I7-950 overclock

[icarus86]

Hi guys,

after much consideration, I've ended up buying the following system:
- Intel i7-950
- ASUS P6X58D-E
- Corsair Dominator 3x2GB 1600MHz CL8
- CoolerMaster V8
- Corsair F120 SSD
- Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB HDD
- LG SATA DVD-R
- ASUS GeForce GTX460 1GB OC
- CoolerMaster HAF 922
- Corsair TX-650W PSU

I would like to clock the CPU from 3.06GHz to 3.8GHz (23*165MhHz).
- Knowing that the turbo modes on this Core-i7 are 1/1/1/2, will the CPU work at 4.12GHz when only one core is used (25*165)? Or will it detect that it's already beyond the maximum turbo frequency (3.33GHz) and as of this, it won't go any higher?
- Setting the base clock to 165MHz as described above will result in having the CPU run at 3.8GHz all the time, or will the multiplier go down when there's no load on the CPU (e.g. 8x165 = 1.3GHz) ?

I have also some additional questions:
1. will the RAM work at 1600MHz/CL8 on this motherboard/CPU, or do I need to clock it down to 1066MHz (maybe CL7)?
2. I chose an SSD for the system drive. Beside setting the SATA controller in the BIOS to AHCI, and disabling automatic defragmentation in Windows 7, what else do I need to do to ensure top performance?
3. For what I've seen, GTX460 does not support 3-way SLI. Is this correct? If yes, is there any workaround?

 

[icarus86]

Bump.

 

[enzo matrix]

Overclocking questions:
It will always turbo unless you disable that in the bios, which most people do to achieve maximum overclock.
Same deal with intel speedstep, but this time people usually disable it to avoid the switching, keeping it on max all the time and some people claim a better overclock. I keep cool n quiet on on my overclock Athlon II.

Other questions:
1. It will work at it's designed frequency unless you up the base clock to overclock. This will increase the ram frequency. You can lower it again with the multiplier back to approx. 1600MHz, or a bit higher if you want to overclock your ram too.

2. Not much really, but here are some major suggestions:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/08/27/ssd-performance-tweaks-for-vista/2

3. Never heard of this. Where did you?

 

[icarus86]

Hi,

thank you for your answer.
Regarding Turbo and SpeedStep, I do not want to achieve maximum overclock (that's why I mentioned 3.8GHz as a target, and not 4.x), but I would still like to allow it to go on Turbo (when needed), and save some power at the same time. So according to what you said, it should be OK like this.

Regarding 1, I don't quite follow. What speed will my RAM run by default? 133x8 or 133x12 ? If it's 133x8 (1066MHz), then I can raise the base clock with no probs. If it's 133x12 (1600MHz), then I should take care how high I put the base clock, or lower this multiplier manually.

Regarding 3, I read this info from the following sites:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=987 - NVIDIA still is restricting the GTX 460 to a single SLI connector which simply means that 3-Way SLI support is out of the equation. Two card SLI with the GTX 460s is still a great configuration as we demonstrated in our Galaxy review.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-460-sli-review/ - Obviously there's the option go for Multi-GPU gaming, though limited to 2-way SLI (two graphics cards maximum) you can easily double up that shader count and thus performance.
I don't see any workaround.

Regarding 2: thanks for the link, I'll read it through!

Cheers.

 

[enzo matrix]

Oh I see. I misunderstood question 2. Actually, that's something I've been wondering myself. I'm still on DDR2.

With the turbo, also run a stability check on just one core, just two cores and just 3 cores, to make sure it doesn't become unstable when it turbos.

Oh I see what you mean about the cards. Physically being restricted. There is no way around this, unless you try to enable SLI without connecting the connectors, which I believe is possible but will restrict performance so much that it would have been better to go with the dual cards instead.

 

[icarus86]

Thank you for the reply.

Just a simple question (and I expect really honest un-biased answers): should I have waited for Sandy Bridge?
I'm not a gamer, I will use the system mostly for photo editing and web development. But I really thought 1156 is not enough for 4-5 years (this is how long I keep a system) and that's why I opted for 1366.

Thanks everyone!

 

[enzo matrix]

Just a simple question (and I expect really honest un-biased answers): should I have waited for Sandy Bridge?

Yes. The problem with that is that the answer will always be yes as technology progresses, to different degrees depending on what is going on.

Right now, sandy bridge will be introducing some kind of video encoding/decoding core and a new instruction set. That's something relatively good. Although, the core i7 of today will still be damned good. But even if you decided to go with the older i7, I would still wait, hoping prices would decrease. But then you would always be waiting.