Core i7 920 Bin Quality

[peebee]

I'm curious, what types of overclocks are most people seeing at stock voltage on air? I'm wondering if my processor had a better bin or not. So far here's where I am.

3.6ghz
Stock voltage for my chip is 1.184v
20x multplier (turbo mode off)
Prime95 stable

I could probably squeeze 3.65 out of it but it's not Prime95 stable at 3.7ghz. It'll POST at 4.1ghz but crash loading Windows 7 x64.

I just wanted a feel for the quality of the bin before I started ramping vcore up and got a little curious on what others were reaching.

Thanks,
Mike

 

[cbn]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/core-i7-coolers-roundup_17.html#sect1

Not sure. Here is the scaling Xbit got while they testing with various coolers.

 

[peebee]

Cool, thanks for the URL. That's sort of what I was looking to find but on a more spread poll. Hopefully I can ramp this one up around the same speed Xbit got theirs without going nuts on the vcore.

 

[peebee]

Anyone else have some input on what they're hitting at stock voltage?

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Forget what my stock Vcore is, but here's what mine are doing :

D0 (SLBEJ), 3849B018, 04/18/09, Costa Rica
4.10GHz
1.152v w/LLC
21x multi (turbo ON)
HT ON
72 hour Prime95 stable

Have 3 of these on Gigabye EX58-UD3Rs (2x Rev 1.0, 1x Rev 1.6) and they all achieve this speed with the exact same CPU/mobo settings.

 

[peebee]

Damn, that looks like an excellent overclock. What kind of cooling are you running?

I managed to bring my vcore down to 1.144 at 3.6ghz, which is below what "auto" was setting it at. I assumed "auto" was set by the CPU but I'm starting to think not since I was able to bring the voltage down almost .5 volts while still pushing the chip at 1ghz overclocked.

Is there an easier way of knowing the default voltage your chip was binned at, or is setting to auto typically the norm on x58 chipsets?

 

[SanDiegoPC]

Anyone else have some input on what they're hitting at stock voltage?

I can do 3.8 very stable. Using a True cooler and Asus P6T board. It's been up for a couple weeks now and runs great.

 

[sxr7171]

Forget what my stock Vcore is, but here's what mine are doing :

D0 (SLBEJ), 3849B018, 04/18/09, Costa Rica
4.10GHz
1.152v w/LLC
21x multi (turbo ON)
HT ON
72 hour Prime95 stable

Have 3 of these on Gigabye EX58-UD3Rs (2x Rev 1.0, 1x Rev 1.6) and they all achieve this speed with the exact same CPU/mobo settings.

I get the exact same speeds as you and I need the 21x mult to get there. I haven't tested 72hour prime though. My volts are much higher than yours though I think 1.35 ish (whatever it auto-raised it to). I am using EX58-UD4P. It was the easiest O/C of my life. Just increased BCLK and the board did it.

Using Megahalem with Scythe 140mm Kaze. It gets loud but I have the auto control running it at 850RPM at idle, when it gets loaded it jumps to 1950RPM in a hurry. If I tried gaming on it it would sound like a hair dryer during the game.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Damn, that looks like an excellent overclock. What kind of cooling are you running?

Nothing fancy. Just IC Diamond thermal interface material and Xigmatek Dark Knights.

 

[Hyperlite]

I get the exact same speeds as you and I need the 21x mult to get there. I haven't tested 72hour prime though. My volts are much higher than yours though I think 1.35 ish (whatever it auto-raised it to). I am using EX58-UD4P. It was the easiest O/C of my life. Just increased BCLK and the board did it.

Using Megahalem with Scythe 140mm Kaze. It gets loud but I have the auto control running it at 850RPM at idle, when it gets loaded it jumps to 1950RPM in a hurry. If I tried gaming on it it would sound like a hair dryer during the game.

set vcore to manual and start stepping it down, eh?

 

[peebee]

Nothing fancy. Just IC Diamond thermal interface material and Xigmatek Dark Knights.

I was running stable at 4.0ghz but had to bump the voltage up to 1.287v. It felt strange though, it's rock solid at 3.6ghz running 1.175v. For another 400mhz I had to bump it by over .1v? The scaling seems off to me. And at that, Prime95 was pushing the temps close to 80c.

Board: Asus P6X58D
Cooling: Vigor Monsoon III LT

Think something might be a little off with my setup? Not sure if I should be seeing 80ish temps with the Vigor Monsoon III LT. The heatsink looked lapped well, I didn't bother re-lapping it.

 

[ChorniyVolk]

Peebee, in your OP don't you mean hyperthreading off, not turbo mode? Don't the 1366 i7s not have turbo mode?

 

[SHAQ]

I was running stable at 4.0ghz but had to bump the voltage up to 1.287v. It felt strange though, it's rock solid at 3.6ghz running 1.175v. For another 400mhz I had to bump it by over .1v? The scaling seems off to me. And at that, Prime95 was pushing the temps close to 80c.

Board: Asus P6X58D
Cooling: Vigor Monsoon III LT

Think something might be a little off with my setup? Not sure if I should be seeing 80ish temps with the Vigor Monsoon III LT. The heatsink looked lapped well, I didn't bother re-lapping it.

You are reaching the point of diminishing returns so you have to up the voltage more than you had to for a mild OC. You will reach a point where you have to up the voltage .1 just for an extra 100 Mhz. It looks like 4.0 is the sweet spot for your CPU. I need over 1.4v for 3.9 on my C0 so don't feel bad.

 

[peebee]

Peebee, in your OP don't you mean hyperthreading off, not turbo mode? Don't the 1366 i7s not have turbo mode?

ChorniyVolk,

The chip supports both Hyperthreading and Turbo Mode. I've left Hyperthreading enabled as I'm a big fan of the technology. I disabled Turbo Mode when I first started playing with the overclocks simply to limit the amount of variables. I might enable it to do some more testing later on.

 

[peebee]

You are reaching the point of diminishing returns so you have to up the voltage more than you had to for a mild OC. You will reach a point where you have to up the voltage .1 just for an extra 100 Mhz. It looks like 4.0 is the sweet spot for your CPU. I need over 1.4v for 3.9 on my C0 so don't feel bad.

Thanks for the input. I was wondering if I was at that point or not. To me the difference in 3.6ghz and 4.0ghz isn't great enough to drop another .1v on the core. With just the 400mhz I notice the temps about 12-15c higher and the CPU fan spinning about 400-500rpms faster.

The board I'm running supports multiple OC profiles though, so I'll probably keep a "balls to the wall" profile handy for when I'm encoding videos and such.

 

[ChorniyVolk]

ChorniyVolk,

The chip supports both Hyperthreading and Turbo Mode. I've left Hyperthreading enabled as I'm a big fan of the technology. I disabled Turbo Mode when I first started playing with the overclocks simply to limit the amount of variables. I might enable it to do some more testing later on.

Really? Is Turbo Mode on 1366 i7s new? I mean I don't plan to use it either, I'll be wanting to overclock instead and not to have worry about any automatic processes, but when I was trying to decide whether to go i5 or 1366 i7 (as a 1156 i7 would be somewhat pointless imo) an argument for the i5 was that it had turbo mode which would help it beat the i7 in applications that used less cores/threads; of course that flew out the window once I decided to overclock the i7 but still.

 

[peebee]

Really? Is Turbo Mode on 1366 i7s new? I mean I don't plan to use it either, I'll be wanting to overclock instead and not to have worry about any automatic processes, but when I was trying to decide whether to go i5 or 1366 i7 (as a 1156 i7 would be somewhat pointless imo) an argument for the i5 was that it had turbo mode which would help it beat the i7 in applications that used less cores/threads; of course that flew out the window once I decided to overclock the i7 but still.

Yup, it definitely has Turbo Mode. This is my processor:

http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLBEJ

In the Notes section you can see it talks about Intel Turbo Boost Technology. It doesn't give much detail, but if you want detail you can find it here:

http://download.intel.com/design/processor/datashts/320834.pdf

 

[Shmee]

turbo functions as a +1 multi above 20x for the 920. depending on the board, you may get a fixed turbo option. Also, 4 GHz for under 1.3 Vcore is still pretty good. IMO, 1.28 is nowhere near too high, IMO worth it for 4 GHz. Of course you may be cooler limited in some cases. You should be able to do 4.1 or 4.2, just keep Vcore under 1.4 V IMO. Also, keep in mind that the i7 is a different architecture from the penryns, even if they both are 45nm the i7's do higher vcore more safely. Just watch temps.

And some people brought their C0's over 1.45 Vcore, but you shouldnt need that much for a D0 unless youre doing some crazy high OCing, (> 4.3) and have great cooling.

 

[v8envy]

I'm running at .87v in windows at 2.8 ghz, HT and LLC on. Can do it without LLC at .92. =)

 

[peebee]

turbo functions as a +1 multi above 20x for the 920. depending on the board, you may get a fixed turbo option. Also, 4 GHz for under 1.3 Vcore is still pretty good. IMO, 1.28 is nowhere near too high, IMO worth it for 4 GHz. Of course you may be cooler limited in some cases. You should be able to do 4.1 or 4.2, just keep Vcore under 1.4 V IMO. Also, keep in mind that the i7 is a different architecture from the penryns, even if they both are 45nm the i7's do higher vcore more safely. Just watch temps.

And some people brought their C0's over 1.45 Vcore, but you shouldnt need that much for a D0 unless youre doing some crazy high OCing, (> 4.3) and have great cooling.

Yea, I don't doubt I could run 4ghz. I'm just concerned about the cooling. At 4ghz it's running 1.287v but sitting around 82c after running Prime95 for 5 minutes. The cooler is a Vigor Monsoon III LT. It still seems high to me. Temps were even 1-2c higher with the case panel off lol.

 

[peebee]

I'm running at .87v in windows at 2.8 ghz, HT and LLC on. Can do it without LLC at .92. =)

I would like to do the same thing and undervolt as far as I can. Just for the hell of it.