ASUS P8P67 Pro vs ASRock Z68 Extreme4: Argh!

[yours truly]

Thanks

There's so much info on the net about overclocking, it's almost too much. One person says this, the other that.

Don't get me wrong, I love reading it. A whole new door has opened up to me and it's awesome!

I can't wait for BF3. Would be cool if I can use a joystick to fly a plane or chopper.

Finally, I can put down that Xbox 360 controller..

 

[RobertR1]

Agreed. That's why I've started reading now and taking notes where possible. However, I'm looking forward to stealing your settings when you gets your OC stabilized.

I'll have to split my time between the 360 and PC. Can't say no to Gears3, Forza 4 and Trials Evolution! The PC will be for BF3, Skyrim and lots of Dota 2.

 

[MadScientist]

Yeah there's a lot of info out there on Sandy Bridge oc'ing. A lot of it here in the CPU and Overclocking section.

Here's some more that may help or confuse you more. Read my first post in this thread, the one with the bios screenshots: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2180536

yours truly,
G.Skill's Sniper ram, depending on the type, is speced from 1.25V to 1.6V. You have yours running at 1.25V. Is that what yours is speced at?

Your voltages look ok. When set to an Optimized CPU OC setting it defaults to Level 5 LLC, large vdroop. That's why your actual vcore voltage is lower than the bios CPU Core Voltage.

The upper limit of your CPU may be 4.4 or 4.5 Ghz. It's the luck of the draw. Mine's 4.6 Ghz. No amount of extra vcore will get it above 4.6 Ghz. You can try oc'ing it manually to find out how high you can go. Try the Vcore Fixed Voltage Mode first.

As for maximum vcore, that's still being debated. Intel has yet to come out with official specs for Sandy Bridge 2nd gen max vcore. Somewhere around 1.35vcore max is being kicked around.

 

[yours truly]

Yeah there's a lot of info out there on Sandy Bridge oc'ing. A lot of it here in the CPU and Overclocking section.

Here's some more that may help or confuse you more. Read my first post in this thread, the one with the bios screenshots: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2180536

yours truly,
G.Skill's Sniper ram, depending on the type, is speced from 1.25V to 1.6V. You have yours running at 1.25V. Is that what yours is speced at?

Your voltages look ok. When set to an Optimized CPU OC setting it defaults to Level 5 LLC, large vdroop. That's why your actual vcore voltage is lower than the bios CPU Core Voltage.

The upper limit of your CPU may be 4.4 or 4.5 Ghz. It's the luck of the draw. Mine's 4.6 Ghz. No amount of extra vcore will get it above 4.6 Ghz. You can try oc'ing it manually to find out how high you can go. Try the Vcore Fixed Voltage Mode first.

As for maximum vcore, that's still being debated. Intel has yet to come out with official specs for Sandy Bridge 2nd gen max vcore. Somewhere around 1.35vcore max is being kicked around.

many thanks, that's saved me some time. I will do some more digging and report back. Would like to sit down and enjoy my PC. I can see myself breaking something soon, so maybe play some old games - I think maxing out Company of Heroes and World in Conflict shouldn't be too difficult now!

I'm quite impressed by Asrock's auto overclock, if those settings aren't that bad. Missed something called Turbo 50 in the bios which boots at 4.8ghz. It seemed stable enough, but the vcore/temps weren't so good - 1.4 and 80c. Tried manually getting to 4.5ghz but my system freezes or doesn't boot.

There's an Asrock Extreme Tuning utility which came bundled with the motherboard drivers which seems pretty funky. I can overclock and watch the results in real time. Still can't get to 4.5ghz.

Still pondering the D14 but I'll sleep on it, or maybe I'll get one when Ivy Bridge lands.

Anyway, cheers for your help guys

 

[RobertR1]

yours,

Not sure if you got my PM but I did my build my this weekend with the same hardware almost. Mind sharing what you ended up for your bios settings on your overclock?

Also, did you flip the top fan on the HAF X to push air into the case and are you using a push/pull on your 212+ or just 1 fan?

 

[yours truly]

Hello Robert, sorry I wasn't paying attention!

Congrats on the new build, how are you finding it?

I've left the top fan as it is, but reading (post 4) here:http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2190744 he mentions using it as an intake has reduced his CPU temps by 6c. Others have reported the same thing but it doesn't make sense to me - if hot air rises, surely you'd want to expell the air out and not draw cool air in.

I've gone back to stock on my 2500k. I was originally using the the auto overclock @4.4ghz (1.29v) and it was prime stable but for some reason running games and benchmarks at 1920x1200 and they would hang. I'd get a "ATI driver has crashed and recovered" message. I haven't overclocked the card and I don't know why this is happening. At stock cpu speed it's fine.

I started manually overclocking, using the Extreme Tuning Utility as a guide and got my cpu at 4.5ghz (1.25v) and it was nice and stable via prime but again my system would freeze when running games at 1920x1200. 1080p is fine though. Really confused on this one. Reinstalled the drivers and Windows didn't help.

Like I said I've gone back to stock speed. I need to read up more on overclocking rather than just experiment in the bios. If I remember correctly I did change the voltage, I think I set it to offset +0.030v and changed the Load Line Calibration (can't remember exactly I think level 5) and it brought my voltage down to 1.25. Please don't try it though - really wouldn't want your system to fail.

There's a few Z68 Extreme4 overclocking guides on the net but not many for the gen3 - but I guess they're basically the same thing. I found this the other day, interesting few posts. I need to read it properly: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18296625&page=5

Really interested in your numbers, what are you running at the moment, temps, voltage etc?

I was thinking about getting a second fan for the 212+ but I might have bent one of the fan retainer clips a little and I'm not sure how much of a difference an additonal fan would make.

I was also thinking about getting a second HD 6870 - the revised BF3 spec recommends a 6950! http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-20-battlefield-3-pc-system-requirements

 

[peonyu]

First off I have the extreme Gen 3 board, but the board is nearly identical to yours. I would like to mention that if you feel your temps are higher than they should be, then take a look at the mounting bracket on your CPU [the one that locks your cpu to the motherboard].

I had a issue with high temps on my board with a Noctua U12-P heatsink, it turned out that the reason for that was the mounting bracket was uneven and it was preventing about 1/4th of the heatsink from touching the Cpu itself.

Obviously that is not good, and I ended up removing the mounting bracket itself [which is held in place by two torx screws - which is very very easy to remove]. After that temps were 15c lower than before. That might not be your problem but its worth looking into. All you need to do to check it, is put white thermal paste on the cpu and mount the heatsink. If the paste is not completely smeared you have that issue.

 

[yours truly]

Thanks but my temps weren't too bad. At 4.5ghz (1.25v) my temperatures between 65-70c. I was thinking about switching out the 212+ for D14 but as long as my temps stay below 70c I'm happy enough.

I'm scratching my head as to why my HD6870 would crash at 1920x1200 when I overclocked the CPU.

I'll try to take a screenshot of the settings in my bios when I get the chance.

 

[peonyu]

Those are good temps, with a DH14 you might see 5c-10c better, but thats a huge guess. These chips can handle up to 85c very well so you have plenty of headroom for heat variance.

As far as the card crashing goes, did you try 105 pcie speed ? It helped stabilize my system when overclocked. < Disregard that part, i was thinking of my old board.

 

[RobertR1]

Hello Robert, sorry I wasn't paying attention!

Congrats on the new build, how are you finding it?

I've left the top fan as it is, but reading (post 4) here:http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2190744 he mentions using it as an intake has reduced his CPU temps by 6c. Others have reported the same thing but it doesn't make sense to me - if hot air rises, surely you'd want to expell the air out and not draw cool air in.

I've gone back to stock on my 2500k. I was originally using the the auto overclock @4.4ghz (1.29v) and it was prime stable but for some reason running games and benchmarks at 1920x1200 and they would hang. I'd get a "ATI driver has crashed and recovered" message. I haven't overclocked the card and I don't know why this is happening. At stock cpu speed it's fine.

I started manually overclocking, using the Extreme Tuning Utility as a guide and got my cpu at 4.5ghz (1.25v) and it was nice and stable via prime but again my system would freeze when running games at 1920x1200. 1080p is fine though. Really confused on this one. Reinstalled the drivers and Windows didn't help.

Like I said I've gone back to stock speed. I need to read up more on overclocking rather than just experiment in the bios. If I remember correctly I did change the voltage, I think I set it to offset +0.030v and changed the Load Line Calibration (can't remember exactly I think level 5) and it brought my voltage down to 1.25. Please don't try it though - really wouldn't want your system to fail.

There's a few Z68 Extreme4 overclocking guides on the net but not many for the gen3 - but I guess they're basically the same thing. I found this the other day, interesting few posts. I need to read it properly: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18296625&page=5

Really interested in your numbers, what are you running at the moment, temps, voltage etc?

I was thinking about getting a second fan for the 212+ but I might have bent one of the fan retainer clips a little and I'm not sure how much of a difference an additonal fan would make.

I was also thinking about getting a second HD 6870 - the revised BF3 spec recommends a 6950! http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-20-battlefield-3-pc-system-requirements

I'm really happy with my setup. Ended up with

2600k @ 4.6ghz with Hyper 212+ and MX-4 Themal Compond
Zotac AMP 580GTX
8GB Corsair Veng 1600 CL9 RAM at 1.5
M4 128GB SSD
Haf X case
Ofcourse AsRock Extreme 4 Gen 3

I'm running the case fans in normal/out of box config. I played around all weekend and yesterday with overclocking. I ended up with sticking to 4.6ghz. My temps on on the cores range from 65-70 during major stress testing. Running the Heaven benchmark also to make sure things are stable on the GPU and full system side so no issues there either.

For settings, I kept it very simple.

In Bios, using the Turbo 4.6 option. Enabled PLL voltate and changed overvolt on the PLL to +0.05v. Everything is auto. My voltage spikes to a max if 1.35 on occasion but generally hovers around 1.3v during stress tests.

I can boot and run all sorts of test at 4.8ghz with the same settings but Load Line Calibration set to 1. However, I don't feel good about temps and vcore being high. temps are low 90's and voltage spikes all over. It's stable, just scary. I prefer stable.

All said and done, I'm sticking with 4.6ghz.

As for the board, I really like it. I like being able to charge my usb devices with the system off. I don't have "sleep" bug that many Asus users tend to experience and it's just very stable.

I use the Xtreme Tuner only to adjust fan speed. I'm using Real Temp for temps btw. The temps is Real Temp read a little higher than HWmonitor. I rather go by worst case scenario.

I don't have a ATI card so I'm not sure why you're crashing with ATI errors. Sorry

 

[yours truly]

wow that's about as nice a rig as you can get! and nice overclock too.. I might have to copy your settings Did you get the firmware update for your M4?

I wish I didn't scrimp on the graphics card - thinking about trading this 6870 and getting a 580 instead. I wouldn't mind the noise so much if it performed well. It sounds like my old xbox. What are the noise levels with your card?

Did you put an additional fan on your 212+?

ps: case is lovely, don't you think..?

 

[RobertR1]

Yeah, loving the case. It almost has too much room! I have the itch to add another top fan but really don't have a problem with temps so we'll see. I used the Xtreme Tune to turn down the fan settings so it's all nice n quiet. The GTX 580 I have uses a stock cooler but it's super quiet. The loudest thing in the system, by far is the CPU fan when it turns up.

I'm currently using one fan on the 212+ for now. I'll add another in a push/pull so I can keep the fan speeds/noise down but maintain the cooler temps.

I did the firmware update on the M4 and did the following optimizations:

Installed in AHCI mode in BIOS
Enable write caching
Disable Defrag
Turn off hibernation
Turn off system restore
Force paging file to 1024min/1024max

AS SSD benchmark gives me around 750 to 800points.

 

[yours truly]

To hell with it, I ordered the MSI GTX 580 Lightning. The noise levels for my 6870 was starting to get on my nerves. The fan kept on revving up just surfing youtube vids. In games it was just way too loud. The temps seemed ok though?

I hope this GTX 580 is slightly quieter. I haven't got it yet but I must be going mad because if it works well, I'm thinking about ordering a second one. The price of it hurts - converted into dollars, one GTX 580 - &#163;396 =$608.

All for a &#163;30 game. What am I doing..!


just to keep it on topic, some people have said they have been having problems with SLI/Xfire on this board. I might be finding out for myself soon..

 

[RobertR1]

Nice! I'm all done oc'ing at this point. I ended up at the following and don't plan to mess around any more. Just going to add another fan on the 212+ for a push/pull and I'm done.

cpu @ 4.6ghz
gtx580 @ 900/1800/2200

With a MSI lightning you should be able to OC well past that. Hopefully we can run BF3 maxed out I basically built this PC for BF3, Skyrim and Dota2. Out of those 3, it's really only BF3 that will push the system.

3DMark11 http://3dmark.com/3dm11/1874738?sho...11/1874738?key=Pt7Dv7uhfZ28F5DCmDLVrBqfKHHEeA

 

[yours truly]

Thanks, received my GTX 580 and I'm very happy with it. It's a lot quieter and faster than the 6870. Got my overclock to 4.5ghz so I'm content.

Only one or two bits left and I'm done.

This thing has cost a lot but I'm obsessed with it. So happy I've included a fancy sig!

Thanks for your help. See you out on the battlefield sometime..

Cheers

 

[Slufa111]

I know your were talking about the P67 version but I just wanted to chime in and rep ASUS motherboards. Previous to this board, I had a ASROCK Extreme6

ASUS P8Z68-V PRO LGA 1155 Intel Z68

Awesome board.

ASUS P8Z68-V Pro is like night and day when compared to The Asrock Extreme6.

My Setup:
Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz @ 4.6GHZ
ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Intel Motherboard
Hydro Series H80 Liquid Cooler
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
2 x Zotac Geforce GTX 460 OCed
64GB Kingston SSD (boot / most used apps)
500gb Barracuda 7200rpm Storage drive
ASUS 24X DVD Burner
XFX XXX Edition 650W PSU
ASUS VH238H Black 23" Full HD HDMI LED Backlight LCD Monitor

The only personal annoyance I had with this board:
When I was installing the motherboard, I would like to mention if you going with something aftermarket for a cooler then it wont be impossible but it will be difficult. The chipset heat-sink does get in the way however with a little work it all goes together eventually. The placement of some ports ( 3-Pin Fan, 8-Pin Power Connector) are a bit awkward but nothing to really mark this board down for.

When I first turned the board on I had a very annoying Marvell Sata 6 try and recognize my SSD and my 500GB harddrive. I went into BIOS and turn that off. The BIOS is very user friendly and has a very stable feeling to it.

I installed Windows 7 64 without a hitch. I updated my BIOS right away which was a 2 minute painless process. I then restarted and went into BIOS and changed my CPU multipler to 46X. No voltage changes, No fiddling, No blue screens. I booted up into Windows, and have been running Prime 95 @ a cool 50C load with a idle @ 27C @ 1.325V. As some of you might know from my previous threads or from threads over @ Anandtech, I could only boot into windows with the AsRock Extreme6 at Stock, or at 4.7ghz @ 1.425. This is a big improvement!

Not a perfect board but next time I purchase a motherboard, it will be a ASUS.

+1 ASUS
-1 ASROCK