PCI-E overlclock, Getting major improvements... What?

[markj_2222]

It started with playing some Metro 2033 (Awesome game/Beautiful graphics). Had maxed out graphics settings and it was bogging in large map environments. With my system being older i figured give it all she's got untill she explodes. So i find out that when its bogging, the video card are not running at 100%, being limited somewhere else. So i start overclocking everything that can be overclocked.

The thing that gave me the most performance was overclocking the pci-express bus. I've set it to 130 Mhz, 30% increase when bogged. This strikes me as odd because i always read people spouting 1-5 mhz OC max and they say no perfomance increase. Turns out my SLi with 8x/8x was limiting the bandwidth to the cards.

So intrigued i start researching stability. I have a Ocz Revo drive 3 Hard drive (PCI-e) and i do a write/read checksum test with zero errors across the board. (i also get 30% read/write speed increase with overclock) I get fur mark for the video cards, after turning my room into a sauna i don't notice any artifacts. I also have a sound card on Pci-e x1, so i bust open the old fruity loops and get clear sound with Zero under-runs.

My over all experience has been amazing, so far nothing had melted and it makes my old hardware meet my current needs.

Asus Maximus III Formula (P55)
i5-750 @ 3.8 Ghz stable
2x Asus 560Ti 900 Mhz (Sli)
OCZ Revo drive 3
Corsair xms3-1333
Corsair HX-850
Red stripes for extra Horse power

 

[amuffin]

Once you adjust your BLCK above 105, you are damaging all of your sata ports and many other major parts on your motherboard.

 

[markj_2222]

By BLCK im assumeing you mean PCI-e Bus.

It will not damage any of my sata ports or any parts on my motherboard. The only parts that are theroretically capabile of being damaged are the CPU (on die PCI-e controller), Video cards, Ocz Revo drive and sound card.

There is a Pci-e emulator connected to the south bridge (ICH) and feeds the data thought the DMI bus and thats how this motherboard powers the 3rd PCI slot. But the ICH frequecy stays the same, it's temperature isnt chaging when PCI-e is overclocked, the interface to the sata ports is uneffected.

As for the other 2 PCI-e slots it is wired directly into the CPU. This is new feature added to the I 3/5/7 cpus. I have the soccet 1156 which has a total of 16 PCI-e ports on the CPU. Since im running sli it is divided into 8x/8x

I'll agree that this is unknown territory, I'll be sure to post if something stops working the way it should or if i start getting errors.

Here is everything you need to know about bussing. Really neat stuff.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/09/intel-launches-all-new-pc-architecture-with-core-i5i7-cpus/

 

[amuffin]

Didn't know that about the P55 chipset, the LGA 1155 CPU's are different.