I7 920 Help, Newb w/ no experience

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Hey guys,

First off, I am trying to OC so I can play Skyrim on higher settings as the CPU seems to be holding me back.
If OCing the i7 920 isn't going to help, let me know and that's the end of this.

I really want to OC to a very safe state. I see lots of forums guiding to 3.8 minimum and trying for 4.0+. I'm not this greedy, and I'm too cautious to attempt it.

My Specs:
ASUS x58 P6T deluxe V2
i7-920 @ stock 2.66
CPU cooler: Asetek 240mm watercooler (I fear this is subpar)
6 GB corsair @ 1600
Thermaltake TR2 RX-850 850W power supply
GTX 285 2GB

ANY help/advice will be very appreciated!
If there is some easy answer like "go to bios and put in these numbers", that would be fantastic.

Thanks

 

[Cygnus x-1]

First off, the graphics card is the bottleneck. But if you have questions about overclocking the 920 i can help.

 

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Thanks,

I'm wondering if I get another video card, would the CPU be the bottleneck after that? Or is the stock 920 pretty much going to handle demanding high res games?

I guess I will hold off on the OC till I get another video card, or never if it really won't improve much.

 

[Cygnus x-1]

You see some improvement with an overclock with a good card depending on the game.

What resolution do you play at?

 

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Right now I am trying to play Skyrim with maxed settings and some intensive mods at 2560x1600. I fall quite short of that.

I have been looking at the GTX 660ti (currently have a GTX 285 2GB)

Also, I have 6GB (3 x 2GB) ram at 1600. I want to upgrade that, but don't know the requirements (exact same model? same size per stick? same whatever)

I was even wondering if a GTX 660ti would be bottlenecked by the i7 920 even if OC'd conservatively.

I know some of this is beyond the scope of this forum, but it all kind of relates to why/if I need the OC.

Thanks!

 

[Cygnus x-1]

yeah at the resolution you'll need a graphics upgrade for high end games. That 285 is way too slow for new games at 2500 pixels.

I have a 920 overclocked, and it does a very nice job running my 660ti. You might want to do some research on gaming at that resolution and what games you play or plan to play. I can't say for sure a 660ti will be enough for 60fps on 2560x1600. It might be enough for skyrim(can't say for sure) but definitely not 60fps in
bf3 or crysis, game that are very demanding.

What are you getting for CPU temperatures at full load on your current cooling setup? My 920 is at 3700ish ghz with a cm 212 plus. You should get better temps than me, so a good 3.8ghz overclock shouldn't be too much trouble.

 

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I don't really know the temps at max load, I'm not sure how to check that. Program like Prime95 (I think that's what I've seen people write about)? I think I am going to get the 660ti. If I get that early next week, I think I would like to go through with the OC.

Since you have such a similar setup, with an OC at the level I would want as well, it would be amazing if you could help walk me through that some. You've already been super helpful.

Thanks!

 

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Oh, also, if I am going on newegg to get the 660ti, I would want to get any ram upgrade at the same time. Do you think that's also something to consider?

I tried finding a program that monitors my CPU and RAM % usage during play, but couldn't seem to find anything. Don't really know exactly how much memory I'm using in game, but I suspect it's alot. Only getting 25-30 fps playing at 1050 res with non max settings.

 

[Cygnus x-1]

I like using realtemp for checking temperatures. I run realtemp and then run prime 95 for an hour or so on small FFT. If that passes, I run blend test for the same amount of time. The hour plus test is for when your overclock is almost final. You'll initially want to run the test for a few worker thread test usually takes a couple/few minutes. then go back into bios and continue raising the clock speed, rinse and repeat.

Watch your temperatures while you're testing. I personally don't like going to 70c, so stay below that if all possible.

A good place to start is to download and install cpu-z. Run prime95 on stock bios settings and see what you're using for load cpu voltage. Then go back into bios and set tthat value. This way you have a good starting point for cpu voltage, you'll need to up this a bit as you increase the overclock.

You'll want to set ai tweaker to manual. Set the qpi speed to it's lowest value. Make sure your ram doesn't run faster than it's rated speed. I would set the ram to a low value until the cpu overclock is finished, then you can go back and play with ram speed. Remember the unclock needs to be twice as fast or more than the ram frequency. I like to use the value that is one step faster than double ram speed. So for example the ram is at 1600mhz, uclk should be 3200mhz minimum i would us something like 3300 or what ever the next step is. Leave ram timings on auto for now.

Set ram voltage to it's rated specs under dram bus voltage.

Also.. Go down the bios and set everything manual to it's default setting. That way the mobo doesn't crank them up too high as you raise the base clock. Example... set pll to 1.8. when you highlight the area you want to set, it will tell you what default is on the top right hand corner. You can leave the stuff further below on auto, like loadline and the other stuff below it don't recall exactly whats down there off the top of my head.

I would set the qpi/dram to 1.300 to start, that should be good for around 3.4 to 3.6ghz. AS you go higher, you can slowly raise it up. Don't exceed 1.35 on this

I think you're ready to start. begin by adding 5 to ten to the blck. save and exit. start testing once fully booted. If you pass the test for a few minutes, go back in and raise the blck again. Keep doing this until you get a worker thread failure (the worker will turn from green to read) or a blue screen /crash/freeze. If you get a blue screen try to catch what the number say, they can be a clue as to what you need tyo do next, even though we know what to do, gl

Oh make sure "round off checking" is checked in prime95 setting. I think it is by defaul in the newer versions but make sure anyway.

 

[Cygnus x-1]

You're probably using anywhere from 3 to 4 gigs of ram while playing high end games, depending on how much stuff you have running in the background. not sure you need it, but if you can find a good deal for cheap, going to 12gigs can't hurt. I like having the head rood to game, have web tabs open, itunes, and videos pause while a play a quick game whiteout having to exit everything.

Again I can't say you need it, I don't like spending other peoples money, lol
If you choose to upgrade, your ram moduals should have a sticker or something on them somewhere saying what the voltage is and rated speed they are, along with cas latency.

Some food for thought... I have 2gbx3 corsair 1600 ram that I'm selling. The cas is 9-9-9-24 and the voltage is 1.65. I set voltage to 1.64 in bios and they have work perfectly like that. You'll want to make sure the ram you upgrade to is the same frequency, voltage and timings as your current stuff.

 

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Wow, amazing help! I'm out of town for a couple days, but will start on all of this as soon as I'm back. Way less intimidating with such specific guidance.

Thanks, I'll let you know how it goes!

 

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Hey, so my max temps at full load are:
58,58,55,53 (FFT and Blend about same)
Idle:
36,34,33,31
Dist. to TJ Max (heard it may be important?):
low I saw was 42 at full load

I didn't see RAM temps during tests...should I?

So I have the following being delivered tomorrow:

Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4) @ 1600
9-9-9-24 (although confused on if this is important or what it is really)
1.5V

GTX 660 ti 3GB OC+
base: 980 mhz
boost: 1059 mhz
cores: 1344

I'm hoping you could help me as far as the order that I do all of this. I was assuming I would install either RAM or video card first, check stability, then do the other, check again, then do the OC when those are in.

If you have any advice/suggestions on this, I'd love hearing them. I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty excited to start the project and take things to the next level.

Thanks!

 

[Cygnus x-1]

I think you're pretty safe to install the ram and card together. Maybe run the blend test for a while to make sure the system is ok with the new memory.

How warm is it where he computer is?

 

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PC is in room about 68 degrees (will be more like 70-72 in summer). I thought the max load temps seemed kind of high?

I did install the new memory and graphics card.
Card works great

Memory I'm a bit confused about and think it may have something to do with OC potential. My windows experience index had me at 7.8 with the 6GB ram I had. Now I put in 3 x 4GB sticks (left one out thinking I read something saying 4 sticks reverts to a lower mode than having just 1 in each channel). The windows experience dropped to 7.5, then I enabled XMP mode in BIOS and it went to 7.6, but it's still lower than I had.

Anyway, I didn't want to start on the OC till I figured out if my temps are going to be too high to bother with it.

 

[Cygnus x-1]

Load temps are a little high but you still have some room. You won't get too high with the cooling the way it is but you can try.

The windows experience went down probably because it's the same speed ram but now you're running in duel channel not triple channel. I wouldn't worry about it. Current Ivy bridge boards are duel channel and no o e complains. Did you open cpu-z to see what the ram is running at and timings?

 

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Thanks! I will try to do a light OC I think.

Still pretty confused on RAM. cpu-z says:
Dram frequency: 801.8 (I double that right?...so 1603.6)
9-9-9-24-208-2t
Not sure what the 208 is, but that looks way higher than that number in other posts I have seen.

 

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Oh, I was under Memory tab, the SFD tab shows cycle time as 24. Also, it says channels #: tripple. I actually didn't install my 4th 4GB stick because I thought using 3 kept me in triple channel.

 

[Cygnus x-1]

Are all 3 In the same color slots?

 

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Yeah, all on the orange slots. A1,B1,C1. The others (A2,B2,C2) are empty

 

[Cygnus x-1]

That's strange. You're saying all same color, all memory is being seen, but still ur running in duel chAnnel? Try the black dimms I guess. Or just run all four sticks In duel channel. You won't notice a difference unless you start encoding a lot of video or do synthetic benchmarks.