Core i7-870 Overclocking And Fixing Blown P55-Based Boards

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Benchmark Results: 3D Games

Most games become more GPU-limited as detail settings are increased, while the biggest performance gains are realized through CPU overclocking as settings are decreased.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
46 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cyberkuberiah
    but some of us would rather give some extra beans and go 920 , and have dual pcie2.0 x16 . a few extra watts doesn't matter too .
    Reply
  • FYI: Power consumption of switching cmos silicon increases with the square of voltage, and linear with frequency. The increases shown here seem to be in line with that, rather than the stated decrease in voltage regulator efficiency (which certainly does decrease, but probably much less).
    Reply
  • Crashman
    dan__gFYI: Power consumption of switching cmos silicon increases with the square of voltage, and linear with frequency. The increases shown here seem to be in line with that, rather than the stated decrease in voltage regulator efficiency (which certainly does decrease, but probably much less).
    Can you turn that into a more accurate estimate than 200W to 240W, where all that can be proven is that it's "high, but less than 240W"?
    Reply
  • jeffunit
    Are your power consumption measurements of the cpu, dc power or wall socket power? If they are the latter, which I suspect they are, then you have to factor in the power supply efficiency, as 150w socket, means 150w DC.
    Reply
  • bucifer
    I would be great to see how the more popular i7 860 or at least i5 750 scale with the voltage.
    I don't think i7 870 is a popular choice because of it's price (people would go for socket 1336)
    Reply
  • ctbaars
    Thanks for article.
    For me - This and previous articles have convinced me to game at stock, w/ tb+ settings on, and a high end GPU card and the i5 is most appropriate for my usage. I need to condition myself to turn off the computer esp. when noone is home.
    Reply
  • avatar_raq
    Although Thomas labels Asrock as "succeeds" I will not buy their motherboards, you'll never know what else this company ignores in the bios, and do you think they would fix that issue if it weren't for THG? After how many failing boards?
    Reply
  • tecmo34
    cyberkuberiahbut some of us would rather give some extra beans and go 920 , and have dual pcie2.0 x16 . a few extra watts doesn't matter too .I agree with you 110%... :D

    Also, I would like to see the voltage scaling using the i5 750, as mentioned by bucifer
    Reply
  • Onus
    A few extra watts being "used" is fine. A few extra watts being "wasted" is something else entirely.
    I don't see a howling difference on these overclocks either. If I bought an i7, that probably means I'd have little reason to OC it.

    While ASRock seems to be taking a "successive approximations" approach to improving their products, the ones I've bought so far have all been solid, but any OC has been mild.
    And, once again (even if it isn't quite epic), MSI = FAIL.
    Reply
  • jerreece
    I was glad to see this article. I was just thinking about this whole debacle this morning. :)
    Reply