upgraded system - OC advice?

[lilrayray69]

Hey all! I upgraded from a FX-6300 & HD7850 to a i5-4690k and a GTX 970.

I'm not sure how great of a benchmark Firemark really is but I ran it on both for a comparison:
FX-6300 & HD7850: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4037993 4684
i5-4690k & GTX970: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4069090 9458

I'm not sure what temps are reasonable for the i5 and 970 - I haven't tried OC'ing either yet.

 

[lehtv]

Yep, that score looks correct.

As for temps, I'd keep the i5 around 80°C max during torture testing, and GTX 970 around 70C max while gaming (similar to what you'd expect from a reference cooler at stock clocks). But also keep an eye on VRM temps.

What make/model is the GTX970?

 

[lilrayray69]

It's an EVGA Superclocked 970 w/ ACX 2.0 cooler
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814487076

in Prime95 the i5 hit a max of 70C.

The 970 maxed at 75C in Furmark.

 

[Techhog]

It's an EVGA Superclocked 970 w/ ACX 2.0 cooler
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814487076

in Prime95 the i5 hit a max of 70C.

The 970 maxed at 75C in Furmark.

Both are great, but don't ever use Furmark again. You have overclocking headroom on both.

 

[lilrayray69]

What should you use to stress test the GPU?

 

[lehtv]

What should you use to stress test the GPU?

Crysis 3 or Metro 2033 bench, or some other demanding game. Witcher 2 with Ubersampling should work nicely as well

GPU's don't really need to be stress tested, i.e. tortured for stability; in fact, you can shorten the lifespan of your GPU with programs like Furmark. The idea is just to challenge them enough to give you an idea of the maximum temperatures. If temperatures look good after a session of gaming (with VSync and other framerate limiters off, of course), and you haven't experienced any artifacts, stability issues or performance issues, then you can keep the settings or try higher settings.

 

[lilrayray69]

What's the best way to go about OC'ing the i5? Just up the multiplier by say, 100mhz each time so 3.6ghz to 3.7ghz etc etc...? I also have not had an intel in a long time so didn't know about turbo boost - was confused when I saw it at 3.9ghz. Should I adjust that as well?

For OC'ing the GPU what software do most use now? Afterburner?

 

[lilrayray69]

So far I've OC'd +150mhz on the core and +220mhz on memory.
That makes it at 1315mhz/7452mhz

Have run some benchmarks/games, no crashes/artifacts and I haven't seen it over 75C so I think it's pretty stable.

 

[lehtv]

When OC'ing Intel... in a nutshell:

First, disable Turbo boost. If Haswell OC'ing is anything like Ivy Bridge (I believe it's almost identical) then I would start from 4GHz, set offset voltage +/-0 and run Prime95 for a while to see if it's stable. If yes, go up by 100 MHz increments, keeping the offset voltage at 0, and keeping an eye on temperatures. When encountering instability, raise voltage, except if temperatures are already showing 80+.

Of course there are plenty of other things to consider depending on how far you want to fine tune and optimize. But with only a 212 EVO, I don't think you need to concern yourself with the 'advanced' stuff, they come into play mostly with higher voltages which require better cooling.

I'd check out some Gigabyte/Haswell specific OC guide such as this one: http://www.overclock.net/t/1490835/the-gigabyte-z97x-overclocking-guide

 

[lilrayray69]

I have had some crashes in 3DMark and Far Cry 4. But I'm thinking it's the RAM, not the CPU or GPU.

I ran memtest86 and got a total of 101 errors which seems....bad.
Test 4: 11 errors, 5: 12 errors, 6: 1 error, 7: 61 errors, 8: 16 errors.

However I did test with all 4 DIMMs in place, not individually. This RAM is 4-5 years old so I'm not entirely surprised I guess. I have them set to their XMP profile @ DDR3 1600...

 

[lehtv]

Try them at 1333 MHz 9-9-9-24.

It should also have warranty so you could RMA it

 

[lilrayray69]

Yep, still plenty of errors at those settings.

 

[lilrayray69]

Well, only 1 single RAM stick produced memtest errors and G.Skill accepted the RMA request. Pretty cool of them, seeing as it's a 6 year old DIMM.

I've got +100mhz on the GPU core and +200mhz on the memory
The CPU is at 4.3ghz just with the multiplier, no vcore change.

3DMark scored at 10,188 - http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4113115

Max CPU temp I've seen is 66C. GPU Still sits around 75C under full load. Played Far Cry 4 on ultra settings with like 2xTSAA - usually around ~60fps, no crashing or anything. Seems pretty stable. Can probably go higher on both GPU and CPU.

Are there any other benchmarks I should use?

 

[lehtv]

Try Unigine Valley and Unigine Heaven