Core i7-980X: Dialing In Efficiency With The Right Overclock

Power Consumption And OC Table

This part is amazing. Even under increased voltage, the six-core Gulftown processor remains at a total system power of roughly 85W as it idles.

Peak power depends on clock speed, but also, even more importantly, on voltage. The slight voltage increase at 4.0 GHz doesn't make much of an impact. But tweaking more aggressively at 4.13 GHz is more noticeable. System peak power scales rather linearly with clock speed, as long as you don’t increase CPU voltage.

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Core i7-980X 3,333 MHz 3,466 MHz 3,600 MHz 3,733 MHz 3,866 MHz 4,000 MHz 4,134 MHz
Multiplier 25x 26x 27x 28x 29x 30x 31x
Turbo multi 26x 27x 28x 29x 30x 31x 32x
Turbo single 27x 28x 29x 30x 31x 32x 33x
Base Frequency 133 MHz 133 MHz 133 MHz 133 MHz 133 MHz 133 MHz 133 MHz
Turbo Boost Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
System Idle Power 85W 85W 85W 85W 85W 85W 86W
System Peak Power 263W 276W 280W 285W 290W 298W 322W
BIOS Vcore Increase 0mV 0mV 0mV 0mV 0mV 30mV 73mV
CPU-Z VT idle 0.938V 0.938V 0.938V 0.938V 0.938V 0.973V 1.020V
CPU-Z VT load 1.219V 1.242V 1.242V 1.242V 1.242V 1.266V 1.324V
PCH 1.81V 1.81V 1.81V 1.81V 1.81V 1.81V 1.81V
RAM 1.5V 1.5V 1.5V 1.5V 1.5V 1.5V 1.5V
Fritz chess benchmark 18231 18821 19508 20116 20784 21382 21931
Stable Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes