the southbridge or IO voltage or PLL voltage or something else

[Harshal]

I have only done DDR3-2000 CL8 (A-Data) on P6T with 1.96V. VCORE and VDIMM was the only thing I played with.
Great therad so need to pick up few points and start again if intel allows me to keep chip for few more days

O/T: Where is my board saaya??? :P

[saaya]

right here, waiting for you to pick it up

[Oliver]

this board is for sure going to scream

cant wait to see some public numbers Sascha

keep pushing it

[boblemagnifique]

i just checed and removed the heatspreader, its samsung!
K4B1G0846D

Thank my friends

The chips samsung is good at low vddr on cas 8/9 (and a little cas 7)

Next Time for see the news Tests

[Gendo]

right here, waiting for you to pick it up

And mine?

[Amurtigress]

Hi there,

I am currently using a ASUS P5Q3 Del. board with 4 pcs. of Corsair DDR3-1600 CL9 RAM.

Hence my question for my upgrade to a nehalem system:

1) What memory modes except for triple channel are supported? Single channel? Dual? I am considering to run my system temporarily with 4x1 GB in dual channel mode if possible, and if that doesn't mean too much of a performance impact.

2) I read a bit on the memory controller/Memory module voltage not being separate yet and Intel recommending app. 1.65V for the RAM subsystem. My Corsairs are rated for 1.8V tho....any recommendations? I don't want to ditch my RAMs.

I'll see how the prices are developing around XMas...and then decide if I am changing or now. My Q9550 at 3.91 GHz is pretty neat so far.

[mike]

Best article I have read in a while here! SUre it'll get ripped left and right!
Thanks so much for your insight - helped me a lot!

[saaya]

1) What memory modes except for triple channel are supported? Single channel? Dual? I am considering to run my system temporarily with 4x1 GB in dual channel mode if possible, and if that doesn't mean too much of a performance impact.

core i7 supports single dual and tripple channel.
each channel only has 2 slots though, while some server boards MIGHT have up to 4 per channel. running dual channel is perfectly fine, and actually shows slightly better performance in some scenarios than tripple channel!

2) I read a bit on the memory controller/Memory module voltage not being separate yet and Intel recommending app. 1.65V for the RAM subsystem. My Corsairs are rated for 1.8V tho....any recommendations? I don't want to ditch my RAMs.

1.8v should be fine as long as you increase VTT as well.
this voltage is called QPI/Dram on asus and QPI/VTT on gigiabyte.
its the uncore voltage, and the memory controller is part of the cpu uncore.
so this is basically the chipset voltage... if you increase it, then it seems even memory voltages of up to 2v and higher are fine.
the rule of the thumb seems to be to keep vdimm and vtt within .5v of each other. so 1.3v vtt for 1.8v vdimm...
you will find that vtt can be as high as 1.5v without any problems for 24/7, and higher vtt means you can run higher memory clocks, so you might want to run more than 1.3v vtt.

I'll see how the prices are developing around XMas...and then decide if I am changing or now. My Q9550 at 3.91 GHz is pretty neat so far.

Well, unless you have a really powerful vga, or even 2 or 3, or unless you really see that your maxed out by cpu power and you need more, for example for vide en/de coding or other cpu intensive tasks, then there is no reason to upgrade yet.

If you want the fastest of the fastes
if you have one or several powerful vgas
if you are a workstation user working with professional tools
if you are a virtualization fan
if you want to benchmark
if you want to play with a new plattform

then go for core i7


if you want to play games
if you are short on money
if you care about price/perf

then go for an E8400/E8500/E8600...

Best article I have read in a while here! SUre it'll get ripped left and right!
Thanks so much for your insight - helped me a lot!

as long as i get a single feedback like yours that what i did was helpful in some way, ill do my best to continue

[freshy]

merry christmas saaya all the best to you and your family