Bios settings question on overclocking

[gizbug]

I'm overclocking my i5 to 3.5 GHZ.

My question is, should the following be enabled or disabled in the bios?

CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)
C3/C6/C7 State Support
CPU Thermal Monitor
CPU EIST Function


Right now they are all enabled.....but I've heard they should be disabled (why, I am not sure)

 

[lothar]

Enabled.
It's foolish to disable them IMO.

 

[gizbug]

Thanks

 

[SanDiegoPC]

I've read to disable EIST. Don't remember what it is/does/affects though.

 

[Kenmitch]

I'd say your better off with them enabled....Unless you can't reach your overclocking goal.

 

[douglasb]

Enabled.
It's foolish to disable them IMO.

And why is that? I've always heard that all thermal-throttling options in BIOS should be turned off.

 

[n7]

It's more likely you'll encounter instability with the power saving features enabled, but if you find everything working properly, then i don't see the harm in leaving them enabled.

 

[Kenmitch]

And why is that? I've always heard that all thermal-throttling options in BIOS should be turned off.

Some chips just don't want to cooperate with overclocking and these items need to be disabled in order to coherse the chip into it.

My theory on this is as follows:

A chip is not born to run at it's stock speed. It's running at the speed intel or amd decided it should run at. I don't care what anybody says or what they link me to. There is no way in hell amd or intel has the ability or the resources to thoroughly test each and every chip. I'm guessing a certain number out of each batch are tested at most.

If you can leave all energy saving features enabled and still overclock your chip with zero problems and it's stable you kinda won the lotto to say. I call this a conservative binning.

At a certain point you might have to start to disable some energy features to ger higher. This is the point I myself call overclocking

Of course I've been up since 4am so I could just be full of shit

 

[betasub]

Kenmitch: you argued a great case & then destroyed it all with that last statement.

Not sure why you made that post-script, because your theory is sound.

 

[aigomorla]

I'm overclocking my i5 to 3.5 GHZ.

My question is, should the following be enabled or disabled in the bios?

CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)
C3/C6/C7 State Support
CPU Thermal Monitor
CPU EIST Function


Right now they are all enabled.....but I've heard they should be disabled (why, I am not sure)

yes you disable..

Enabled.
It's foolish to disable them IMO.

DOE... okey i'll explain why.

C1E and all those thermal supports will drop your multi when its not under load.
This will cause the nortorious "i set my multi at X but its at Y" problem you see a lot in this section.

Also when you enable those features and your overclocked, when c1e kicks in, it can and might crash your system.

When C1E kicks in, it drops voltage, and multi.
If your FSB / QPI is ramped really high, even with a multi drop, your GHZ will still be way too high for the lowered C1E voltage to handle.

Result will be a crash, or a halt, or reboot.


Thats why we dont recommend u enabling those features when you overclock.

After you know you have a solid overclock, then you enable those features and do a dry test, to see if your system can handle the C1E power saving features.

Otherwise you have too many variables in your overclock to troubleshoot / debug.

 

[ekoostik]

The other settings often (especially recently) tacked to your list is whether or not to leave Turbo on. And - for chips that support it - HyperThreading.

My approach would be to first determine whether I want those power saving, turbo boost, extra thread, etc. capabilities. Any of them that I want, leave on. Any that I don't want, turn those off. Then begin OCing by taking small steps and testing each step. If the system is stable, move up a notch. Continue until I've found my max stable OC.

Alternatively, you could leave everything on, OC until you can't get it stable. Then try disabling the items you don't care about and see if that helps.

Finally, if you don't care about any of them and your end goal is simply the highest OC that you can hit, then by all means disable them from the get go.

 

[MagickMan]

My rule of thumb: If I OC using stock volts, I'll turn on the power saving features. If I use extra voltage, then I won't.

Usually that serves me well. With my current CPU I've elected to just OC as high as I can with the factory VID and leave C1E on and it's worked like a charm.

 

[aigomorla]

Is it seriously too much work to disable it.. then overclock, and then re enable it?

No im seriously asking you guys this question.

If you dont want to disable it, then your better off not messing with bios, and using software to overclock.

Being serious here.