I7 920 with dummy oc / turbo mode question

[alan342]

I posted this in the wrong forum, and couldn't find a way to request to have it moved. My apologies for double posting, I'll transfer what has been said already and ask for help in the proper place. Here are the posts.

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I recently received all the parts in the mail and assembled my new i7 920 rig, and also took my first step into some light (hopefully) idiot proof overclocking.

I just wanted to confirm with somebody that knew better than me, the steps I took are the correct steps:

Going into the bios, I enabled the dummy oc feature, as well as turbo mode.. taking the cpu from 2.67 to 3.35 ghz.

Then, I adjusted the ram settings.. first switching to xmp profile 1, and then going back into the bios and changing the speed from 1067 to 1600 after noticing the frequency hadn't raised properly. It's now at 800mhz.

Now, I made no adjustments to voltage or anything else.. and my main question is simply- is that all I need to do? I would hate to think I made these changes without making other necessary changes to keep things running smoothly and safely. I would hope that with a dummy oc / turbo mode feature.. and xmp profiles for the ocz ram, it would make the necessary changes for me.

Idle temperature hovered around the mid 30s at stock settings, and now is fairly consistent at 40c. While playing a game it can easily push to 60c and higher at times. Everything seems very stable and I've had no issues, but with this being my first attempt at altering ANYTHING in the bios, I would feel more comfortable asking the pros.

i7 920
evga x58
6gb ocz xmp ddr3 1600
dark knight cooler w/arctic silver 5
gtx 275
coolermaster haf 922

If any other info is needed, ask and I'll be happy to report. Thanks everyone.

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I was then pointed towards prime95 for testing, and I did so.. then followed up with this post.

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I downloaded prime95 64 bit and within 3 minutes, 4 of the 8 tests had failed. Going back into bios I turned the ram back down from 1600 to 1067. My suspicion is that for some reason the pre set profiles (xmp) for the ram aren't supported, and my bumping it up to 1600 didn't automatically make the necessary adjustments to voltage and such.

I'm not celebrating yet, but have been running prime95 now for 45+ minutes without issue. Temps are around 80c during the stress test, is this normal?

If the ram settings are the culprit, what is the proper way to get it to 1600mhz?

Thanks for the help, I really am a dummy when it comes to this stuff. Everybody has to start somewhere.

 

[alan342]

I hate to bump, but 42 views on the oc forum and nobody can help me with basic ram settings adjustment?

 

[overshocked]

^ Sorry nowon posted... i would have but somehow i missed your post

But the problem reason you got errors in prime 95 is more than likely a voltage problem. Make sure you have the voltage on the memory at 1.6v

Also just so you know memory speed will barely effect frame rates. So there is almost no reason to make it 1600mhz

The main reason people get higher memory is that it will allow for further overclocks on the cpu.

 

[alan342]

Thank you for the reply. I only ask because I'm unfamiliar with overclocking even on the most basic level. The bios made it extremely easy to push the cpu from 2.67 to 3.35 by just enabling 2 built in functions. With the memory, I was counting on what I read at newegg "just enable xmp profile 1 and you're good to go", and found that not to be the case. At least with my setup.

Is it as easy as changing the speed from 1067 to 1600 and setting the voltage at 1.6v? I don't have it in front of me obviously, and so without knowing what to look for exactly.. I just want to be sure it will be self explanatory once I go into the bios and play with it. I need to reboot anyway for updates, and will take a peek right now.

Would you switch to 1600? I mean, are there any downsides?

 

[overshocked]

Their are no downsides to going to 1600 mhz other than it will not allow you to overclock your cpu as far.

Your CPU has a multiplier of 20 and a base clock of 133mhz
Thus this equals a speed of 2.66ghz (20*133)

When you overclock you increase the base clock... so your base clock would be 167 (167*20=3340)

But your ram is also influenced by the speed of your base clock.

The speed of your ram at 1066mhz has a 2:8 ratio

that means that your base clock times eight would equal memory speed.
(133*8=1066)

But when you increase the base clock by overclocking it will increase the memory speed. So when your base clock is 167mhz then it would look like this.

baseclock*memoryratio=memory speed
167*8=1336mhz

So when you put your memory ratio to 1600 mhz it would be a ratio of 12
(133*12=1600 mhz)

This means that when you put your ram at a ratio of 12 then your memory would not be running at 1600 mhz as you may think but will actually be running at 2000mhz

(12*167=2004)

This means that your memory probably wont run at that speed.

So it is best to set your memory to a ratio of 8 so that you can increase your base clock as far as posible and in turn make your cpu run faster.

Get it?

 

[alan342]

Somewhat, though I'm going to have to read through that a few times and probably look into some overclocking guides before it really sinks in. I may just leave it how it is, as performance is pretty rock solid and its 100 times faster than my old computer already. I don't need to push all at once, especially if there's little gain from the tweaks.

Also for the record, voltage is at 1.65v and appears as read only information. I was unable to find a place to change it.

DRAM freq 638.8 mhz and 2:8, 9-9-9-20. That'll serve me just fine won't it?

Thanks again for the help.