2600K turbo boost vs. strict overclocking

[Explo]

I am overclocking my i7 2600K and after THG's review on overclocking this chip, I am curious:

Do any of you have thoughts on using turbo boost to essentially auto pilot your overclocking (I am thinking 4.5GHz to 4.8GHz) versus doing a strict overclock with a manual voltage, set multiplier, no stepping, etc.?

For those who have tried it, do you find SB chips handle the fluctuating voltages and speeds smoothly?

Thanks!

 

[bearclaw99]

Mine works out better set manually (Manual 45X multiplier, Offset +0.025 voltage, CPU PLL 1.75v, Stepping on). Comes out stable at 1.296-1.304 vcore

Using an Asrock 4Extreme Pro board and auto OC Turbo setting were raising the voltage a bit too high even on new BIOS. Was using 1.312v on 4.4, and 1.376 on 4.6. My temps are lower on 4.5 ghz than they were on 4.4

 

[55Range]

I would say only Strict oc in bios- No programs. Its safer and better in bios-

 

[Explo]

well, turbo boost is set up in the bios. I guess motherboards have software that can tap into it, but I wasn't planning on using that, either way.

 

[55Range]

Disable turbo boost- Oc will be more stable-
Anyway why would you need turbo when you are already ocing.

 

[Explo]

I thought it might be more efficient? If I did turbo, I'd be doing exactly what they do in the THG overclocking review that was recently posted. If the chip is intelligent about what cores are being used and when, wouldn't it be worth it to have it switch automatically between, say, 4.5ghz across all cores or 4.6 across three, 4.7 across 2, or 4.8 across one, all with the same low voltage?

I guess it comes down to how well it detects core usage?

 

[55Range]

Well, personally, i am not familiar with these new features..
You may try some reviews/facts on these features. For now, you could set a strict oc.

 

[rantoc]

Tried both ways and both works quite well, i rather have a tad more effichient/stable rig so went for the turbo overclock and it works great and was amazingly easy to perform even with the usual non-good-for-overclocking features like HT, C1 ect enabeled.

A hint - If you do turbo overclock, make sure you set all multipliers to the same (4-3-2-1 threaded) and then stress test, if your cores holds below 70c and the test run well your golden!

Set my goal low on this oc since stability is the major key this time as the rig will run 24/7, bumped the 2600k up to 4.0 @ 1.18V and did a 24hr stress run with LinX without any errors so i guess its ok to call it stable.

 

[4Ryan6]

I thought it might be more efficient? If I did turbo, I'd be doing exactly what they do in the THG overclocking review that was recently posted. If the chip is intelligent about what cores are being used and when, wouldn't it be worth it to have it switch automatically between, say, 4.5ghz across all cores or 4.6 across three, 4.7 across 2, or 4.8 across one, all with the same low voltage?

I guess it comes down to how well it detects core usage?

The fantastic thing about these K series is you have that option, you can go the Turbo enabled or not it's really up to you, if Turbo is enabled you have the flip side of the coin I don't care for, it will idle down to 1600mhz for the 2500K at that point the desktop is sluggish and slow to respond, until you run a solid power drawing app., that causes it to kick back up to at least the default 3300mhz.

With Turbo completely disabled and the features that work with that feature also disabled, and all 4 cores enabled the desktop experience is amazing and seriously tends to spoil you at the responsiveness of everything, you'll probably be going both routes and answering these questions for yourself.

For example if you run a 45X multiplier, all 4 cores will run at 4500mhz as long as they're being supplied the proper voltages to maintain that level stably, however it's imperative you have extremely good after market cooling, because under load those temperatures have to stay below the Thermal Throttling Threshold.

So it really boils down to how important is the power saving features to you, most of us previously overclocking AMD Black Edition CPUs, right out of the gate disabled every Cool and Quiet and CPU throttling feature the CPU had, so this is literally the same type of overclock to disable all the power saving features of the K series, to result in a straight across the cores clock.

The choice is yours, it's a new platform, do your own tests.