Gigabyte EX58-UD5/Extreme Discussion Thread

[SteveRo]

Thanks for the quick reply, I really cant figure else what it could have been. The only other system change is that I dropped in another harddrive since then, but I have a 650watt PSU and am only running a single 8800gtx, so I cant imagine that im out of power head room to push an overclock.

I will try to set it to a 6x memory multiplier manually to see if that makes any difference when I try to start pushing the settings. Thanks for the idea. I will let you know how it goes.

sometimes you can overload one rail of the ps and that can cause problems.
you might try rearranging the power cabling so that you have a more equal load seen by the ps.

[EtherWind]

sometimes you can overload one rail of the ps and that can cause problems.
you might try rearranging the power cabling so that you have a more equal load seen by the ps.

Wow... another good idea. Cool. Thanks SteveRo. I will also give this a try.

[EtherWind]

sometimes you can overload one rail of the ps and that can cause problems.
you might try rearranging the power cabling so that you have a more equal load seen by the ps.

SteveRo, you saved my bacon!

So I rearranged my PSU rails, breaking up my 3 harddrives onto two seperate rails (2x500g, 1TB) and I also took out 6gb RAM of my 9 (removed 2gb modules). My first boot I just bumped up the chip to 3Gz with everything on Auto, and it failed out. But then pushed the voltages a small amount manually and perfect boot on second attempt at 3gz. Phew. I am back in business and can start tweaking upwards again.

I know what everyone is thinking, that 9GB is a bit ridiculous, but I do video editing with 1080p AVCHD files on Adobe CS4 and the memory makes my work purrr along very nicely. Now I just have to strike a happy balance with CPU clock and how much memory I will be able to support with my 650Watt Enermax Infinity.

But anyways, thanks SteveRo... a lot.

EDIT: Back up to 9Gb RAM and at 3.33. The RAM will limit my top-end of course, but I think the main issue was actually adding that other HardDrive which overloaded that one rail.

EDIT: Jumped the gun on the last edit. Weird, but i was trying for 3.60 and couldn't push it. Now it refuses to overclock altogether again. I didn't perform stress testing at 3.33 w 9GB, but was able to boot to Vista and post on this forum. Now nothing again. Perhaps its RAM. Will try to pull out some DIMMS again and go from there.

[SteveRo]

SteveRo, you saved my bacon!

So I rearranged my PSU rails, breaking up my 3 harddrives onto two seperate rails (2x500g, 1TB) and I also took out 6gb RAM of my 9 (removed 2gb modules). My first boot I just bumped up the chip to 3Gz with everything on Auto, and it failed out. But then pushed the voltages a small amount manually and perfect boot on second attempt at 3gz. Phew. I am back in business and can start tweaking upwards again.

I know what everyone is thinking, that 9GB is a bit ridiculous, but I do video editing with 1080p AVCHD files on Adobe CS4 and the memory makes my work purrr along very nicely. Now I just have to strike a happy balance with CPU clock and how much memory I will be able to support with my 650Watt Enermax Infinity.

But anyways, thanks SteveRo... a lot.

EDIT: Back up to 9Gb RAM and at 3.33. The RAM will limit my top-end of course, but I think the main issue was actually adding that other HardDrive which overloaded that one rail.

EDIT: Jumped the gun on the last edit. Weird, but i was trying for 3.60 and couldn't push it. Now it refuses to overclock altogether again. I didn't perform stress testing at 3.33 w 9GB, but was able to boot to Vista and post on this forum. Now nothing again. Perhaps its RAM. Will try to pull out some DIMMS again and go from there.

forgive me if this sounds obvious.
get back to where you have oc freedom and then freeze your settings at a reasonably high oc.
Then make one chnage at a time and see where it breaks
post your settings and config and let folks take a look at what you have.

[EtherWind]

forgive me if this sounds obvious.
get back to where you have oc freedom and then freeze your settings at a reasonably high oc.
Then make one chnage at a time and see where it breaks
post your settings and config and let folks take a look at what you have.

OK, so Im back at 3.6GHZ w 9gb RAM. Havent tried to push further yet, but this is what I have done to get there:

My situation appears to be that any time I try to overlock with my 3x2GB 1600 G.Skills in place, I cant touch my BIOS settings period without my rig going into a reboot loop that eventually resets itself back to defaults. BUT, if I just have my 3x1GB 1600 Corsair ram sticks in, I can tweak away till my heart's content, and THEN add the Gskill back in place, which then boots fine. When I do this, the only thing that BIOS appears to change are my RAM timings, which go really loose up to 10x10x10x26x2 when all 9 gigs are activated.

Here are my settings for 3.6GHZ w 9GB Ram:

QPI Link: Auto (6.48Ghz)
Uncore Freq: x17 (3060)
Isochronous: Enabled

CPU Clock Ratio: 20x (x180)
Intel Turbo Boost: Disabled
CPU Cores: All
CPU MT: Enabled
CPU (CIE): Enabled
C3/C6/C7 State Support: Enabled
CPU Thermal Monitor: Enabled
CPU EIST Function: Enabled
Virtualization: Disabled
Bi-Dir Prochot: Disabled

Performance Enhance: Standard
XMP: Disabled
Sys Mem Multiplier (Auto): 1440
Dram Timing (Audo)

CPU VCore: 1.25000V
QPI Voltage: 1.195V
IOH Core: 1.10V
Dram Voltage: 1.500V

So nothing exotic, and really conservative voltages obviously.

Will do some more experimentation later this week, but Im guessing that, again, if I dare touch BIOS with that Gskill in place i have to start from scratch with only 3gb in again to get started. Does that at all make sense? Stay tuned for further testing.

[SteveRo]

OK, so Im back at 3.6GHZ w 9gb RAM. Havent tried to push further yet, but this is what I have done to get there:

My situation appears to be that any time I try to overlock with my 3x2GB 1600 G.Skills in place, I cant touch my BIOS settings period without my rig going into a reboot loop that eventually resets itself back to defaults. BUT, if I just have my 3x1GB 1600 Corsair ram sticks in, I can tweak away till my heart's content, and THEN add the Gskill back in place, which then boots fine. When I do this, the only thing that BIOS appears to change are my RAM timings, which go really loose up to 10x10x10x26x2 when all 9 gigs are activated.

Here are my settings for 3.6GHZ w 9GB Ram:

QPI Link: Auto (6.48Ghz)
Uncore Freq: x17 (3060)
Isochronous: Enabled

CPU Clock Ratio: 20x (x180)
Intel Turbo Boost: Disabled
CPU Cores: All
CPU MT: Enabled
CPU (CIE): Enabled
C3/C6/C7 State Support: Enabled
CPU Thermal Monitor: Enabled
CPU EIST Function: Enabled
Virtualization: Disabled
Bi-Dir Prochot: Disabled

Performance Enhance: Standard
XMP: Disabled
Sys Mem Multiplier (Auto): 1440
Dram Timing (Audo)

CPU VCore: 1.25000V
QPI Voltage: 1.195V
IOH Core: 1.10V
Dram Voltage: 1.500V

So nothing exotic, and really conservative voltages obviously.

Will do some more experimentation later this week, but Im guessing that, again, if I dare touch BIOS with that Gskill in place i have to start from scratch with only 3gb in again to get started. Does that at all make sense? Stay tuned for further testing.

Many folks have had trouble ocing with 3x2GB, at least you now have a procedure that works.
Try not to use auto settings - you want to set these values - not leave them up to the bios to estimate for you what is best that way you KNOW what the values are.
Uncore looks nice and low for ocing - is this 2x memory plus one click up?
Do you get better oc results turning off eist, c1e, c3, ... many folks have found they can oc higher if they turn all this off - the downside is your idle temps are usually a bit higher particularly at much higher cpu volts.
After you get your oc stable with 3gb and add back in the other 6 can you then adjust back down your timings?
If you have xmp capable memory try runing just that xmp memory, turn on xmp and see what ET6 says your voltages are at - this gives you an idea of what mem and qpi volts the memory manufacturer wants you to run when at xmp speeds.
All your voltages are nice and low - should help you keep your cpu nice and cool!
Downside is increased oc at these voltages can be had only by a very few i7s. , certainly not mine.

[EtherWind]

Many folks have had trouble ocing with 3x2GB, at least you now have a procedure that works.
Try not to use auto settings - you want to set these values - not leave them up to the bios to estimate for you what is best that way you KNOW what the values are.
Uncore looks nice and low for ocing - is this 2x memory plus one click up?
Do you get better oc results turning off eist, c1e, c3, ... many folks have found they can oc higher if they turn all this off - the downside is your idle temps are usually a bit higher particularly at much higher cpu volts.
After you get your oc stable with 3gb and add back in the other 6 can you then adjust back down your timings?
If you have xmp capable memory try runing just that xmp memory, turn on xmp and see what ET6 says your voltages are at - this gives you an idea of what mem and qpi volts the memory manufacturer wants you to run when at xmp speeds.
All your voltages are nice and low - should help you keep your cpu nice and cool!
Downside is increased oc at these voltages can be had only by a very few i7s. , certainly not mine.

Yep, its Uncore at 2x Mem + 1 click.
I disabled a few more of the options, leaving on C1 and MT only for now.
I was able to adjust my timings down and then back up to 3.6 and then up again to 3.66 and then 3.8 on a slightly higher voltage of 1.325 with the Gskill in place, so perhaps my move to 6a has helped with overall stability. Im almost getting bold enough to try to push higher with the full set of RAM to see how high I can go, but after months of frustration, no more double boot errors and all that riot, I am finally happy with my machine and don't want to tinker that much more! Thanks again for the help to get me back up and oC'ing again