Overclocking Haswell Question

[RadiclDreamer]

I havent overclocked since my opteron days so i had a few questions regarding haswell and how it behaves with overclocking.

Currently when idle it lowers clock speeds down to around 800mhz and I assume voltage as well, If i were to change the multiplier to something higher, would it still idle at a lower clock and voltage? Or is that feature lost when overclocking?

 

[blackened23]

I havent overclocked since my opteron days so i had a few questions regarding haswell and how it behaves with overclocking.

Currently when idle it lowers clock speeds down to around 800mhz and I assume voltage as well, If i were to change the multiplier to something higher, would it still idle at a lower clock and voltage? Or is that feature lost when overclocking?

Yes, it will still idle at 800mhz. Another tip for you - you have a choice between adaptive, offset, and manual voltage. I highly recommend using manual voltage ONLY to dial your required OC turbo voltage, and then once you figure that out - go to adaptive or offset. Reason being is that if you use manual voltage, you will even idle at your manual voltage - let's say you overclock to 4.5ghz with a H100i @ 1.25V. If you use manual voltage you will idle at 800mhz and 1.25V.

You do not want this. Running excessively high voltages causes electromigration, which *will* lower the life of the chip and will also needlessly increase temperatures at your 800mhz idle speed. Generally it takes 2-3 years or more [for electromigration] to become an issue, but I have had chips slowly start to BSOD after 2-3 years from 24/7 super high manual voltages.

TL'DR: use manual voltage only to dial in your overclock. Then switch to adaptive voltage. And yes, you will still idle at 800mhz even if you change the multiplier - the idle clockspeed is constant @ 800. (1600 for Ivy).

 

[tweakboy]

Go to MANUAL where its your blck place of UEFI ? advanced options. turn off turbo, but leave on CE1 just disable turbo boost, now enter desired speed with either mutli or blck

good luck.

 

[boondocks]

Yes, it will still idle at 800mhz. Another tip for you - you have a choice between adaptive, offset, and manual voltage. I highly recommend using manual voltage ONLY to dial your required OC turbo voltage, and then once you figure that out - go to adaptive or offset. Reason being is that if you use manual voltage, you will even idle at your manual voltage - let's say you overclock to 4.5ghz with a H100i @ 1.25V. If you use manual voltage you will idle at 800mhz and 1.25V.

You do not want this. Running excessively high voltages causes electromigration, which *will* lower the life of the chip and will also needlessly increase temperatures at your 800mhz idle speed. Generally it takes 2-3 years or more [for electromigration] to become an issue, but I have had chips slowly start to BSOD after 2-3 years from 24/7 super high manual voltages.

TL'DR: use manual voltage only to dial in your overclock. Then switch to adaptive voltage. And yes, you will still idle at 800mhz even if you change the multiplier - the idle clockspeed is constant @ 800. (1600 for Ivy).

Well that is not exactly right.....my 4770K / Z87X UD5H is overclocked using manual voltage selection, and at idle the voltage drops right along with the core speed. With Haswell I've seen no reason to use offset at all.

 

[CakeMonster]

Well that is not exactly right.....my 4770K / Z87X UD5H is overclocked using manual voltage selection, and at idle the voltage drops right along with the core speed. With Haswell I've seen no reason to use offset at all.

Really? Care to share your BIOS settings? I have the D3HP and when I set the voltage it never drops. But I have to set it in order to avoid it skyrocketing.

 

[Redoitall]

Well that is not exactly right.....my 4770K / Z87X UD5H is overclocked using manual voltage selection, and at idle the voltage drops right along with the core speed. With Haswell I've seen no reason to use offset at all.

Your Bios is either borked or something in your settings is set up wrong Manual should override offset or adaptive

 

[boondocks]

Really? Care to share your BIOS settings? I have the D3HP and when I set the voltage it never drops. But I have to set it in order to avoid it skyrocketing.

X46 / 1.26 vcore / 39 uncore / 1.10 vring / XMP Profile 1 / LLC Extreme / All C states Auto / Wake On LAN disabled for sleep to work properly.

Nothing magical, I'm guessing you don't have C states on Auto??

 

[boondocks]

Your Bios is either borked or something in your settings is set up wrong Manual should override offset or adaptive

Every bios since the one it shipped with has been exactly the same.
Nothing borked with my board....yours might be. :whiste:
I see a lot of people giving advice based on IB...Haswell is somewhat different.

Also...this is my second Haswell board, so I'm not pulling this out of thin air.......

 

[Redoitall]

Every bios since the one it shipped with has been exactly the same.
Nothing borked with my board....yours might be. :whiste:
I see a lot of people giving advice based on IB...Haswell is somewhat different.

Actually I have two systems the impact from Asus and the deluxe and both mini ITX no drop in voltages when st to manual. I am not trying to put your board down is that if you watch most of the 4770 K overcloking guides most of the experts will tell you to set to manual so that there is no drop in voltages and that ensures a stable clock before moving to adaptive or offset

 

[boondocks]

Actually I have two systems the impact from Asus and the deluxe and both mini ITX no drop in voltages when st to manual. I am not trying to put your board down is that if you watch most of the 4770 K overcloking guides most of the experts will tell you to set to manual so that there is no drop in voltages and that ensures a stable clock before moving to adaptive or offset

Maybe it's something specific to some Gigabyte boards? Through 2 boards and several bios revisions, it's always behaved the same....that led me to believe (wrongly, I guess) that was normal behaviour for Haswell.

So my apologies, I thought that was normal, as it's been quite normal for my boards. 😳

 

[blackened23]

Well that is not exactly right.....my 4770K / Z87X UD5H is overclocked using manual voltage selection, and at idle the voltage drops right along with the core speed. With Haswell I've seen no reason to use offset at all.

Then your motherboard is unique. They aren't SUPPOSED TO DO THIS, by the way. 😉 What I mean is that manual means manual - it stays at that manual voltage forever. So if you're getting vDroop with manual voltage, your motherboard is messed up. That isn't proper behavior. This is how manual voltage works with every brand of board i've used including ASrock, MSI, asus, among others.

 

[blackened23]

Maybe it's something specific to some Gigabyte boards? Through 2 boards and several bios revisions, it's always behaved the same....that led me to believe (wrongly, I guess) that was normal behaviour for Haswell.

So my apologies, I thought that was normal, as it's been quite normal for my boards. 😳

Yeah, it definitely is specific to the motherboards you've used. That is definitely not "proper" behavior for manual voltage. Manual means your voltage sticks. Manual voltage means your voltage never changes, ever. Offset means you get vdroop. What is happening in your case is that you're getting offset vDroop when you specify manual voltage - that should not be happening. Proper behavior is YOU set offset voltage and THEN you get vDroop.

Just to clarify, again:

Offset means you get vDroop.
Manual means your voltage stays where you set it forever.
Adaptive means you can specify the Turbo voltage and you will get vDroop while idle. Adaptive and Offset are similar. But the bottom line is that manual voltage is never supposed to change if you specify that in your BIOS.

Then again, i've heard Gigabyte owners having to go through 3-4 BIOS's to get their Haswell's up and running. Would not surprise me if Gigabyte had something strange going on in their BIOS (this is why I stick with Asus).

 

[boondocks]

Yeah, it definitely is specific to the motherboards you've used. That is definitely not "proper" behavior for manual voltage. Manual means your voltage sticks. Manual voltage means your voltage never changes, ever. Offset means you get vdroop. What is happening in your case is that you're getting offset vDroop when you specify manual voltage - that should not be happening. Proper behavior is YOU set offset voltage and THEN you get vDroop.

Just to clarify, again:

Offset means you get vDroop.
Manual means your voltage stays where you set it forever.
Adaptive means you can specify the Turbo voltage and you will get vDroop while idle. Adaptive and Offset are similar. But the bottom line is that manual voltage is never supposed to change if you specify that in your BIOS.

Then again, i've heard Gigabyte owners having to go through 3-4 BIOS's to get their Haswell's up and running. Would not surprise me if Gigabyte had something strange going on in their BIOS (this is why I stick with Asus).

Yes, I'm quite familiar with how offset works.

Anyway, after some investigation, I found that the BIOS in my board supports advanced C3 features; so it's intentional and not a "bug". I never noticed before since the default is enabled.
The setup allows the vcore to drop at idle even with vcore manually set. I find it works quite well for me.

So as I said, all apologies as I thought this was a new feature common to all Z87 boards when in fact it's only Gigabyte, apparently.

 

[JimmiG]

My Gigabyte board does not seem to have this magical voltage mode. Manual means manual - voltage always stays the same, regardless of whether the CPU is idling at 800 MHz or running AVX2 loads.

Adaptive/Offset works well as long as you're not into heavy AVX/AVX2 loads. This will cause the voltage to go up by as much as 0.1V compared to what you normally get at full load. However for regular 24/7 operation it works great, since you get all the power saving features. It should also extend the life of the CPU, since it spends much of its time at low voltages.

 

[Kenmitch]

I kind of wish I ponyd up for a better board. Wasn't much in m-atx available when I purchased my build.

My 1.25x and 1.66x straps have always worked thru uEFI versions. My board for some reason seems more stable using the 1.25x strap. Could use more voltage control options tho. Wish there was a option to kill the avx voltage boost. Sitting at 4.375GHz 1.200v fixed vcore currently. Too much work to tweak offset mode do to the avx vcore boost. 4.375GHz is as high as I can get with the H100i in quiet mode push/pull and not throttle in Linpack 11.