Over Clocking my P6T/i7 920 system -...

Hi all,

After some guidence from Harm, i had my P6T / i7 920 system running at 3.6GHZ. But its kind of scary tweaking things manually. So i read up on DOCP and XMP OCing. I decided to try XMP since memory parameters and cpu ratio are automatically optimized.

I set the AI Tweaker to XMP and set the BCLK to 200.?The system is running at 4.0GHZ and temperatures appear reasonable for a stock i7 920 cpu fan. With a better cpu fan/heat sink, I'm sure i could get the temperature down to about 5 degrees instead of the 15 degrees i'm getting from ambient. So far the system also appears stable.

I have attached the Stats while running at 4.0GHZ and transcoding 1440x1080 HDV in En CS4.:

The only thing i don't understand, is why SpeedFan reports cpu core temps at about 10 degrees celsius cooler than CPUID Hardware Monitor does?

Over Clocking my P6T/i7 920 system -...

It should not show these large differences and people have reported these differences to both. It is also the reason why I usually advise to use both. From your results, while very good, you see that your Vcore is up to 1,432V and temperatures are getting close to maximum. For testing purposes this is fine, but for regular editing work I would go a bit lower. At this BCLK setting, you are stressing the CPU and it's longevity, especially when running long encoding sessions. That is the reason I usually have mine at 172 to 180 BCLK with a Vcore of 1,264V and much lower temperatures.

Over Clocking my P6T/i7 920 system -...

I hear you Harm....

I put my system back to normal last night. From what i've read, overheating is the main problem to OCing, so i'll try 4ghz again when i get a good cpu cooler and can keep temperatures down.

FYI, I experimented with some overclocking settings and realized they are still not perfect, I can still improve on these, but just like you, for fun, I bested my previous PassMark score to 5184 (will probably be posted tomorrow, it takes some time) while running at BCLK 200. Did you try this benchmark? I will try to improve further and let you know the progress.

No,

i tried it at 172 or 180 i can't remember. it's the one which gave me 3.6ghz.

I will try 200 though asap and email the benckmark.

Simple calculus: BCLK x Multiplier = Clock Speed. So BCLK @ 200 and the standard Multiplier of 20 gives: 200 x 20 = 4000 or 4 GHz.

With Turbo mode enabled the multiplier can go up to 21, so the BCLK of 200 will give you a clock speed of 4200 MHZ or 4.2 GHz.

If your system indicated a clock speed of 3.6 GHz, your BCLK setting was 180. (180 x 20 = 3600 MHz or 3.6 GHz)

I have tried some more, but this is the best I could achieve currently:

Not bad Harm....

Do you have the best possible cpu cooling? maybe that's holding you back! However, from all I've read, 4ghz is about as good anyone has gotten.

This was, like you said, just for fun.

This is not advised for regular work, but only to see if I could regain first or second place in the ranking. I failed! Maybe with some more tweaking I can get better results, but the relevance in day-to-day life is negligent. Nevertheless, attaining scores?over 5400 on this benchmark is not bad. Everybody achieving scores over 4500 is not doing bad either.

This is not advised for regular work, but only to see if I could regain first or second place in the ranking.

Now it is a challenge!

Look here: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/493122?tstart=0

Nelson,

Bill showed me your PPBM4 results and I seriously wonder if something is not correct. Did you accidentally turn off HT or set the affinity of CPU's on anything other than default? I would have expected much nicer results, especially on the AVI test. My AVI results were around 400% better and when I retested with a RAM disk, my results for the AVI part went down to 2.0, a 15% performance improvement. Or were the tests run while using a clockspeed of 2.66 GHz, as Bill wondered about? Seriously devastating for these kind of benchmark tests is having search indexing on and running background disk optimization.

Harm,

Yea... I got an email from Bill informing me of the problem with the PPBM4 results. I thought i was running at 3.6ghz at the time of the test but can't be sure now. I did notice that indexing for the video raid was on at the time of the test and have turned it off.

Does it also matter if indexing is on for the scratch and system drives?

I'll have to check on disk optimization later as i have to go finish setting up a file server and network for a client.

I will attach a screen shot showing the current cpu frequency from SpeedFan to the email the next time i submit a test to BIll.

Does it also matter if indexing is on for the scratch and system drives?

Harm,

Indexing is now turned off.

Disk optimization i.e. defrag should not be a problem as far as i can see. The system sets the default schedule for defraging to be once a week on wednesday at 1am. I reset it to once a week on sunday at 4am - i'm sleeping at that time.

Just in case others don't know how to disable or reschedule defraging on Vista:

1. right click on any hard drive icon.

2. select properties.

3. select the tools tab.

4. click on the ''Defragment now...'' button.

a. uncheck the ''Run on schedule'' check box to disable defraging all together.

b.?click on the ''Modify schedule'' to change the frequency/date/time.

c. click on the ''Select volumes'' to select which volumes you want defraged now or according to the schedule.