Core i7-870 Overclocking And Fixing Blown P55-Based Boards
-
Page 1:Shocking Revelations Of Inefficiency
-
Page 2:Step 1: Finding The Overclocking Limits
-
Page 3:Benchmark Settings
-
Page 4:Benchmark Results: 3D Games
-
Page 5:Benchmark Results: Applications
-
Page 6:Benchmark Results: Synthetics
-
Page 7:Step 2: Examining Power Consumption
-
Page 8:Step 3: Evaluating The Solutions
-
Page 9:Conclusion: ASRock Succeeds, MSI Survives
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.
Summary
I don't think i7 870 is a popular choice because of it's price (people would go for socket 1336)
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"?
I don't think i7 870 is a popular choice because of it's price (people would go for socket 1336)
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.
I agree with you 110%...
Also, I would like to see the voltage scaling using the i5 750, as mentioned by bucifer
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.
The first thing i care about when over clocking is being "green"
Why is this even in the report?
Sometimes you can acgtually gain efficiency when overclocking: This is especially true when voltage levels aren't altered.
i'd go with evga/asus ,and for amd , gigabyte or asus . the crosshair 3 formula is top end at just 200 dollars .
I'm not sure how to interpret the results, but the best fit I get for trying to get a constant W / (GHz * V^2) is a base load of only 7W plus a draw of 36.63-36.72W * frequency in GHz * voltage squared. The fit is fairly accurate; there's a 0,26% difference between the min and the max.
Obviously stuff other than the CPU draws more than 7W, but I don't know enough about the hardware to give an explanation. I'd assume that you get fairly close to 7W + (voltage^2 * GHz * 36,7W) if you measure the draw at other speeds and voltages though.
Didn't you use a different PSU last time? Playing it safe with the higher quality 850HX maybe?
ASRock, Asus, Biostar, ECS, Foxconn, Gigabyte, and MSI use Foxconn sockets. Jetway and EVGA use the cheaper Lotes sockets.
Uh, d00d, let me see if I can explain this in terms you can understand: 1.45V has been used for 45nm Intel processors long enough that it's now a standardized OC test voltage. There are many reasons for it having become this standardized test voltage, including the fact that it's considered the maximum safe voltage in some Intel documentation, that it's the maximum voltage most processors can run using above-ambient cooling, that it's the spot just before power consumption spikes, etc. It makes sense, and because it's NOT extreme, was never extreme, was never intended to be extreme, and is in no way extreme, it's something that any overclocking motherboard should tollerate.
We understand that cheap boards exist. If you're going to market a cheap board towards low-cost overclocking, you need to put in over-current protection. If you're going to market an even cheaper board with no protection, you need to disable the overclocking features.
It's one way or the other, when it comes to overclocking either do it right or don't do it at all. Half-fast solutions aren't acceptable in the overclocking market. It's a quality issue, and Tom's Hardware has tested MANY high-quality budget parts in the past.
There's no excuse to cut quality when you can instead cut features to produce a cheap product. IE, if you really really really wanted to make a board that could only do 1.35V before blowing the VRM, and really wanted to sell it without overcurrent protection, you'd really really really want to limit the BIOS settings to 1.35V. Because when you didn't, you'd get caught with your pants down by a site such as this one.
To not report such a finding would be proof of a lack of integrity. To give up testing at this setting would be to cave in for low-quality products at the expense of not revealing the superiority of high-quality products. The reader isn't served, the industry is disserviced, everyone loses.
Nah, same power supply since September, might have forgotten to change the model in the setup table.
Why do you want dual x16 slot when it offers no extra benefit? You might want to give this a read http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/7.html before you start clicking that thumbs down button, and if you do disagree please tell me why I'm wrong.
Even the most powerful card in the world can't saturate an x8 slot according to that source.