Man Vs. Machine: Four Automatic Overclocking Techs, Compared

[Crashman]

Targeting inexperienced tuners with easy-to-use buttons, several motherboard vendors now provide one-touch overclocking technologies that take away the guesswork. We examine the ease, effectiveness, and safety of methods provided by four major brands.

Man Vs. Machine: Four Automatic Overclocking Techs, Compared : Read more

 

[iam2thecrowe]

auto overclocking is not a good think IMO, its asking for trouble. How many RMA's do motherboard & CPU companies want when this doesnt work properly?

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

I have a Asrock z68 Pro 3 MB, and after trying out auto overclocking the system only worked stable until 4,3 Ghz (core i7 2600k). I had to do manual settings to make my CPU stable @ 4,5 Ghz

 

[apache_lives]

I don't like anything assuming anything.

 

[iamtheking123]

Automatic overclock blows for 2 reasons.

1) It either is super conservative and therefore useless for any enthusiast.
2) It is insanely over-aggressive because it doesn't bother testing stability for more than a few minutes (if at all). So you end up with it thinking a 50% overclock is "stable" when it totally isn't.

 

[moomooman]

When I tested the Gigabyte utility to overclock the only area I found problems in was the peak core voltage, I soon noticed the CPU idle temps were way too high.

Turned out that with all other settings as chosen by the utility the peak core could be set to its lowest value in the BIOS and still be perfectly stable. So is it just ramping up the voltage to be on the safe side?

 

[Guest]

Isn't changing the default BCLK frequency supposed to be dangerous? Why do so many sites seem to promote changing it?

 

[chesteracorgi]

ASRock's auto OC'ing on the P67 Extreme6 is excellent with my 2500K. I achieved a 4.8 GHz OC, a 4.6, 4.4, 4.2 & 4.0 with the auto settings. The voltage stayed under 1.36 on all of these OC settings.

I have downclocked my system to base settings on both the CPU and GPU because the wear on the system with OC'ing. None of the games I play, nor any of the other apps need a OC to perform well, so why place additional stress on the components when it is merely for bragging rights?

When I played with manual OC'ing I found, like this article, that there was only a marginal gain from auto settings. Plus ther is the additional risk of screwing the pooch entirely and bricking the CPU or mobo by overvolting.

Unless you are a real pro and are not risk adverse, I'd recommend that you stick with auto OC'ing, and for this, ASRock has proven to be the best.

 

[jamie_1318]

@Chesteracorgi, you don't need to be a pro to OC your CPU. They have guides on Overclocking every CPU around, very easily and effectively.

I feel that Toms should have done some stability testing on their manual and automatic OCed Processors. They might have and just not posted their results. I am in the camp where I feel that if you can't take the hour or two to figure it all out you probably shouldn't be Overclocking. If we had a larger sample of Proccessors we have no idea how many would turn out badly.

It looks like a good tool to start off your own OC because it's probably gonna be in the ballpark, but on it's own it leaves much to be desired.

 

[hyteck9]

Question... Was the same CPU used in all tests? If so, it seems untrue to say that "CPU's" shouldn't have more than 'n' voltage when the Mobo's are presenting different internal loads, right? You stated that manually you can get 4.67 GHz at 1.35 V on board 'x'. If the CPU is consistnat in all tests, 1.35V should ba ample force to get 4.67 on ANY Motherboard with that CPU right?... but you couldn't. My point being different mobo's require more "push" there by making it harder for me to fault autoOC programs for cranking up voltage past "comfy" limits when, for all we know, they are taking into account higher internal loads. There is a variable missing someplace. Like 1.375v is risky on type "A" mobos but type "B" mobos can go to 1.4V. I don't know.. am I making any sense here? It just seems some piece of the puzzle is missing....

 

[wingartz]

just wondering i7 series 900 apply the same rule?? less than 1.4v safe, more is a certain death??

 

[sid_nag]

Well i am an AMD used and use a gigabyte board the quickboost software is not good compared to manual ocing.. sets vcore way up at 1.488 and just clocks the cpu at 3.6ghz manually achieved 3.9 ghz on that same voltage stable.

 

[wolfram23]

I don't really see the point in even pushing as high as 1.4V except for benchmarking. I use 1.32V daily on an i5 750 at 4ghz on water. I've taken it up to 4.3ghz but certainly not for long times. I've been running strong on this CPU with an overclock for 1.5 years now.

 

[crewton]

I manually set my 2500k to 4.4Ghz and my voltage peaked at 1.204! I was happy with that so I tried easy tune just to see what the voltage is and it put it at 1.38. Not bad but no reason to have that much more voltage when it wasn't needed.

My belief is that these programs are overvolted to keep from having BSOD but shorten the lifespan of your hardware for more $$

 

[LATTEH]

you guys should use source because source is a very CPU intensive (and very popular) engine

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]jamie_1318[/nom]@Chesteracorgi, you don't need to be a pro to OC your CPU. They have guides on Overclocking every CPU around, very easily and effectively. I feel that Toms should have done some stability testing on their manual and automatic OCed Processors. They might have and just not posted their results. I am in the camp where I feel that if you can't take the hour or two to figure it all out you probably shouldn't be Overclocking. If we had a larger sample of Proccessors we have no idea how many would turn out badly. It looks like a good tool to start off your own OC because it's probably gonna be in the ballpark, but on it's own it leaves much to be desired.[/citation]

These overclocks are *always* run under Prime95, full-load, for hours to ensure stability.

An overclock isn't considered successful just because the overclocker is able to boot into Windows and take a screenshot. In all of our demonstrations, we're shooting for daily usability with complete stability.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]hyteck9[/nom]Question... Was the same CPU used in all tests? If so, it seems untrue to say that "CPU's" shouldn't have more than 'n' voltage when the Mobo's are presenting different internal loads, right? You stated that manually you can get 4.67 GHz at 1.35 V on board 'x'. If the CPU is consistnat in all tests, 1.35V should ba ample force to get 4.67 on ANY Motherboard with that CPU right?... but you couldn't. My point being different mobo's require more "push" there by making it harder for me to fault autoOC programs for cranking up voltage past "comfy" limits when, for all we know, they are taking into account higher internal loads. There is a variable missing someplace. Like 1.375v is risky on type "A" mobos but type "B" mobos can go to 1.4V. I don't know.. am I making any sense here? It just seems some piece of the puzzle is missing....[/citation]

"More push" = faster CPU death. If you need 1.45 V on a certain motherboard to push clocks higher, then you're going to kill the chip. A CPU won't hit the same frequency on every board.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]VerVe77[/nom]Isn't changing the default BCLK frequency supposed to be dangerous? Why do so many sites seem to promote changing it?[/citation]

On an LGA 1155-based platform, changing the BCLK is just about pointless. But on an LGa 1366-based board, for example, big BCLK modifications are how enthusiasts were able to take Core i7-920s up to 4 GHz.

 

[Onus]

My own experience with the Asus OC Tuner was similar, but on their 990FX Sabertooth. It OC'ed my 970BE to 3.8GHz (withOUT raising the multiplier!), but the voltage was sufficiently high that it idled at 57C! I don't recall what it was, but needless to say, I reset it to stock then did a 3.8GHz manual OC on stock voltage just by raising the multiplier.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

the cpu-z screenshots of msi board in manual vs auto oc are interchanged.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

can toms do an article to find if there are any "golden SB CPU's" ? which apparently OC higher and reach 5ghz on air stable at reasonable voltages?

 

[hyteck9]

Cangelini, thank you for the reply. I think you have confirmed my interpretations. So if the CPU is the "control" in this experiment, and we know it takes 1.35V to make the CPU do what we want, then all this overclocking "buzz" is really about pushing the board's stability isn't it? (Like the SBM Gigabyte board missing a few heatsinks issue.) So how can a consumer identify a "low-push" board? Is it the chipset? the BIOS? integrated video? It sure isn't price, because I know that Gigabyte board from the SMB isn't on the cheap side. Tell us what to look for!

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]greghome[/nom]oh yea, before I forget, can you guys stop using Metro2033 and Crysis as a CPU benchmark ?They're some of the most GPU dependent games I know[/citation]Balance. We wouldn't want to fake an average performance gain by using only CPU-bottlenecked apps in that average, would we?[citation][nom]hyteck9[/nom]Question... Was the same CPU used in all tests?...It just seems some piece of the puzzle is missing....[/citation]The thing that's missing is that different parts of different boards have different stability limits. Same CPU was used, same target voltage, different motherboards would hold that voltage better than others

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]wingartz[/nom]just wondering i7 series 900 apply the same rule?? less than 1.4v safe, more is a certain death??[/citation]Everything wears out eventually, 900-series can handle a little more voltage because it's on an older/larger lithography process

 

[christop]

The tried oc feature that can with my board and found it not so first it bumped my volts to 1.4 which is too much for 4ghz. I went into my bios and change everything and run at 4.1ghz on 1.32 volts. It might be ok for new overclockers but know this you might hit your target with the software but your volts are going to be in the red so I would suggest learning to oc the proper way threw the bios.