What the heck is QPI link and should I increase it?

[plagasx]

Hey guys,

I just finished overclocking my i7 920 to 3.6ghz fine with no problems running Prime 95 for about an hour and 2mins...

I've been hearing about having to set this QPI link option in the bios to get better performance...

I don't seem to have any problems with my current clock settings and my temps are pretty good. (36c idle/66c load) so should I worry about it or just leave it on Auto?

Here is a screen of my CPUz:

 

[wolfram23]

It's basically how fast everything on the mobo communicates, but you don't really need to mess with it. Since you increased the bus speed to 180, it automatically increased the QPI. In my BIOS I can set it to either 16x or 18x, but I've left it at 18.

I've heard i7s run fairly hot, but my OC is a little higher than yours and it's not near that hot, although I guess you have HT on. Did you enable C1E, EIST? Those can drastically lower idle temps.

 

[plagasx]

Yea, I have HT enabled and speedstep disabled...

You think I really should enable speedstep? I thought most people disable that when overclocking?

 

[wolfram23]

Most OC guides I've read do indeed say to disable turbo and all the other functions but that's for stability. Once you're stable, you can turn them on and see how it performs. For me, I leave them on and it doesn't negatively affect performance. And like I said, super low idle temps (CoreTemp and Speedfan show as low as 19C, while HWMonitor shows them at 30C highest to 25C lowest). I even have turbo on - which is great as single threads reach 4.2ghz no problems.

Just so you know tho, an hour of Prime95 isn't really adequate to determine stability. A good program to use for faster stability checks is Intel Burn Test. If you can pass 10 or 15 consecutive then you're pretty stable. It also gives a CPU speed output (in gigaflops) so you can see how you're doing. I noticed that with too low or too high Vcore, I lost efficiency (lower GFlops). So it was a good way to hone in the Vcore setting, and then any errors happening tell you to raise the VTT voltage. Once it's running fine tho, you should try doing at least 8hrs Prime95 overnight. I had it stable in the burn test but it failed P95 after 4hrs, raised VTT a tick, failed in 7hrs, raised 1 more tick, and it ran fine for 11hrs.

 

[Jak_Sparra]

Most OC guides I've read do indeed say to disable turbo and all the other functions but that's for stability. Once you're stable, you can turn them on and see how it performs. For me, I leave them on and it doesn't negatively affect performance. And like I said, super low idle temps (CoreTemp and Speedfan show as low as 19C, while HWMonitor shows them at 30C highest to 25C lowest). I even have turbo on - which is great as single threads reach 4.2ghz no problems.

Just so you know tho, an hour of Prime95 isn't really adequate to determine stability. A good program to use for faster stability checks is Intel Burn Test. If you can pass 10 or 15 consecutive then you're pretty stable. It also gives a CPU speed output (in gigaflops) so you can see how you're doing. I noticed that with too low or too high Vcore, I lost efficiency (lower GFlops). So it was a good way to hone in the Vcore setting, and then any errors happening tell you to raise the VTT voltage. Once it's running fine tho, you should try doing at least 8hrs Prime95 overnight. I had it stable in the burn test but it failed P95 after 4hrs, raised VTT a tick, failed in 7hrs, raised 1 more tick, and it ran fine for 11hrs.

Hi,
good information thanks. I would just like to say I overclocked my i7 920 to 3.6Ghz and it would fail on Prime95 after about 4 hours. I did not change anything and continued using the PC to watch HD movies and play all sorts of PC games. It has never crashed in over 1 year except in Prime95. I don't do any photoshop stuff or film editing or rendering or anything so maybe if I did I would have seen some faults/crashes etc. Anyway just saying that for me Prime95 was not the same as real life usage.

 

[schmuckley]

You should probably set it to lowest..or 1 above lowest
If you're overclocking,that is.
I'm itching to mess with 1366..but the fellers say it would be a waste
I swear I wanna play with it.