- Mar 3, 2006
- 142
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- 18,680
Ok
Spent the last few weeks experimenting with all sorts of overclocking configurations on my new Core2 Duo rig. As I have had Athlon Tbird, then AthlonXP and then Athlon64 for the last 5 or so years this has been something a bit new for me, as it is for many others.
Some side information: CPU cooling is dealt with by an Asetek Waterchill rig with a 120mm rad, but using a Swiftech StormGT CPU block. The case has 2x80mm fans on the side blowing air onto the chipset and feeding air to Graphics card, and a 120mm exaust fan, so plenty of air with a good airflow thru the case.
Ram Geil PC6400 Extreme 4-4-4-12 ram
By reducing my multiplier to 7 I tested the ram to find its max bootable FSB. Running at 2.3v it would boot happily at 950mhz whilst maintaining 4-4-4-12 timings. It would probably go higher but this was enough for me at the time. Also, to acheive this I set the FSB voltage on the DS4 to +0.10v.
Ok, so once I had charted the memory speeds and required voltages from 870 to 950mhz I was set to push the CPU.
The chip in question would clock up to 3.2ghz on stock voltage which was fairly impressive. This soon got to 3.6ghz at 1.45v. The 1.45v was the bios setting, whilst Gigabytes monitoring program showed this as being 1.43v.
To get to 3.632 I had to up the voltage to 1.4625 so i knew it was starting to get to the point where I was going to have to do a voltage increase for every 1mhz FSB increase.
So I benchmarked the CPU at this point.
Aquamark 133642
3DMark06 6802
Then I pushed the chip more.
3648mhz needed 1.475 and showed only a very slight improvement in benchmarks.
3664mhz needed 1.5v and benched the same as 3632
At this point I got bored with little jumps, and got to 3702mhz with 1.525v.
What was interesting was that my benchmarks now dropped significantly
Aquamark 130766
3DMark06 6701
I went back to 3632 but left the voltage at 1.525, and again the benches were down. I then rebooted at 1.4625 and immediately got very similar benches to the first ones at 3.632mhz
This is a new behaviour for me for where a chip is getting to its max on overclocking. With the AMD chips I got a constant increase no matter what the voltage until they just stopped working.
Anyway, I have settled at 3632mhz as this isnt a bad overclock (1499mhz or +70.267%)
Thought some of you might find this interesting.
As a footnote, I am bidding on a Vapochill Xtreme L2 rig at the moment, who knows what speeds that might bring......
Footnote 2, if only this chip has a x.5 multipilier option!! I would get max performance out of this running at 475x7.5 - 3562mhz
7x475mhz gave me 3324mhz and the benches on this didnt get beaten until I hit 3560mhz (8x445)
Spent the last few weeks experimenting with all sorts of overclocking configurations on my new Core2 Duo rig. As I have had Athlon Tbird, then AthlonXP and then Athlon64 for the last 5 or so years this has been something a bit new for me, as it is for many others.
Some side information: CPU cooling is dealt with by an Asetek Waterchill rig with a 120mm rad, but using a Swiftech StormGT CPU block. The case has 2x80mm fans on the side blowing air onto the chipset and feeding air to Graphics card, and a 120mm exaust fan, so plenty of air with a good airflow thru the case.
Ram Geil PC6400 Extreme 4-4-4-12 ram
By reducing my multiplier to 7 I tested the ram to find its max bootable FSB. Running at 2.3v it would boot happily at 950mhz whilst maintaining 4-4-4-12 timings. It would probably go higher but this was enough for me at the time. Also, to acheive this I set the FSB voltage on the DS4 to +0.10v.
Ok, so once I had charted the memory speeds and required voltages from 870 to 950mhz I was set to push the CPU.
The chip in question would clock up to 3.2ghz on stock voltage which was fairly impressive. This soon got to 3.6ghz at 1.45v. The 1.45v was the bios setting, whilst Gigabytes monitoring program showed this as being 1.43v.
To get to 3.632 I had to up the voltage to 1.4625 so i knew it was starting to get to the point where I was going to have to do a voltage increase for every 1mhz FSB increase.
So I benchmarked the CPU at this point.
Aquamark 133642
3DMark06 6802
Then I pushed the chip more.
3648mhz needed 1.475 and showed only a very slight improvement in benchmarks.
3664mhz needed 1.5v and benched the same as 3632
At this point I got bored with little jumps, and got to 3702mhz with 1.525v.
What was interesting was that my benchmarks now dropped significantly
Aquamark 130766
3DMark06 6701
I went back to 3632 but left the voltage at 1.525, and again the benches were down. I then rebooted at 1.4625 and immediately got very similar benches to the first ones at 3.632mhz
This is a new behaviour for me for where a chip is getting to its max on overclocking. With the AMD chips I got a constant increase no matter what the voltage until they just stopped working.
Anyway, I have settled at 3632mhz as this isnt a bad overclock (1499mhz or +70.267%)
Thought some of you might find this interesting.
As a footnote, I am bidding on a Vapochill Xtreme L2 rig at the moment, who knows what speeds that might bring......
Footnote 2, if only this chip has a x.5 multipilier option!! I would get max performance out of this running at 475x7.5 - 3562mhz
7x475mhz gave me 3324mhz and the benches on this didnt get beaten until I hit 3560mhz (8x445)
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