Need help i5-750 overclock

[Mishtasteele]

Hello everyone! I am going to go ahead and quickly admit I have never overclocked a processor before. I am just recently purchased new computer components and I am wanting to test the waters of overclocking and benchmarking. I have searched numerous forums/websites for guides on overclocking the i5-750 and I have followed them however I am not getting stable boots. Sometimes the computer won't boot at all, sometimes it will and when I get it into LinX to test the stability it will run for a few seconds and freeze or it will run for a couple of minutes and then quit with an error.

The computer:
i5-750
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD4P
Radeon 5570

I am trying to just obtain an overclock of 3.8GHz and I have tried the following settings in my bios:
Vcore @ 1.35
VTT @ 1.21
PLL @ 1.80
Base clock @ 190
Multiplier @ 20

I have also disabled turbo mode, EIST, LLC, C1E and all the C-States.

Pretty much this won't even boot without a blue screen. What am I doing wrong? Any assistance in helping me walk through my first overclock ever is very much appreciated!

Andrew

 

[photonboy]

There is no need to overclock your CPU.

Because you are using an HD5570, your CPU will not be completely used. Benchmarks indicate that the i5-750 can handle an HD5870 without reaching 100% usage in any game.

You can verify this yourself by using the Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and monitor CPU usage.

Note that if virus software kicks in it will increase CPU usage. Even if a single core is at 100% it's unlikely overclocking will help (other cores will process the task).

Only if two or three cores/threads are at 100% is it likely the game will benefit from an overclock and I'd be highly surprised if you could find one.

It would be interesting to find games like Mirrors Edge that support PhysX through the CPU and turn this on and off in the settings to monitor cpu usage. I turned it on and just after my character talks to her sister the police shoot at me and there's a lot of glass which caused my framerate to drop to 3%. I have an X2-4800+ and HD3870.

FYI, PhysX on the CPU is limited to a maximum number of particles (or shatters of an object, I'm not quite sure); this is an artificial cap by NVidia because they want you to buy their video cards (I'm pissed they are blocking support of PhysX on NVidia cards when an ATI card is also detected). Still, games like Batman Arkham Asylum do look a bit better with it. Your CPU will jump up a lot but I suspect it's quite capable of handling PhysX.

Things would be different if you had two HD5870's in Crossfire. In this case I'd be recommending overclocking. As for now, likely all you'll do is wear out your CPU prematurely or possibly even kill it completely.

 

[cyberkuberiah]

excellent point , unless u are playing games like fsx , no need to do that ... as u already know the i5 goes to 3.2 ghz itself on upto 2 cores ... thats already more than enough .

 

[cadder]

I've been working on overclocking an i5 tonight myself. We run AutoCAD and Revit so we Can definitely use all the CPU power we can get. I built a machine that tries to be economical in cost but with lots of performance.
I used an i5-750, 8gb of G.Skill ram, Gigabyte P55-UD3R mobo, Xig 1284 cooler, OCZ Agility SSD. I built it with a low end GeForce video card because our CAD card of choice wasn't available on short notice.

Tonight I assembled it, loaded Win7 64bit, and tried it out a bit, then started overclocking it.

At least AutoCAD just uses one core so I use SuperPi as a quick and dirty benchmark program. I run coretemp and prime95 for stress testing. My current CAD machine uses an E8500 at 3.8GHz, my home machine is a Q9400 at 3.4GHz. For the i5 I wanted to get close to the performance of the E8500.

I ran the i5 at stock speed and wrote down its superpi score, then I went directly to a base clock of 160. I didn't change any other settings in the bios. I got virtually the same result in superpi. This is what they were telling you above- the chip will go into turbo mode for one core and overclock itself.

Next I went to 3.5GHz, this time I also changed the memory multiplier to 8 instead of 10. I then went to 3.7GHz, 3.8GHz and 3.9GHz. Each time I would run prime95 for 20 or 30 minutes, and I was also recording maximum temperatures. At 4.0GHz I also dropped the QPI multiplier to 32. Prime95 ran for a few minutes and one of the cores detected an error so I stopped it right there.

My maximum temp running 30 minutes at 3.9GHz was 72 for one of the cores.

I did not change voltages or memory settings during any of this testing. I think I could have tinkered with other settings and gotten the cpu to run slightly faster but I was not really interested in finding the absolute limit, and also I thought I was getting near the temperature limits that I would be comfortable with.

After I finished probing the limits, I intended to set the chip back to 3.5GHz or so for daily use. At that speed it was running about 57 degrees, and seems to be a touch faster than my E8500 at 3.8GHz.

 

[photonboy]

cadder,
I read that AutoCad 2009 was the first version that offers true multi-core support though I can't confirm that.

You should use the Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and monitor the programs you use to see how many cores/threads they are using. Even programs that aren't multi-threaded can use more than one core.

By the time AutoCad truly gets its act together people will be wanting OpenCL Graphics support.

 

[cadder]

Suppsedly AutoCAD uses multiple cores for some operations, but in normal usage it is just one core. I have a dual core machine at work that I spec'd for myself, and a couple of our other guys have quad cores that they ordered from our supplier. I have tested my machine by telling the bios to use both cores and by telling it to use only one core and I couldn't tell any difference in autocad. The machine I just built will be used for Autocad 2010 and Revit 2010 so we will see how it works with 4 cores and also how it works with 64bit OS.

My opinion is that even if your software all uses just one core, multiple cores are still beneficial because the OS needs to run while your software runs, and you might have other apps running in the background. In particular it seems that plotting will use more than one core. I can crank up a string of plots and while they are running I might switch to email or something like that. I notice a big slowdown with the dual core machine. At home with my quad core it doesn't seem to matter what I am running I can still switch to another app and it will be responsive.

Back on topic- I had originally intended to build an i7-920 for a CAD test machine but when I got down to picking specific parts I decided that an i5 could be built for about $300 less. I expected to overclock both of them to the same point, so the only benefit I could see for the additional $300 was that the i7-920 could be easily built with 12GB while the i5 would top our at 8GB. (I said "easily" because to go beyond 8GB/12GB would require 2GB DIMMS and there is a big cost penalty right now for them.) Anyway my CAD guys told me that 8GB is supposed to be enough.

As a result of choosing the i5-750 and now having the experience with it, I have decided that it is a great processor. It is reasonably priced, it is real easy to overclock to 3.5GHz or so, even if you don't want to overclock it will still get reasonable power due to its turbo mode. If a person wants to really get into overclocking then they can work with it and get it to the 4GHz range. Motherboards and memory for it are reasonably priced as well.

 

[shadowf0x]

Hey I have essentially the same set-up: Core i5, 4gb of G.skill ripjaws ddr3 1600, nvidia 260gtx 216, and same cpu cooler I believe, etc. other components are not important. Anyways, I found that a safe OC to be at 3.3-3.4ghz with the Base Clock at 165Mhz, and the clock multiplier at 20x (but set at Auto, I have an Asus P55 Evo board which is smart about it and I found runs more efficiently with it that way) and at stock voltages (1.25v I believe). I got system errors running intelburntests at 3.6ghz+ even with perfectly cool temperatures (<60C). 3.4Ghz is disgustingly fast already so I don't advise you put the life of your processor at risk by overvolting it and potentially having your motherboard fried. Also, don't forget to turn Turboboost and power saving features off because they might get in the way of your overclock. Goodluck!

 

[photonboy]

Overclocking:

1) The higher you overclock, the shorter is the lifespan of your CPU.

2) Again, monitor your CPU usage with the Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) in game to see if it's needed.

I'm not saying don't overclock in certain situations. I am saying be aware of what's going on. If I was encoding video or using certain programs there may be long times of processing that I can shorten proportional to how much I overclock.

But, again, depending on your setup in programs like games your CPU may not be maxed out at stock speeds. A graphics card or hard drive could be holding you back. In these cases you should not overclock as there's no benefit; all you do is add heat, noise and prematurely wear your CPU. This can be monitored by running the Task Manager in the background (CTRL-ALT-DEL).

Christmas is creeping up...

 

[andy5174]

Hello everyone! I am going to go ahead and quickly admit I have never overclocked a processor before. I am just recently purchased new computer components and I am wanting to test the waters of overclocking and benchmarking. I have searched numerous forums/websites for guides on overclocking the i5-750 and I have followed them however I am not getting stable boots. Sometimes the computer won't boot at all, sometimes it will and when I get it into LinX to test the stability it will run for a few seconds and freeze or it will run for a couple of minutes and then quit with an error.

The computer:
i5-750
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD4P
Radeon 5570

I am trying to just obtain an overclock of 3.8GHz and I have tried the following settings in my bios:
Vcore @ 1.35
VTT @ 1.21
PLL @ 1.80
Base clock @ 190
Multiplier @ 20

I have also disabled turbo mode, EIST, LLC, C1E and all the C-States.

Pretty much this won't even boot without a blue screen. What am I doing wrong? Any assistance in helping me walk through my first overclock ever is very much appreciated!

Andrew

Try the following setting:

Vcore @ AROUND 1.32V with Load-line Calibration(LLC) OFF
VTT @ 1.16V
PLL @ 1.88V
PCH @ 1.10V
Base clock @ 190
Multiplier @ 20

 

[andy5174]

Next, torture test the stability with prime95 Large FFTs test and obviously you will want to up the voltage a bit if it's not stable.

If it is stable, keep lowering the voltage of each parameter ONE a time until the system become unstable.

For example, when tweaking the core voltage, you HAVE TO make all other voltages being unchanged and then keep lowering the Vcore until they system become unstable.