Well I got my 8120 2 days ago and have overclocked the piss out of it :)

funboy6942

Lifer
Nov 13, 2001
15,311
395
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I did the automatic clock and it took it to 3875ghz and thought it could do more so I tried and its stable at 4.107 at 1.4 volts. Thats a whole 1000ghz increase. I tried 4.3 and it worked but it didnt get much 3dmark 2011 love. I tried 4.5 and it wouldnt even post. But at 4.1 it runs smooth, cool, and stable. I ran prime 95 all night and didnt have a single problem.

I have gamed with it and DiRT will not play even at all stock settings for some reason, but DiRT 2&3 work just fine. Thats all I have played so far with it for its pretty much all I play.

Am I happy since I paid $189 shipped for it, you bet. Huge improvement over my old X4 940 cpu in games and number crunching. Today I am to get my 2nd HD6870 to cf this rig and Im hoping to see an even bigger improvement.

OH, I have done makeMKV with it and I see about a 5-7 minute faster decoding time.

But all in all, Im very happy, this cpu rocks.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ArcticCooling/Freezer64Pro/
This is my cooler I am using.

Forgot to mention this is on air not water ;)
 
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Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
6,240
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I did the automatic clock and it took it to 3875ghz and thought it could do more so I tried and its stable at 4.107 at 1.4 volts. Thats a whole 1000ghz increase. I tried 4.3 and it worked but it didnt get much 3dmark 2011 love. I tried 4.5 and it wouldnt even post. But at 4.1 it runs smooth, cool, and stable. I ran prime 95 all night and didnt have a single problem.

1000ghz increase, holy smoking CPU's batman!
 

blckgrffn

Diamond Member
May 1, 2003
9,505
3,840
136
www.teamjuchems.com
Not saying that isn't awesome, but isn't that a very typical OC for BD?

Funboy, you don't happen to have a kill-a-watt, do you?

I'd be interested about your load power usage increase. It seems like a lot of testers show it at more extreme clocks (4.5Ghz+).

In any case, enjoy :)
 

BD231

Lifer
Feb 26, 2001
10,568
138
106
One game installed and you're saying it's a huge improvement gaming? Explain.
 

BD231

Lifer
Feb 26, 2001
10,568
138
106
Just helping with the obvious, man. No antagonism intended.

If I need your help I'll ask, thanks.

Ditch the bad attitude. And that advice is free, so there's no need to ask.
-ViRGE
 
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frostedflakes

Diamond Member
Mar 1, 2005
7,925
1
81
4.6-4.8GHz would be overclocking the piss out of it. 4.1GHz is a pretty easily achievable BD overclock. Heck the 8150 turbos up to 4.2 at stock. :p

Definitely would be a big improvement over stock in heavily and lightly threaded tasks, though. In single threaded stuff the 8120 turbos up to 4.0GHz at stock so it won't be much faster than stock in those situations. Wish there was some way to use turbo while you're overclocking (so you could set your CPU to 4.2 base but then have it turbo up to 4.7GHz, something like that for single threaded tasks), but it doesn't seem to be possible, at least not on my motherboard.

4.3-4.4 seems to be the sweet spot for them, beyond that voltage and power consumption really starts to get pretty high. With high-end air or water you can hit 4.8-5GHz I think. They suck down gobs of power at those kind of clock speeds, though.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
106
I have 2 8120s working as mining rigs. Haven't even tried to OC them yet, might just to see how easy it is.
 

pelov

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2011
3,510
6
0
4.3/4.4 with turbo on or off? If I had a BD chip I'd definitely want to keep the turbo on as it's one of the few major wins of the architecture. I couldn't reason spiking the voltage and power consumption figures when I'd get nearly the same performance with turbo on and not have to worry about heat/power, particularly when lightly-threaded tasks are concerned.
 

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2003
9,811
110
106
Aren't they basically idling along, feeding your GPUs? (curious how much CPU is involved in mining, I really don't know...)

Correct. There would be no bitcoin mining benefit in using an overclocked CPU. Technically you can mine with a CPU, but even the fastest CPU are orders of magnitude slower than a GPU, and the power cost makes it unprofitable. I'm just curious what they can do, and I do use them occasionally as regular gaming or media computers.
 

jpeyton

Moderator in SFF, Notebooks, Pre-Built/Barebones
Moderator
Aug 23, 2003
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You'll notice a big bump in game performance with the second 6870.
 

Absolute0

Senior member
Nov 9, 2005
714
21
81
I was under the impression that these things were supposed to do well over 4 Ghz, easily, on the stock heatsink?

In the Anandtech review of the 8150 they got to 4.6 Ghz, stable, on stock heatsink, and said with better cooling you should hit upper 4's or 5Ghz with water

4.1 Ghz with aftermarket cooler, don't think your chip is close to being maxed out, unless it is a very poor overclocker.
 

Maximilian

Lifer
Feb 8, 2004
12,604
15
81
I was under the impression that these things were supposed to do well over 4 Ghz, easily, on the stock heatsink?

In the Anandtech review of the 8150 they got to 4.6 Ghz, stable, on stock heatsink, and said with better cooling you should hit upper 4's or 5Ghz with water

4.1 Ghz with aftermarket cooler, don't think your chip is close to being maxed out, unless it is a very poor overclocker.

Yeah, sandy bridge can do 4.6ghz easy at less volts and a cheap cooler :awe:

*dons flamesuit*
 

funboy6942

Lifer
Nov 13, 2001
15,311
395
126
You'll notice a big bump in game performance with the second 6870.

Thats what I a hoping for, well that and the fact I shouldnt have to upgrade much for a few years. Maybe run a 64bit os when some of my other programs got to that os and be used. I hate the fact Im running on 32 for it wont see my full 8 gigs of ram, only 4 gigs right now.

But Im done testing it right now and its time to fire up some more games and max them out and see what I get with this sucker.

As far as the going speed of my chip, thats fine if its not all that big. All the reviews I saw on it were water cooled to go higher and I just dont have that, and dont ever plan on running that kind of cooling system. But as it sits right now, I can max everything out and its no longer stuttering or slow. Just wish DiRT would run, dont know whats up with that for I was almost done with it.

I could maybe push it to 4.3 or 4.4 if I up the volts a bit, but I dont really feel like burning up my new chip when its doing great right where I have it for what I got it running on.

And as far as overclocking it its super easy. All you got to do it bump the ratio to 15.5, up the volts to 1.4, and then up the HT and set it to what you like to run your chip at or when it craps out. All I know is I didnt spend much to get it where its at right now. I bought everything from tiger direct and it cost me around $350 for the mobo, ram, and chip. Add another $100 to that for the extra HD6870 I got showing up sometime today. I really dont think I need the other card at this point with all the scores I got from testing it out and the games I have played so far, so I guess it was an impulse buy really.

But Im stoked with what I got it at using a $30 cooler and a $100 Mobo. Maybe I should give the stock cooler a try??
 
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thilanliyan

Lifer
Jun 21, 2005
11,978
2,200
126
I wanna OC my 6100 to 5GHz (at 1.46v @ 4.4GHz right now), but I don't think my watercooling can handle that much heat output with the low speed fans I'm using.
 

funboy6942

Lifer
Nov 13, 2001
15,311
395
126
Got my other card installed and it doubled my 3dmark2011 score. Me so happy right now :)