Hey fellas,
It's been a long time since i started a thread on any forum sheesh. Forums have generally been quiet, wouldnt surprise me if Sandy Bridge had a bit to do with it also but extreme is back with Intel Ivy Bridge and what better way to unleash but to crank a nice CPU with the GIGABYTE Z77X-UP7.
TeamAU boys creating havoc in these sessions
- SniperOZ
- Bob(nz)
- Uncle Fester
- dinos22
HiCookie and Vivi joined in the party as well
Test system:
- GIGABYTE Z77X-UP7 (F3 OC bios > get it here thanks to Stasio!)
- GIGABYTE GTX580SOC GPU
- GIGABYTE 7970 GPU (with GHz core)
- Intel Core i7 3770K
- Corsair Dominator Platinum (Samsung ICs)
- G.Skill Trident X (Samsung ICs)
- Kingpin Fatty GPU pot
- Kingpin Venom CPU pot (AWESOME!)
- Corsair AX1200 (single card)
- CoolerMaster 1500W (for full 4WAY LN2 rig, it's awesome )
- Windows XP Pro and Win7 64bit
Evil pot
There's a whole bunch of stuff that's very handy for extreme OC crowds with this board. i'll go over a couple of things that have been very handy for me
LN2 switch. What it does is drop your multi to 16x straight away as soon as you flick it. Anything you bench to the max/on the edge would have given some nervous moments if you've ever lost runs on screenshots. i know i have and this really is a great piece of mind. it's a hardware switch and it works 100% as it should every time. It also helps keep the pot cooler when you're trying to have a quick bench session and want to bring the temp down. If you are shooting for quick benchmarks like frequency or 1M etc etc you can also use it to get a few more degrees on the CPU before you crank the benchmark. Works a treat with Aquamark3 also as you can start the bench and flick the switch while it loads and flick it back as it finishes. I used it with my 3DMARK01 benching as well between tests when i was running on the edge. You'll probably pick up extra CPU frequency in benchmarks like that easily.
This shot has a couple of other things on there which can come in handy. You can disable dual bios and select specific bios to test with. Might be handy for troubleshooting. I've mainly had it in default position to be honest.
The black PCIe 16x slot is bypassing PLX chip so you can bench single card via that slot which should not add latency. In early testing we found that 2way, 3way and 4way was actually faster via PLX chip so that should be the ideal lane config for any number of cards to bench. Black slot is also away from the CPU pot and PLX a bit so that is kinda good for single card with fat pot and fat insulation on the back of the first card. I try not to let condensation and ice buildup stop the session a bit early hence the fat foam on back of GPUs
The board is real nice for some hardcore 3D benching. We've benched with a whole bunch of CPUs and cards and it just kept going. One thing that id didnt like as most others is condensation in DIMM slots and you have to take it easy with grease or it can give a headache if there's too much.
I've only benched with Samsung based ICs like G.Skill TridentX and a bit with Corsair Dominators also as they are good for just about everything other than 32M SuperPi, that's right, even 3D01 is faster with them. I did get some emails from a couple of guys testing with PSCs not clocking too great and probably a little better on the UD5H or UP5 once you dial them in properly. i havent had a chance to play yet but just passing on what i know so far as im sure there would be a few interested guys.
Bottom line though it is turning into a cracker extreme overclocking board. I like how predictable the behaviour is and it just does what you want every time. We've put it though it's paces in a bunch of different benchmarks and if OC drops off usually you've just lost mount and have to remount or if things are playing up it might be DIMM slots if you dont use grease or have really good airflow. Everyone benches and insulates differently but ive found greasing up the board a bit with vasoline and then toilet paper in the cracks (LOL) and some towels on top with good airflow works best.
GIGABYTE Tweak Launcher (GTL) mod
For those of you that dont have a UP7 youngpro come up with an awesome "mod" for the GIGABYTE Tweak Launcher (GTL) Software. I have a full guide in the GIGABYTE Extreme OC section at Kingpin forum, jump over here and find out how to control CPU frequency with just Function keys and nothing else (it works AWESOME).
Indepth look at GIGABYTE Z77X-UP7
Here is a really detailed look at the UP7 board also which covers some serious details you won't see anywhere else
http://kingpincooling.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1974
Thanks Sin0822!
TeamAU boys had a bench session with UP7s recently and put together a few nice runs. Btw Team.AU on HWBOT is made up of youngpro, dinos22 and Uncle Fester who've joined into this one account as HWBOT will move to a different style of competition for Pro OC (teams). We live far away and dont really bench together that much but for a lot of guys that is not the case and they do bench a lot together and suspicions sometimes get raised (whether for wrong or right reasons). Anyways we've already made the move.
We took out the Unigine Heaven DX11 world record. CPU was at 6.2GHz while three GIGABYTE 7970 OC graphics cards were running at 1600/1800 Crossfire frequencies.
For more results visit www.hwbot.org.
Score link
3DMARK03 4way global world record was also smashed on the same platform with 7970 4way crossfire!
CPU was at 6.66GHz
Score link
Team.AU also dropped another score with CPU clocking at 6.7GHz and a third fastest 3DMARK01 in the world.
pretty stoked with this one even though there was a fair bit more left in the run.
Score link
We also did some 4WAY 3DMARK06 which we'll redo at some point with a better chip
Score Link
Aquamark3 CPU frequency was only possible because of the LN2 switch. Efficiency wasnt great as we didnt really plan to bench this and didnt prep for it. We'll redo this with a nice 7970 and a good OS and an even higher clocking CPU
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