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Need help overclocking i7 940 (Read 6460 times)

Dec 15^th, 2008 at 10:00am

fvjuke Offline
Colonel
Hello!

Posts: 29

Hello guys,

I need some guidance in overclocking my i7 940.

I want to start slowly and as my knowledge increases, I want to bring it close to 4ghz.

I have started to read some of the posts from NickN (bit-tech guide and video from NCIX) and am starting to be a bit familiar.

I want to start on stock cooling until my TRUE 120 arrives. Would like to target around 3,4Ghz on stock cooling.

During a flight with my stock clock, my current CPU temp shows 55c on my little palm display.

Can I use the same display thru TurboV to play with the settings ?

Can I just bring the bclock to 155Mhz (155*22=3410Mhz) and not change any other settings yet ?

If so, what is the max CPU temp I should not exceed on my palm device? (70c?)

Looking forward to hear back from you.

Intel i7 940 @ 2.93 Ghz&&Thermalright TRUE 120 -1366&&ASUS P6T-Deluxe/OC Palm X58&&OCZ 1600 Mhz DDR3 6144mb&&nVidia 8800GTS 512mb&&SATA2 150g 10 000 rpm V-Raptor&&SATA2 500g 7200 rpm Seagate&&Antec Nine Hundred Case&&750W ATX Corsair TX&&Samsung 22" LCD&&VISTA Home Premium 64bit&&FSX Acc.&&UTX + GENX + Scenery Tech Landclass

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Reply #1 - Dec 15^th, 2008 at 12:02pm

NickN Offline
Colonel
FSX runs fine... the problem
is you or your system

Posts: 6317

Use this beta of RealTemp to confirm the temps on the processor

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3471705&postcount=2735

link is in the post

Confirm the readout on the Palm matches Realtemp. If it does under a full load the Palm readout is correct.. if it doesnt, use the reading in RealTemp instead

There has been some discussion about i7 and the temps sensors out there. Coretemp will not read the i7 CPU correctly and even some BIOS have been said to report temps incorrectly

As for clocking it.. what you said is that simple... raise BCLOCK, vcore if necessary, confirm the memory is running the correct or close to the correct speed and the temps under full load are in order..

thats it

As for it it will be stable without raisng vcore.. that is problematical and I cant guess about it... If its not stable then start bringing vcore up in values of .05 till it trims in. Most should be able to run a 940 at 1.35-1.40v Vcore @ 4GHz however that varies from system to system. The name of the game is get the CPU to the highest speed stable at the lowest Vcore possible and that is part of clocking. Its a trial and error setting.

Load testing is done with the software OCCT v2.0.1

Run the 1 hour automatic text and watch the temps under full load. FSX will never get the processor that hot which means if it passes that load test stable and below max temp spec, your safe and clocked correctly

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Reply #2 - Dec 15^th, 2008 at 12:24pm

NickN Offline
Colonel
FSX runs fine... the problem
is you or your system

Posts: 6317

forgot... In realtemp Properties.. change the tJMAX to 100 for all 4 cores in the SETTINGS so the readout is calibrated correctly.. make sure to apply the change

after that, keep the temp at a MAX of 78c under a full OCCT load test

FSX will never, ever run that processor that hot so if you are under 78c with OCCT 1hr test with the tJMAX set to 100c in Realtemp,... your good to go

I could guess that you would either

A: Not need to raise vcore

B. Need to raise vcore just a tad

to do 3.4.. probably not at all

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Reply #3 - Dec 15^th, 2008 at 12:38pm

fvjuke Offline
Colonel
Hello!

Posts: 29

Great Thanks again NickN. Your help here is invaluable !

I did try RealTemp and the readout seems consistent with my palm.

Now, 2 more questions:
1) Just to clarify, vcore is CPU voltage, right ?
2) Can I get to 3.4 on stock cooling ?

I will use occt to my testing.

Hopefully this will help me eliminate some stutters when FPS locked at 30. At 25 no stutters but as smooth....almost there.

Intel i7 940 @ 2.93 Ghz&&Thermalright TRUE 120 -1366&&ASUS P6T-Deluxe/OC Palm X58&&OCZ 1600 Mhz DDR3 6144mb&&nVidia 8800GTS 512mb&&SATA2 150g 10 000 rpm V-Raptor&&SATA2 500g 7200 rpm Seagate&&Antec Nine Hundred Case&&750W ATX Corsair TX&&Samsung 22" LCD&&VISTA Home Premium 64bit&&FSX Acc.&&UTX + GENX + Scenery Tech Landclass

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Reply #4 - Dec 15^th, 2008 at 7:27pm

fvjuke Offline
Colonel
Hello!

Posts: 29

Ok, I did some test with occt using bclock of 145 and not changing anything else. In OCCT I set the max temp at 78c and I stop the test myself after 4 minutes because the temp was reaching 83c, 80c, 81c and 78c on each core with stock cooling. I was afraid it was going to go over 78c and damage the cpu.

I also tried the OCCT test on stock clock of 133mhz and it used a multiplier of 23 instead of 22 and the test failed after 10minutes????

Is that normal ? Should I do anything differently ? Do I need to adjust the HSF ?

Intel i7 940 @ 2.93 Ghz&&Thermalright TRUE 120 -1366&&ASUS P6T-Deluxe/OC Palm X58&&OCZ 1600 Mhz DDR3 6144mb&&nVidia 8800GTS 512mb&&SATA2 150g 10 000 rpm V-Raptor&&SATA2 500g 7200 rpm Seagate&&Antec Nine Hundred Case&&750W ATX Corsair TX&&Samsung 22" LCD&&VISTA Home Premium 64bit&&FSX Acc.&&UTX + GENX + Scenery Tech Landclass

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Reply #5 - Dec 16^th, 2008 at 12:59am

NickN Offline
Colonel
FSX runs fine... the problem
is you or your system

Posts: 6317

you cant damage the CPU unless it hits 100c

The lower value is what we use becasue the thermal limiting system will kick in right around 80-85c and slow the processor down to keep it cool

If you were hitting those 80c+ temps and did not change Vcore (set to AUTO) and only running 3190 then I suspect the heat sink may not be sitting on the CPU correctly.. thermal compound was too thick, PSU is too weak (would eliminate that if a decent 750watt unit is installed) or the tower airflow is very poor with a high room ambient temp

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Reply #6 - Dec 16^th, 2008 at 8:30am

fvjuke Offline
Colonel
Hello!

Posts: 29

Hello NickN,

thanks for your reply.

My room is at 21c, my tower airflow seems very good with this Antec 900 (all the fans are running), my PSU is a good Corsair 750W. RealTemp is giving me 34c at idle.

Don't know what is wrong with that. I will have to go back to my shop and see if they can help. May be the heatsink was not installed correctly.

Intel i7 940 @ 2.93 Ghz&&Thermalright TRUE 120 -1366&&ASUS P6T-Deluxe/OC Palm X58&&OCZ 1600 Mhz DDR3 6144mb&&nVidia 8800GTS 512mb&&SATA2 150g 10 000 rpm V-Raptor&&SATA2 500g 7200 rpm Seagate&&Antec Nine Hundred Case&&750W ATX Corsair TX&&Samsung 22" LCD&&VISTA Home Premium 64bit&&FSX Acc.&&UTX + GENX + Scenery Tech Landclass

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Reply #7 - Dec 19^th, 2008 at 6:01pm

fvjuke Offline
Colonel
Hello!

Posts: 29

Ok, I just installed a Thermalright 120 and my temps are great.

Need some help here.

I increased the bclock to 155
Set the multiplier to 22
Set vcore to 1.225v

passed occt with temps below 60c.

How do I know if my RAM is running ath the right speed ?

CPUz tells me it is running at 465mhz with FSB/DRAM ration of 2:6 and NB frquency of 2480mhz.

Do I need to play with the RAM settings in the bios ?

Looking forward to your help.

Intel i7 940 @ 2.93 Ghz&&Thermalright TRUE 120 -1366&&ASUS P6T-Deluxe/OC Palm X58&&OCZ 1600 Mhz DDR3 6144mb&&nVidia 8800GTS 512mb&&SATA2 150g 10 000 rpm V-Raptor&&SATA2 500g 7200 rpm Seagate&&Antec Nine Hundred Case&&750W ATX Corsair TX&&Samsung 22" LCD&&VISTA Home Premium 64bit&&FSX Acc.&&UTX + GENX + Scenery Tech Landclass

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Reply #8 - Dec 19^th, 2008 at 8:48pm

NickN Offline
Colonel
FSX runs fine... the problem
is you or your system

Posts: 6317

fvjuke wrote on Dec 19^th, 2008 at 6:01pm:

Ok, I just installed a Thermalright 120 and my temps are great.

Need some help here.

I increased the bclock to 155
Set the multiplier to 22
Set vcore to 1.225v

passed occt with temps below 60c.

How do I know if my RAM is running ath the right speed ?

CPUz tells me it is running at 465mhz with FSB/DRAM ration of 2:6 and NB frquency of 2480mhz.

Do I need to play with the RAM settings in the bios ?

Looking forward to your help.

Get the latest version of CPUz which updates for Bloomfield because something is not right with those numbers

You should have QPI LINK in CPUz showing

http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpuz_149.zip

post the CPU and MEMORY tabs here

On that heat sink you should have no problem going to 4GHz but Vcore will need to come up to somewhere between 1.28 and 1.40, lower is better

The memory multiplier in the BIOS will set the memory speed with BCLOCK check the ratio and it should display a value close to 1600, perhaps a little under. Memspeed in CPUz should read 800MHz for DDR3 1600

DRAM Frequency - 1600MHz in the BIOS if BCLOCK is 200

Look here.. this is 920 on P6T but it is similar

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/11/06/overclocking-intel-core-i7-920/3

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Reply #9 - Dec 19^th, 2008 at 9:28pm

raptorx Offline
Colonel
There's too much confusion...
San Diego, CA

Gender:
Posts: 434

Guys, I just got an unexpected Christmas boner..ah, I mean bonus Tongue

Tongue

and I'm seriously thinking of taking that + selling off my MB, CPU, RAM (done!) to get one of these i940s. Undecided

Undecided

-Jim

« Last Edit: Jan 1^st, 2009 at 4:33pm by raptorx »

Rampage II Gene, i7 965 4GHz
Mushkin Redline DDR3 1600
XP x64 SP2
ASUS Matrix GTX285

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Reply #10 - Dec 31^st, 2008 at 12:03pm

fvjuke Offline
Colonel
Hello!

Posts: 29

Ok guys, I have been doing some tests and I will need you help again.

Nick, I used the settings mentionned in your link (bit-tech) but I had to increase the vcore to 1.4v for it to boot into Vista and it did not pass the occt test, I had a BSOD as soon as it started to push the cpu. I am afraid to increase the vcore even more.

Here are the settings I used:
Disable turbo mode
CPU ratio of 20
bclk of 200
Dram frequency of DDR3 1603mhz
cpu voltage 1.4v
CPU PLL voltage of 1.96v
QPI/DRAM voltage 1.35v
CPU differential amplitude to 800mV
DRAM voltage 1.66v

Where do I go from here ?
Should I set the cpu ratio to 19 to get to 3.8ghz ? or should I increase again the vcore ?
Most people seem to be able to have a stable system at 4ghz.

Looking for you advice here.
Thanks in advance

Intel i7 940 @ 2.93 Ghz&&Thermalright TRUE 120 -1366&&ASUS P6T-Deluxe/OC Palm X58&&OCZ 1600 Mhz DDR3 6144mb&&nVidia 8800GTS 512mb&&SATA2 150g 10 000 rpm V-Raptor&&SATA2 500g 7200 rpm Seagate&&Antec Nine Hundred Case&&750W ATX Corsair TX&&Samsung 22" LCD&&VISTA Home Premium 64bit&&FSX Acc.&&UTX + GENX + Scenery Tech Landclass

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Reply #11 - Dec 31^st, 2008 at 6:11pm

NickN Offline
Colonel
FSX runs fine... the problem
is you or your system

Posts: 6317

fvjuke wrote on Dec 31^st, 2008 at 12:03pm:

Ok guys, I have been doing some tests and I will need you help again.

Nick, I used the settings mentionned in your link (bit-tech) but I had to increase the vcore to 1.4v for it to boot into Vista and it did not pass the occt test, I had a BSOD as soon as it started to push the cpu. I am afraid to increase the vcore even more.

Here are the settings I used:
Disable turbo mode
CPU ratio of 20
bclk of 200
Dram frequency of DDR3 1603mhz
cpu voltage 1.4v
CPU PLL voltage of 1.96v
QPI/DRAM voltage 1.35v
CPU differential amplitude to 800mV
DRAM voltage 1.66v

Where do I go from here ?
Should I set the cpu ratio to 19 to get to 3.8ghz ? or should I increase again the vcore ?
Most people seem to be able to have a stable system at 4ghz.

Looking for you advice here.
Thanks in advance

Did you shut down TURBO MODE and ALSO the CPU TM Function in the BIOS before setting up the clock? If not kill the CPU advanced TM crap and turbo mode and it should be stable

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Reply #12 - Jan 1^st, 2009 at 3:11pm

fvjuke Offline
Colonel
Hello!

Posts: 29

Hello Nick,

Yes I had disable the turbo mode and tried disabling the TM function but again it failed the OCCT 1 hour test. I also noticed they had disable some other functions in the CPU advanced settings of the BIOS (like Virtualization tech, A20M). So tried that with a vcore of 1.4 and failed again.

Then I tried to lower the bckl to 190 with mult of 20 for 3.8ghz, which forced me to select a DRAM freq of 1500mhz and lowered vcore to 1.38v (all other settings stayed the same as my first attempt, see above)and it passed the OCCT 1 hour test and seems stable. I haven't tried FSX yet. The max temp it reached was 79c on core 1, the other ones were at 75c.

It looks like 4ghz is not possible for me.

Any other clues ?

Thanks again.

Intel i7 940 @ 2.93 Ghz&&Thermalright TRUE 120 -1366&&ASUS P6T-Deluxe/OC Palm X58&&OCZ 1600 Mhz DDR3 6144mb&&nVidia 8800GTS 512mb&&SATA2 150g 10 000 rpm V-Raptor&&SATA2 500g 7200 rpm Seagate&&Antec Nine Hundred Case&&750W ATX Corsair TX&&Samsung 22" LCD&&VISTA Home Premium 64bit&&FSX Acc.&&UTX + GENX + Scenery Tech Landclass

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Reply #13 - Jan 2^nd, 2009 at 1:36am

NickN Offline
Colonel
FSX runs fine... the problem
is you or your system

Posts: 6317

hmmmmmm

I would think that would have been stable

You may want to go over to the OCZ forums and post this to Tony or one of the other devs.. I am not sure what they are suggesting for QPI/Dram voltage on those sticks.. they may want that a bit higher than 1.35v for their product

I assume you made sure the DRAM Timing was correct by the stick spec

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Reply #14 - Jan 2^nd, 2009 at 12:11pm

fvjuke Offline
Colonel
Hello!

Posts: 29

Hello nick,

I will go on that forum and see what they have to say about this.

According to CPU-Z, my memory is at 760mhz 9-9-9 25 on 1T. I haven't played with those timings in the BIOS. I just followed the bit-tech article. My QPI link says 3420mhz.

Should I do anything else with those RAM timings ?

I played FSX on that clock(3.8) and everything was great, I am in FSX heaven !

My question is: Are those values safe for my hardware ?

Should I put my DRAM voltage to 1.64 instead of 1.66, will that make any difference ?

Intel i7 940 @ 2.93 Ghz&&Thermalright TRUE 120 -1366&&ASUS P6T-Deluxe/OC Palm X58&&OCZ 1600 Mhz DDR3 6144mb&&nVidia 8800GTS 512mb&&SATA2 150g 10 000 rpm V-Raptor&&SATA2 500g 7200 rpm Seagate&&Antec Nine Hundred Case&&750W ATX Corsair TX&&Samsung 22" LCD&&VISTA Home Premium 64bit&&FSX Acc.&&UTX + GENX + Scenery Tech Landclass

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