Overclocking 5 years old 980x

[Timmah!]

So i have been thinking about finally doing some decent overclock on my CPU, mostly because of Ashes of Singularity...but the question is, is it even safe with such "old" CPU?

I am actually running it OCed already, but only without voltage increase. Its stable at 3,78GHz with the Turbo and all the power saving options on. Now if i hypothetically wanted to go beyond that, to say 4,2-4,4 GHz (depending on what is possible with my particular chip), is it safe to bump the vcore to the once recommended values for this class of CPUs (IIRC 1,4V max in case of Westmeres), or were those values only meant for brand new chips?

What i am thinking about doing basically, is to bump the multiplier from current 27x (28x with turbo, which is on and i intend on keeping it that way, all the other features as well) to say 31x or even more (depending on what will end up stable) and change the vcore value from current "Normal" option to say 1,35V (just to be on the safe side, not to go higher, too close to those theoretical limits)... then test the stability with the Intel Burn test... do you think it is safe or will i be doing it wrong?

I am not that afraid to give it a try as i was all those years, cause the CPU was so goddamn expensive i could not afford to lose it in case things went south for whatever reason - nowadays i could get replacement chip of similar power (i7 4790 or skylake) for way less money - but obviously i would still prefer not to kill it... so if you think the odds of that happening are more than miniscule, please let me know...

thanks in advance

 

[MongGrel]

Should be OK, I'm running a used X5680 in at 4.5.

Probably closer to 4.6 24/7.

Depends on your CPU cooling a lot, I just use air but have a pretty modified tower case with a NH-D14 on it.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2335636&highlight=l5639&page=102

It pertains a bit.

 

[Timmah!]

Should be OK, I'm running a used X5680 in at 4.5.

Probably closer to 4.6 24/7.

Depends on your CPU cooling a lot, I just use air but have a pretty modified tower case with a NH-D14 on it.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2335636&highlight=l5639&page=102

It pertains a bit.

Thanks.

So i tried, bumped the multiplier first to 32x and then lowered it to 31x, and Vcore to 1,35...both times BSOD the moment i got into Windows, LOL. Clearly its not stable, not even need to burntest anything.

So i wonder, is 1,35 vcore low for these speeds, or should i bump other voltages, like the QPI ones as well? I left that one intact, at its default state its 1,178V or so i think...if yes, how far i can go there? 1,35V as well?

 

[Burpo]

1.32Volts for QPI is typically what I run, and I have adaptive voltage for the CPU, up to 1.45volts. You'll probably achieve best results increasing bus speed (Bclk) instead of multiplier (i.e. 152X29=4.4Ghz.). I hope you have good cooling..

 

[Timmah!]

thanks

i have aftermarket air cooler, something from zalman, checking the box now... CNPS 10X performa: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-cooler-heatsink-roundup,2788-7.html

I dont think i have cojones to go with the voltage beyond 1,4V, probably not even 1,35...
anyway, 1,32 for QPI is within those safety limits?


You think OCing just via multiplier is less viable / less probable to yield stable results than doing it by bumping BCLK?

 

[Burpo]

I am unfamiliar with the 130 watt Gulftowns, but the Westmere Xeons overclock well via Bclk. QPI volts are ok up to 1.35V.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I think your other motherboard features might be holding you back. 4.4GHz is normally obtainable at 1.32-1.34vcore

 

[Timmah!]

I think your other motherboard features might be holding you back. 4.4GHz is normally obtainable at 1.32-1.34vcore

Thanks for response! Its true i left all the features on, more precisely the ones which are usually supposed to be switched off, like C1E, EIST and Turbo... do you think those might be the culprit and turning them off will change the situation?

Regarding the 4,4 overclock, are you sure about that? I was under impression for most people the standard is about 4,2GHz...

I guess i may try to turn power saving features off, bump vcore to 1,35 and QPI to 1,32 to see what happens, when i dial the multiplier up to 32x-33x... i would rather not touch BCLK, since that means OCing RAM too (right?) and that just brings another possible complication and source of instability into equation...Or am i thinking wrong?

 

[Burpo]

We don't know what board you have.. Overclocking with an Asus board is pretty easy, and I leave everything on.
The memory settings are tied to bus speed, but can be stepped down to whatever speed you want to run. I have DDR3 1600 that clocks up to 1700 stable. A higher bclk and less than peak multi has proven the highest/best gains with the Xeons..

 

[Timmah!]

We don't know what board you have.. Overclocking with an Asus board is pretty easy, and I leave everything on.
The memory settings are tied to bus speed, but can be stepped down to whatever speed you want to run. I have DDR3 1600 that clocks up to 1700 stable. A higher bclk and less than peak multi has proven the highest/best gains with the Xeons..

I have Gigabyte X58A-UD7 revision 1.0

 

[Burpo]

I had a dozen of the Rev2's recently.. They are harder to overclock with than Asus, but if you disable turbo, increase Bclk & voltages, you'll get there.. It's a good board with healthy VRMs, but settings are touchy..

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Thanks for response! Its true i left all the features on, more precisely the ones which are usually supposed to be switched off, like C1E, EIST and Turbo... do you think those might be the culprit and turning them off will change the situation?

I would. You can control the wattage/power drawl with the Windows power config. For normal day to day use I generally set mine to Power saver or Balanced. When I game I set it to High. You can create easy short cuts on the desktop to switch back n forth Power Plan - Create Shortcut I do all this with a locked Vcore, I leave my Vcore locked/constant with no power saving features on. That's why I don't push the Vcore that much, 4.4GHz is good enough for me. The wattage drawl/power differs between power configs

Regarding the 4,4 overclock, are you sure about that? I was under impression for most people the standard is about 4,2GHz...

4.2Ghz is easily obtainable. My W3690 will do 4.4GHz (all cores no turbo) at 1.32v at idle 1.33v at load.

I guess i may try to turn power saving features off, bump vcore to 1,35 and QPI to 1,32 to see what happens, when i dial the multiplier up to 32x-33x... i would rather not touch BCLK, since that means OCing RAM too (right?) and that just brings another possible complication and source of instability into equation...Or am i thinking wrong?

Yes the RAM gets overclocked with BCLK overclocking but afaik changing the multi can bring more instability than overclocking by the BCLK. But you are correct. You'll have to test the RAM stability also. I ended up buying a 1.35v DDR3 1600 CL8.8.8.24 kit that runs great. Currently doing 2040MHz @ 1.55v Cl9.9.9.24. Keep an eye on your Uncore status if you overclock by BCLK. Mine is around 3GHz. Some people don't have to push their VTT/QPI voltage beyond 1.2v until it reaches 3GHz. I never really tested mine and so I've just grown accustom to running it between 1.25 - 1.31v

 

[Timmah!]

I would. You can control the wattage/power drawl with the Windows power config. For normal day to day use I generally set mine to Power saver or Balanced. When I game I set it to High. You can create easy short cuts on the desktop to switch back n forth Power Plan - Create Shortcut I do all this with a locked Vcore, I leave my Vcore locked/constant with no power saving features on. That's why I don't push the Vcore that much, 4.4GHz is good enough for me. The wattage drawl/power differs between power configs


4.2Ghz is easily obtainable. My W3690 will do 4.4GHz (all cores no turbo) at 1.32v at idle 1.33v at load.




Yes the RAM gets overclocked with BCLK overclocking but afaik changing the multi can bring more instability than overclocking by the BCLK. But you are correct. You'll have to test the RAM stability also. I ended up buying a 1.35v DDR3 1600 CL8.8.8.24 kit that runs great. Currently doing 2040MHz @ 1.55v Cl9.9.9.24. Keep an eye on your Uncore status if you overclock by BCLK. Mine is around 3GHz. Some people don't have to push their VTT/QPI voltage beyond 1.2v until it reaches 3GHz. I never really tested mine and so I've just grown accustom to running it between 1.25 - 1.31v

Thank you! And to Burpo and everyone else responding as well.

I will think about it. I would still rather prefer to OC the easier way, just by bumping multiplier. Maybe its true its more suspectible to instability, but then again, who says it? Burpo, in one of his posts above, said on Xeons "BCLK way" apparently brings usually better results too, but do Xeons even have unlocked multiplier, so you can do any comparison?
Additionally, i have some basic Kingston RAM, they are i think rated to 1600, not sure about latency, but it was not any expensive OC series. Not to mention i have all 6 RAM slots populated (6x4GB), which is probably not the most ideal situation for overclocking either...

if it proves futile, then i will turn my attention to bclk clocking. I will need to do some research then, since its quite time i was looking into this stuff last time. I dont even know how the current CPUs are overclocked, all those "K" versions...completely fell out of the picture since Sandy Bridge.

Few more question for you:

the idea with controlling the wattage without Windows profiles is interesting. Never thought about that. I wonder though, if i disable the power saving functions in BIOS and do the overclock, lets say its hypothetically stable - the CPU will now run at 4,4 GHz all times, right? Does that mean it has the same power consumption when its idle as when its on load? With C1E, Turbo etc... obviously it downclocks to 1,6GHz when idle, so there is indeed difference in both consumption and temps...

...and then, once i disable Turbo etc...., what voltages would you recommend again? 1,33v for core and 1,3 for QPI? Or should i not touch QPI voltage if i am not touching BCLK?

EDIT> so i tried disabling C1E, EIST and Turbo, bumping multi to 33x, vcore first to 1,33, later to 1,35 alongside QPI voltage to 1,255 - 3 different trials with basically the same outcome - BSOD - the only differences were at which point, first during the flashing Win logo phase, second the moment that phase ended and finally third time upon typing password and entering Win....
BTW the bsod said something about page fault in non-paged area - kinda new to me, newer saw this kind of message. Any idea where it may point out? Something RAM related? If yes, funny thing that it happens when i try to avoid overclocking RAM, lol.

Anyway, at this point it seems i truly need to try deal with BCLK after all, if i want those 4,4GHz.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Let me be a little more precise about the multiplier. Apparently some boards have issues with multipliers on chips that are unlocked and go beyond the standard range. I think it has to do with the chip-set (North or South bridge) so you might be stuck to overclocking with BCLK. Use the max multiplier WITHOUT turbo.

The better results with BCLK overclocking comes from the increase in bus speed and change in Uncore frequency. Uncore will yield the most noticeable results and they can be observed with Cinebench 11.5


I think all those occupied RAM slots are putting too much pressure on your memory controller. Try your overclocking with just one stick, and you can also lower the memory divider. I think the reason why my RAM is running fine at 2040MHz is due to the use of only 2 memory slots.


I think you may have the Wattage/Power idea mixed up. From observing HWmonitor (an early version) my wattage usage while in Power Savings mode (Windows Power config) is about 15w, and my core speeds are at 2035MHz. When I set my Windows Power config to High Performance HWmonitor reports 4.4GHz (4409MHz) core speeds (all 6 cores no turbo) and the wattage reads 140w. So if this is any indication of real wattage/power usage than I imagine it's somewhat safe to say you can adjust the power usage with Windows Power config. Like I said I don't use any power features in bios except Speed Step, if that can even considered a power savings features.. :hmm:

I think that answers most of your questions. If I've left something out, please feel free to ask again and I'll be glad to assist the best I can

 

[Burpo]

This video shows you how to get to 4.2Ghz using the free Gigabyte software "Easy Tune 6, Quick Boost".
Essentially he just set Bclk to 160 & 26X multiplier, and you can do that in bios..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDwW8pSWWk4

 

[Timmah!]

Many thanks to both of you. I truly appreciate your help.

So i did look into this bit more yesterday and found this old thread on xtremesystems:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...ormance-–-high-cpu-multi-or-high-bclock/page2

its about the multi vs bclk overclock, interesting reading. Apparently OCing via multi requires more vcore than bclk OCing and has some other downsides (as you suggested after all), i was not aware of that. Always thought the whole point of having unlocked multi is to actually use it, LOL. Not that you cant, but clearly not to the extreme.

Then i found this, its about OCing 980x on my board among others, does not look that good in regard to 4,4GHz overclock (via multi).

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/1602622/intel-core-i7-980x-mainboards

And then finally this, need to go through it yet, but i may find some useful info there:

http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/40911-i7-980x-ga-x58a-ud5-rev-1-0-a-5.html


Bottom line, seems dealing with Bclk is inevitable, if i want to achieve such high OC like 4,4 is. So in case i would go that way, what do i need to do? Say i want 27 x 163 (thats 4401), i turn off all those power saving things, bump multi and BCLK, increase vcore to 1,33-1,35, increase QPI/VTT to what value? 1,3V?...then there is IOH voltage, do i deal with that? And finally my RAM voltage is set on auto (1,5V), do i increase it to 1,65? I suppose i need to change some kind of RAM multiplier too, IIRC, cause with 163 bclk those ram would run at almost 2000 MHz (they are rated for 1600 CL8 i think, but obviously right now, by default, they run at 1333 and whatever default latencies)...and then there is Uncore frequency....do i need to touch it as well?

 

[Burpo]

I don't turn off anything, but System Memory Multiplier is where you'd adjust ram speed. There's very few videos of overclocking the Gigabyte UD7, but this video runs you through the settings. If this guy can do it, you can too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJNOd2-vPKk

You can also go to Gigabytes site and get the Easy Tune Quick Boost software for quick easy overclocking.