Really need help....Please someone - Overclocking 920D0

[pooal]

"DRAM Timing Configuration
1st Timings [6-8-6-24-5-88-14-8-24-4]
2nd & 3rd Timings AUTO "

i hope by auto you mean "quick tune" or that your setting all three channels to the same latency by just setting the one reference for all!!

"UCLK Frequency 3200"
you need to up this just one more tad, don't have it even 2 x the dram have it say 2.2 x the dram and must not ever go below 2 x dram or serious instability may/will occur, i run mine near 3.7ghz when ram@1600, although i should prob check the benifits if any of raising the uncore from 2x to 2.2x the dram.

[Mungri]

I need 1.396v with both LLC on or off for no BSODs at 4.2 Ghz with HT on. Bios volts need to be set to 1.475v (LLC off), or 1.425v (LLC on) to achieve this.

4.0 Ghz is fine at 1.344v.

[RoEy]

"DRAM Timing Configuration
1st Timings [6-8-6-24-5-88-14-8-24-4]
2nd & 3rd Timings AUTO "

i hope by auto you mean "quick tune" or that your setting all three channels to the same latency by just setting the one reference for all!!

"UCLK Frequency 3200"
you need to up this just one more tad, don't have it even 2 x the dram have it say 2.2 x the dram and must not ever go below 2 x dram or serious instability may/will occur, i run mine near 3.7ghz when ram@1600, although i should prob check the benifits if any of raising the uncore from 2x to 2.2x the dram.

Yeah auto I mean as in, ioh/ich etc..

I've set ram timing, 8 8 8 24 and 1N

Set ram, uclk and qpi manually. I've always kept ulck double the ram freqeuncy so I may try nudging that up another.

Thanks,

RoEy

[RoEy]

I need 1.396v with both LLC on or off for no BSODs at 4.2 Ghz with HT on. Bios volts need to be set to 1.475v (LLC off), or 1.425v (LLC on) to achieve this.

4.0 Ghz is fine at 1.344v.

Is the big increase in voltages worth going from 4 to 4.2? I doubt there is much difference in terms of speed but then again I may be wrong.

I'm thinking 4ghz maybe better for me as I can get it stable around 1.3 llc off, plus the temps are lower but then again I did want ram at full speed, 1600.

Decisions decisions....

RoEy

[Mungri]

You need major cooling for 4.2 Ghz with HT on. I managed to get mine down to <80 degrees with 100% load, but after much reseating and reapplying thermal paste several times, ad also with lots of fans.

To be honest, I dont think it is worth it over 4.0 Ghz, I just did it because I were bored.

[pooal]

Have you turned virtual technology off, i've heard of people getting an extra 300-400mhz out of there 920 DO chips by turning it off as it's only needed with vmware and virtual machines etc...and don't quote me on this next bit but i think it handles the compatibility options in win7 i.e.win xp mode or vista mode is run virtually.In my profile 1(4.4ghz) it is on and it don't effect me as far as i know, but all hardware no matter how alike, they always have different needs(voltages,clocks etc.) so it might benefit you!!

also if your only gaming i have tests here that show next to know dif in fps by switching HT off, as i see your into max stressing for verification of a stable overclock, the HT will be heavily used with the testing but yet not the practical realworld stuff you actually do so i.e. turn it off and check your gaming benchmarks, if they don't differ then leave it off and start lifting your clocks again, and vantage will differ i can tell you now by about p1000,
but crysis,farcry2 and dirt2 won't budge at all!!!

so do you want stable high clocks for gaming or are you after max stable clocks for heavy multithreaded enviroment i.e. prime,linx,media encoding,everest stressing

they are two dif ball parks trust me, i will now upload my results from my testing HT on and off in various games(crysis,farcry2,dirt2) and benchies(vantage,mark06,cinebench r10 and 11.5 and y-cruncher)i assure you turning it off will def help with your higher clock adventure, and not affect your fps in current DX9 or DX10 games, although you should know i have a review here of DX11 and it scales across cores very well, infact direct compute can have two threads all to itself, so next gen games will def benefit from multithreading in my opinion, so i'll post a pic of that as well... bck in halfa with all results

[pooal]

Is the big increase in voltages worth going from 4 to 4.2? I doubt there is much difference in terms of speed but then again I may be wrong.
RoEy

mmm.LOL. yeah theres a noticible dif i will show you shortly, first the other results then i'll compare with 4.01ghz to 4.2ghz to 4.4ghz after my pluto pup 'n' chips..

[pooal]

You need major cooling for 4.2 Ghz with HT on. I managed to get mine down to <80 degrees with 100% load, but after much reseating and reapplying thermal paste several times, ad also with lots of fans.

To be honest, I dont think it is worth it over 4.0 Ghz, I just did it because I were bored.

he is watercooled, not aircooled.. and gaming does not need the extra cooling only the heavily multithreaded stuff does, i have an atomic magazine review here that even states that gaming rigs only require a portion of what mediaencoder rigs require in cooling i.e. i7 920@4.2ghz on a gaming rig would be lucky to see 65c after hours of play(roey i hope you have a descent rad)where a media encoding rig at same settings would be lucky to stay under 75c

hence what i previously said "is it for heavily multithreaded apps or just gaming" the two rigs in my opinion should be tuned differently(in regards to temperature concerns that is). to back this statement i will post temps @4.4ghz between crysis,farcry2 and prime,cinebench r10 'n' 11.5....

[RoEy]

Morning Pooal,

Thanks for all the info so far and I'm looking forward to the results you're going to post.

To be honest, I'll mainly be gaming on it and I don't do any encoding. I was doing more testing lastnight and it looks like I'll need over 1.4 vcore LLC off to get it stable at 4.2. I don't really want to have to use that much voltage so I think I'm going to settle for 4ghz. Need to sort it this week once and for all. I'll try the virtual tech tonight though, thanks.

Radiator is TFC QUAD so I have the cooling power.

Many thanks again,

RoEy

[RoEy]

Waiting for the results......

RoEy

[CryptiK]

For me, 4.2 - 4.3 GHz is my sweetspot. I notice games are smoother compared to 4 GHz (especially Crysis) and obviously other CPU intensive tasks benefit from the higher clocks. I run HT on for the added power in multi threaded apps/encoding/rendering. It really just depends on what you use it for, and whether or not the gains of higher clocks are perceivable / worthwhile. I run a TFC Quad too, and temps are manageable at up to 4.5 GHz (and my CPU is very hot) so you should have the headroom.

[RoEy]

I really want 4.2 but I'm just worried about going over 1.4 vcore with llc off. Plus I think I'll need high vtt too.

I havent altered cpu pll, ich voltages etc.. so they may help stability.

RoEy

[CryptiK]

You just need to choose a voltage for vcore & Vtt you are comfortable with, and go as high as that allows. No point feeling uncomfortable to get 4.2 GHz.

[RoEy]

You just need to choose a voltage for vcore & Vtt you are comfortable with, and go as high as that allows. No point feeling uncomfortable to get 4.2 GHz.

Yeah I agree with you.

RoEy

[pooal]

..finally, heres the ht off and on comparison, sorry about the delay been off doin stuff,the list goes off, on, off, on..... i'll get some 4.01,4.2,4.4ghz game and multithreaded temps up shortly(prime, everest stress and ychruncher vs crysis,farcry2 and dirt2) including my volts and settings..

[Nuckin_Futs]

I really want 4.2 but I'm just worried about going over 1.4 vcore with llc off. Plus I think I'll need high vtt too.

I havent altered cpu pll, ich voltages etc.. so they may help stability.

RoEy

The 1st thing you will need to increase is the PLL. For a 4.2 and above stable without having to crank up the vcore you will likely need to start around 1.86 to 1.88 but it is not unusual for a 4.2+ to need or want 1.90v PLL. This is a quad and they really do benifit from raised PLL to stable out. 2nd, follow the profile I posted earlier on page 1 as a guide. Use manual voltages where as much as you can, even if set to default.

You can maybe get away with UCLK, QPI, & CPU Differential frequencies to AUTO but you should set the rest I pointed out manually. I also sugest upping the PCI-E bus if to stable out USB stuff especially or onboard sound and USB mouse for starters. Try at least 110 but some need or like 115. Notce the increase in NB/SB cores, they like at least 1.20v and it is not unusual to need 1.30v on NB & 1.35 on SB. I would play with NB/SB PCI-E 1.5v and test with 1.52v for now, lower if stable later. In CPU config, DISABLE everything but HTT for now till you get stable. I honestly dont feel you should need more then 1.35v (in BIOS) for QPI, but some do need or want 1.4 but that has more to do with RAM and timings I think. (somebody can confirm for us).

Last, but should be 1st, set RAM to a 2:4 ratio if able to hit 1600 with auto timings for now just to leave out of OC testing. Once you get CPU to where you like, go back and dial in timings and continue testing as it may change due to QPI, UCLK and timings, but at least you will know. Also, make sure no GPU overclocking is going onduring any of this yet.

Try this and let us know how it goes.

[pooal]

Did you up the ioh core as well?

[pooal]

The 1st thing you will need to increase is the PLL. For a 4.2 and above stable without having to crank up the vcore you will likely need to start around 1.86 to 1.88 but it is not unusual for a 4.2+ to need or want 1.90v PLL. This is a quad and they really do benifit from raised PLL to stable out. 2nd, follow the profile I posted earlier on page 1 as a guide. Use manual voltages where as much as you can, even if set to default.

I also sugest upping the PCI-E bus if to stable out USB stuff especially or onboard sound and USB mouse for starters. Try at least 110 but some need or like 115. Notce the increase in NB/SB cores, they like at least 1.20v and it is not unusual to need 1.30v on NB & 1.35 on SB. I would play with NB/SB PCI-E 1.5v and test with 1.52v for now, lower if stable later. In CPU config, DISABLE everything but HTT for now till you get stable. I honestly dont feel you should need more then 1.35v (in BIOS) for QPI, but some do need or want 1.4 but that has more to do with RAM and timings I think. (somebody can confirm for us).

I don't think he mentioned any troubles with usb or pci-e and i have never ever had to stabilise an overclock with the pci-e settings in bios so i'm not sure what you mean there, if anything the recomendation is to not go over 105mhz incase you cause GFX card damage and or corrupt data.Besides why would you overclock your pci-e it changes almost nothing and almost certainly nothing over 105mhz and i have tested it on numerous GFX cards.
I'd agree that the extra ram speeds etc. would cause extra stress on the QPI seems logical!! but i have never had to increase QPI VTT going from cas7-1333mhz to cas7-1866mhz manually but if done via the XMP setting then it automatically sets QPI VTT to 1.6v up from 1.175v wich is extremely dangerous for the chips lifespan, and when the voltage is lowered bck to 1.175v no stability issues occur so i am sure this is not an issue for most.

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