i7 920/930/9xx Sweet Spots

Hello everyone!

The past few days I have been wandering around the internet trying to find people's best 920/930 overclocks based on voltages more so than maximum frequency, and it's been a difficult hunt. There are tons of people with the chips at 4GHz and above, but I'm curious as to what your "sweet spot" is for the chip... or most "efficient" OC, rather than max stable.
For example: I'm seeing people report chips hit up to 3.8 on stock voltages, then a decent voltage jump to 4.0, and even a larger one to 4.2.

-What's the lowest voltage your chip runs with @ 3.6? Lowest voltage @ 3.8? Lowest voltage @ 4.0? 4.2? etc..
(What are your other voltages at? not just CPUv)

-What cooler do you have? What temps are you getting at each setting?

-What's your batch number?

Finding the max stable is really fun, but how about an efficient 24/7 setting? with the choice of loading your max setting profile when you want the extra juice.
I just think this would be helpful for newbies and experienced OC'ers alike, so if you'd care to add a reply and share your experiences, that would be awesome.

(If anyone knows of a similar thread anywhere, or if this is a double post, let me know please!)

SUBMITTED CHIPS:

blckhaze ----------------------------- 920 D0 --- 3990MHz --- 1.231v --- 38C/71C --- HT, Turbo
SpinachEater ----------------------- 930 D0 --- 3900MHz --- 1.250v --- 38C/61C ---
redechelon -------------------------- 930 D0 --- 4011MHz --- 1.1875v - 41C/60C ---
Hard Line ---------------------------- 930 D0 --- 4300MHz --- 1.296v --- 45C/75C --- HT
mdbrotha03 ------------------------- 920 D0 --- 4011MHz --- 1.200v --- 45C/75C --- HT, Turbo

Maybe a template would help organize... if this thread gets posts, I'd be happy to update the original post with everyone's settings.

920/930/other:
Revision:
Stepping:
Batch No.:

Frequency:
Voltage:

Motherboard:
Memory:
Case:

Cooler:
Idle Temp:
Load Temp:
Ambient Temp:

Hyper-Threading:
LLC/vDroop:
SpeedStep:
Turbo:

Other Voltages:

Hey I am about to embark on my 930 OC as well. I need to research all of the different settings but I will contribute to this post in a few days when I start. I am with you though, information seems to be scattered about so it is helpful to see what voltages people are using.

It is nice to see a few examples, but realizr that there are several variables, some unknowable. :
1) Chips are all slightly different, even from the same batch and stepping.
2) How well the cpu cooler was mounted may be more important than the cooler type.
3) What is the ambient temperature.
4) How good is the case cooling.
5) Are there some hot vga card/s involved?

Is the overclock a maximum effort, a best stable effort, or just a minor tweaking.

For my part, I just use a 920 c0 with a slight OC to 3.2.

That's a BIG assumption

Dammm I need a 930, my 860 sucks up the juice like a 10 year old at a pool party.

There's no way to get a thread like this perfectly accurate. In forums, we're just going to have to expect human error.
The point of the thread was to gather information from numerous people to see a sort of... average. It would help give you an idea of what to expect before overclocking and would be used as a guide, not a bible. Also, you could compare your chip to others to see where you specific CPU's performance is at and how you can improve it in certain areas.

Yeah, it does decrease temps a good chunk (often 10C?), but I'm already satisfied with my temps and I'd prefer to not sacrifice performance if it's avoidable. I haven't tried benchmarking a difference though... would be interesting. In articles I've read, HT seems to make a 0-20% gain, usually about 10% or less. If you could reach a much higher clock without hyper-threading enabled, it might be worth it, I dunno though.

Yeah... I think it would depend on the application being used, but the more I read about it, the more I'm tempted to turn off HT. I don't think it helps in games at all, so obviously a higher clock would do something there (Even though it would be minor, it's mostly in the graphics cards). In general productivity though, I'm not so sure... I guess it would depend on how much higher of a clock you could achieve. If you do rendering and converting really often, I'm sure it's worth it... but I don't use programs like that often enough.

I'm stuck on my laptop for the next few days, otherwise I'd see how high I could go. 10C would provide some nice headroom =]

Jeez, sorry to highjack your thread on this HT tangent but this is pretty interesting. It looks like you can indeed benefit from turning HT off to get higher clocks. I am finding a lot of evidence that HT mostly causes a small drop in gaming performance.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/ci7-turbo-ht-p2.html

Alright, I tried disabling Hyper-Threading at 4.0 and it lowered my temps at load to 63C with Prime95. With HT, it loads at about 72C. It allowed me to lower my voltage further also: from 1.206 to 1.1875. So, now it loads at 60C... that's pretty damn good, but later tonight, I'll bench it to see if there's a significant performance shift. If it's a very similar or identical score in programs like 3DMarkVantage and Heaven, then I'll keep it disabled for sure. I don't record and edit often enough to care about performance in those areas... mainly gaming and simple programs.

Hey red, I am having some weird issues can you help? I am hitting 3.8 and 4.0 GhZ just fine and with great temps (64C max at 4Ghz with HT off) I am running Prime 95, memtest, Stone Giant, AVP, Heaven, and Final Fantasy benchmarks with no issues what so ever at 4.0 Ghz but when I start up a real game like Crysis or BF BC2, I go to BSOD.

Do you have an idea as to what would cause a game to crash but not any of the benchmarks? I am starting with high voltages and working my way down but nothing at 3.8 and up seems to allow games to run.

I first thought it was my RAM but I downclocked the crap out of it and I still BSOD. Would you have any ideas regarding why I am crashing in games but not with benchmarks?

920
Revision: D0
Stepping: 5


Frequency: 3.990
Voltage: 1.231


Motherboard: P6T V2
Memory: 12gb 1600 Dominator 8-8-8-24 @ 1520mhz
Case:


Cooler: H50
Idle Temp: 38~
Load Temp: 71~
Ambient Temp: 24c


Hyper-Threading: 8
LLC/vDroop:
SpeedStep: ON
Turbo: ON

Other Voltages: Dram 1.35 & 1.66

1.225vcore ran for 3 hours before prime95 stopped working
1.231vcore ran prime95 for 9+ hours in 2 different instances, with memtest x4.
Overclocking to 4.2ghz required the vcore to be 1.263, so it was quite a big jump for that (the 200 bclk) so I think 1.231 with bclk 190 is the sweet spot on this 920.

Nice, thx blckhaze.

Yeah, the jump to 200 BCLK is much larger for me too, so it's not really worth it.

Spot on sir. I am up to 3.90 now and running pretty stable. I updated my post for the current settings. Now I can't seem to break 4.0 but I am happy with what I am getting at 3.9

I can prob go through and drop some more voltages to fine tune it. I am pretty shocked at how high you can get the CPU clocks with such a low Vcore.

Yeah people poo on the Xigmatek S1283 cooler for the new i7s but it is rocking out for me.

I was down by your vcore (1.206v) but I was getting a single core crashing out in Prime95. I am prob a bit over the necessary vcore but I gave up tweaking last night because I wanted to get some gaming in!

What is great is that when I game, nothing uses 100% of all 4 cores so I am even below 61C in real life temps.

Hmm, I did some HT ON vs OFF tests. I ran 3D Mark 06 at my 3.9Ghz

HT ON
Overall: 25316
CPU: 6747

HT OFF
Overall: 24876 (-440 points, -1.7%)
CPU: 6280 (-467 points, -6.9%)

There is an ever so slight difference but it is probably all due to the CPU score from the CPU rendering tests.

Can you post your settings with red's format way above? It will be helpful to see what all of your voltages are set to other than Vcore

My i7 920 runs at 21x191 1.2v

Ran Intel Burn in with 20 runs at max memory and 8 threads.

Test was successful. 75c was the highest core temp using a D14 in a warm room.

Idle Temps around 45c

Gaming Temps in the Mid 50s

HT and Turbo on

All other voltage on Auto

All other settings at default values.

updated

Yes, its a DO. I also have my CPU z val in my sig now. When I put 1.2v in the bios it comes out as 1.192v. Also its 191x21. If you at CPU z its 190.84

Hey guys, I am having some trouble getting my rig stable at 4ghz. Although, I am not exactly sure what to set my voltages at to get it stable. As it stands now, i can run prime95 for about 5min before it will freeze or bsod. I had it running stable at 3.52 ghz (22/160) at 1.2125 vCore with temps getting into the upper 60s... so i know i can push it further. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

920/930/other: 930
Revision: D0
Stepping: 5
Batch No.: ? (not sure, at work)

Frequency: 4.01ghz (21/191)
Voltage: 1.225

Motherboard: Asus P6X58D-E
Memory: 8gb G.SKILL Ripjaws Series DDR3 1600 (1.6v 7/7/7/24)
Case: Silverstone Fortress FT02B

Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212+
Idle Temp: 42-46 across all for cores
Load Temp: 72-75 across all 4 cores
Ambient Temp: ~28

Hyper-Threading: Yes
LLC/vDroop: Yes
SpeedStep: No
Turbo: No

Other Voltages: Everything is Auto except for vCore and DRAM voltage

Hey awilson. Yeah try setting some of our voltages to match ours. The first thing I always ask is what your memory multiplier is at... if you're increasing your BCLK, it's raising what your memory is running at. So at 191, you need it at 8x for a total of 1528MHz.

Alright, so i read through a few more threads and tutorials and messed around with my voltages a little more and got it stable running prime95 for about 30min. I know this isnt really a long enough time to tell if it will be stable or not, but i just wanted to check and make sure my voltages looked good before i run a more extensive stress test.

according to cpu-z, i have:

4009.1 MHz (21x190.9)
vCore: 1.2875 (CPU-Z is reading 1.264??)
QPI: 1.275
PLL: 1.88
IOH: 1.14
DRAM: 1.6 (7/7/7/24)

and i got temps of: (I figure these are about right since the ambient temp is 34 degrees right now)
idle: 48 46 48 45
load: 81 80 77 78

Got a chance to do more hyperthreading experiments. I play a lot of bad company 2 so since it doesn't have a benchmark I thought I would use FRAPS and try something like walk through an empty map on the same path. I used Panama Canal and walked down the middle of the road with HT on and HT off.

I noticed when I loaded the game up it maxed out all 8 threads and also when I play, it seems to use a lot of hyperthreading (using all 8 threads as well) vs some games that only use 4 threads and the other 4 have no activity. I thought HT being on would be a great benefit in this case but it turns out that it doesn't make much of a difference with my settings.

CPU - 3.90 Ghz
GPU - 780Mhz
Resolution - 1680x1050


HT ON
MIN-55,
MAX-89,
AVG-70.345

HT OFF -
MIN-57,
MAX-91,
AVG-70.172

Me too. I saw how it was using all of the threads pretty heavily so I was thinking that it would make a difference. My only other thought is that perhaps the high CPU clocks are making me GPU bound and HT doesn't matter at this point.

I can either downclock the CPU and do HT ON/OFF or go down to a lower resolution and maybe I will become CPU bound again.

ok here goes

920/930/other: i7 930
Revision: D0
Stepping: 5
Batch No.: 3002A652

Frequency: 4300
Voltage: 1.296v

Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R rev 2
Memory: 6GB Mushkin Redline Enhanced 6-8-6-24-1T @1640mhz
Case: Haf 922

Cooler: Noctua D-14
Idle Temp: 45C
Load Temp: 75C
Ambient Temp: 33C

Hyper-Threading: ON
LLC/vDroop: LVL 2
SpeedStep: ON
Turbo: OFF

Other Voltages:

CPU PLL: 1.8
QPI/Vtt: 1.355
DRAM 1.66
DRAM Termination: 0.75
QPI-PLL: 1.1
IOH Core: 1.18
ICH I/O: 1.5
ICH Core: 1.1