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movax posted:Intel CPU chat was in danger of disappearing into oblivion
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Jul 22, 2011 02:21
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You Am I posted:My i5-2500K has been running at 4.7GHz and been rock stable. Even more stable than what my old Q6600 system was, and that wasn't overclocked. What voltage are you running?
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Jul 22, 2011 03:59
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Shmoogy posted:Not well, my sata ports died and ASUS is giving me the run around with my RMA. It's been like three weeks that their shipping depot has been "out of stock" on my replacement P8P67. I've been managing just fine without my desktop though, which was pleasantly surprising to me. I'll never understand why the P8P67 boards are the ones EVERYONE has yet they are the ones that are the most problematic.
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Jul 22, 2011 08:51
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Risky posted:I'll never understand why the P8P67 boards are the ones EVERYONE has yet they are the ones that are the most problematic. Specifically, Gigabyte boards have an absolutely retarded implementation of Loadline Calibration (aka vDroop Compensation), and it's enabled by default. Loadline Calibration changes how power is delivered to the CPU (in a way that violates the Intel spec), with the goal of reducing vDroop, the drop in CPU core voltage seen when the CPU is under heavy load. To greatly simplify, Loadline Calibration overvolts the CPU when it's under load, dropping the voltage back down when idle, in theory providing a steady voltage. The problem is that when the load is removed, the core voltage momentarily overshoots the target voltage. This happens even when Loadline Calibration is disabled, but Intel designed the power delivery spec so that at stock voltage this overshoot remains within the acceptable range for the CPU. When Loadline Calibration is enabled, this overshoot is dramatically higher, and if high enough can exceed the CPU's limits and cause a hang, bluescreen error, restart, or shutdown. Gigabyte's Loadline Calibration implementation exceeds the stock voltage by 0.10v even when the system is sitting idle on some boards, the overshoot when dropping back from full load is obviously even greater. When people were buying LGA-1155 systems en masse and used Gigabyte boards recommended in the Parts Picking Megathread, the Haus of Tech Support forum was filled with threads from people who had system problems when exiting games or when SpeedStep/Enhanced C-States were enabled (because of overshoot when the CPU goes into power-saving modes), the common factor was always Gigabyte boards. Updating the BIOS, disabling Loadline Calibration, or disabling power-save helped, but disabling power-saving sucks and even then sometimes the only fix was switching motherboard brands. The really lovely thing is that motherboard reviewers sometimes notice and comment on the bad power delivery, but somehow don't end the review with "this is a poo poo board and you should not buy it." Then again, this shouldn't surprise me with the number of times I've seen sites give good reviews to hardware that didn't even do what it claimed to. And you see kids, this post I just typed is why you should never stop smoking  .
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Jul 22, 2011 09:56
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Cool post. +1 to your nuts. Really though I was wondering if you might have any idea if perhaps the LGA 1366 (it's not Sandby Bridge, buuuut...) boards like the X58A-UD7 does that as well. I haven't really had any stability problems with the system, but it's great to keep in mind, given how difficult it is to troubleshoot hangs.
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Jul 22, 2011 22:43
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I'm not sure, I would verify that Loadline Calibration is disabled in the BIOS and not really worry about it if you're not having stability problems.
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Jul 22, 2011 22:58
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movax posted:Intel CPU chat was in danger of disappearing into oblivion I just went from an E8500 that was valiantly struggling to keep up with my GTX 570 to an i5 2500K. Just running the autoconfig thing that comes with the P8P67 Pro pushed it to 4.33 ghz, and I really don't see any need for it to go faster than that at this point. I'm still adjusting to how much faster this thing is, I was kidding myself that I was doing alright. The 8500 has gone to a good home with a friend who needs a new home machine after taking his home machine to his workshop, so godspeed little wolfdale 
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Jul 22, 2011 23:05
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Alereon posted:The more people who buy a product the more people complain about problems with said product, Asus still does pretty well compared to the competition. I mean look at Gigabyte, their boards have had garbage power delivery since LGA-1155 came out at least and people still buy/recommend them. This isn't even something nebulous like anecdotal product experiences, you can monitor the voltages and see exactly how out of spec they are, tell exactly what Gigabyte did wrong, and see the consequences. Not to mention, their BIOS isn't nearly as spiffy as Asus & friends yet. Again, sample size n=1 here, but I've had nothing but trouble with Gigabyte boards whereas Asus boards have always treated me well. Dogen posted:The 8500 has gone to a good home with a friend who needs a new home machine after taking his home machine to his workshop, so godspeed little wolfdale My E6660 went into file-server, but just got replace by a i7-930. Now it will live-on for eternity in its place of honor amongst my stocked-in-closet components
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Jul 22, 2011 23:12
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Kachunkachunk posted:Cool post. +1 to your nuts. On my EX58-UD3R core voltage doesn't seem to deviate much when (C1E/SS) power states change, but with C6 and LLC enabled I noted a sudden split-second jump to 1.4V on an OCCT log. Given my (anecdotal) experience, LLC and C1E's more or less fine, but there's probably a reason why Gigabyte set C6 disabled by default.
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Jul 23, 2011 01:51
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Grumperfish posted:On my EX58-UD3R core voltage doesn't seem to deviate much when (C1E/SS) power states change, but with C6 and LLC enabled I noted a sudden split-second jump to 1.4V on an OCCT log. Given my (anecdotal) experience, LLC and C1E's more or less fine, but there's probably a reason why Gigabyte set C6 disabled by default.
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Jul 23, 2011 02:26
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movax posted:What voltage are you running?
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Jul 23, 2011 02:47
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Alereon posted:One thing to keep in mind is that we're talking about a voltage spike so brief you're not actually going to be able to measure it without extremely sensitive equipment, so take the numbers you're seeing in hardware monitoring programs with a grain of salt. There's really no good reason to have LLC enabled, as it reduces overclocking ability and exposes your CPU to more voltage than necessary. ... even on an Asus board? For me setting it to high was the key to 4.7GHz rather than 4.5GHz. Totally stable, very safe temperatures, Offset mode with all power savings in the Intel specification enabled because I am a fan of the planet when I'm not pretending to kill aliens; without LLC on, it's not stable unless I go with a much higher voltage offset that causes it to idle and run at unnecessarily high voltages. What I look at is how much wattage it's using and that seems fine, so what's wrong with LLC if you aren't using Gigabyte? The chips seem to be able to handle the juice just fine.
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Jul 24, 2011 03:22
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Agreed posted:... even on an Asus board? For me setting it to high was the key to 4.7GHz rather than 4.5GHz. Totally stable, very safe temperatures, Offset mode with all power savings in the Intel specification enabled because I am a fan of the planet when I'm not pretending to kill aliens; without LLC on, it's not stable unless I go with a much higher voltage offset that causes it to idle and run at unnecessarily high voltages. What I look at is how much wattage it's using and that seems fine, so what's wrong with LLC if you aren't using Gigabyte? The chips seem to be able to handle the juice just fine. If you actually care about the power consumption of your chip, do some tests to find out where it's sweet spot is. There's a point where increasing the core voltage and clockspeed start having massive current draw implications for incredibly minor performance gains, and that point is usually around 200Mhz or so below the core limit. If you could cut power draw 50% by dropping the clockspeed only 5%, that's probably worth it. Bonus Edit: Here's an article from Xbitlabs showing how power consumption changes when overclocking for various CPUs, though it doesn't cover Sandy Bridge. The Core i7 860 they tested overclocked from 2.8Ghz to 3.4Ghz with only a minor power usage increase, but each step beyond that caused increasingly massive jumps in power consumption. Alereon fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jul 24, 2011 |
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Jul 24, 2011 03:48
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Alereon posted:Bonus Edit: Here's an article from Xbitlabs showing how power consumption changes when overclocking for various CPUs, though it doesn't cover Sandy Bridge. The Core i7 860 they tested overclocked from 2.8Ghz to 3.4Ghz with only a minor power usage increase, but each step beyond that caused increasingly massive jumps in power consumption. How does a 7% cpu voltage bump increase the entire system draw (of which CPU is obviously only a significant fraction) 18%?
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Jul 24, 2011 03:57
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Likely has to do with the motherboard's VRM operating at higher temperatures, which reduces efficiency and so requires more power for the same output, which leads to higher temps, etc. diminishing to a limit.
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Jul 24, 2011 04:03
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greasyhands posted:How does a 7% cpu voltage bump increase the entire system draw (of which CPU is obviously only a significant fraction) 18%? Note that the same ISN'T true for undervolting below stock, because power leakage increases as voltage decreases (as do resistive losses). You rapidly hit diminishing returns as you push voltage down.
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Jul 24, 2011 04:47
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Well, ain't that somethin.
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Jul 24, 2011 05:05
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Adding to the Sandy Bridge love. I saw that the stock voltages for the i5-2500k's were around the 1.2v area and I was able to overclock to 4ghz using a voltage underneath the stock rating blows my mind (1.12). I'm sitting at 4.3ghz right now only using 1.232v with a Hyper 212+ for cooling. I could easily go higher but a 1Ghz bump is good enough for me since my video card is the bottleneck now.
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Jul 24, 2011 07:09
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Alereon posted:The relationship between voltage increases and power consumption is exponential, not linear. It's approximated for by (V/Vs)^2, with V being the actual voltage and Vs being the stock voltage. Power conversion efficiency and losses due to increased temperatures are an additional factor, but the largest factor is a genuine increase in CPU power draw (you can tell because the additional power is turning into heat in the CPU). I don't know enough about semiconductors to explain why, however. Joule's first law states P = IV. Substituting in Ohm's law (I=V/R) gets you P = V²/R. If you increase voltage from V1 to V2 you can find the increase in power as the ratio P2/P1 = (V2/V1)².
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Jul 24, 2011 08:48
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Longinus00 posted:Joule's first law states P = IV. Substituting in Ohm's law (I=V/R) gets you P = V²/R. If you increase voltage from V1 to V2 you can find the increase in power as the ratio P2/P1 = (V2/V1)². 
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Jul 24, 2011 08:53
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Alereon posted:You'll always get better overclocking performance with LLC off and just raising the voltage than you will with LLC on. This will increase power consumption when not at max load, but the alternative is pumping high voltage transients into your chip, which is a Bad Thing(tm). Here's a good article from Anandtech about power delivery and Loadline Calibration, using a 45nm Q9000-series quad-core and an Asus motherboard for testing. The principles are the same on current CPUs, but they're even more sensitive to higher voltages due to the smaller manufacturing process. Thanks a lot, you jerk, now I have to redo my whole overclock oh who am I kidding this is gonna be awesome, I love overclocking and this is the fun part Edit: Hm, reading that article, it seems like over-currenting (I gerunded that word, sorry) is a big part of the problem with overvolting (which makes sense from an electrical perspective, I'm guessing there are bumps doing stuff that really can't comfortably handle current that high for very long?). But the Asus P/Z boards allow between 100% CPU current and 140% CPU current. Just a :ricer: crazy rear end thing, or what? Also, okay, what are the real-world consequences of using LLC on a moderate setting (goes auto which is the same thing as normal - you can't turn it off - then normal, then high, then very high, then extreme or ultra or some crap but it's higher than the others)? My eyes are glazing a bit trying to make sense of the maths in the linked article and I am not entirely sure whether I am going to kill my processor in a real-world time span. Which I define as replacement/obsolescence within 4 years, anyway, that's my usual cycle, though I like it when my computer can make it a few years into the next one for backup purposes, can't hurt to be able to resume work immediately - and I overclocked the Q9550 in my old PC without ever touching LLC. So... Help me out, it's A Bad Thing but overclocking in general is bolting big gently caress-off heat sinks and taking extraordinary measures to rip stability and performance out of exceeding the factory specifications, so isn't overclocking in general, if it exceeds stock voltage, A Bad Thing? Also, do you happen to know how in -the- gently caress Asus calculates the normal voltage? Offset is ridiculous, the stock voltage is clearly 1.24V for the 2600K (yes I do use the hyperthreading, kicks rear end for audio if your DAW is efficient and you use a lot of high-resource software inside it, ain't all about 2500Ks  ). Yet if I set everything else to stock, and offset to +0.025, that'll park it at about 1.35V. Turning up LLC a tick past normal to "High" puts it at 1.36-1.37V, with occasional excursions to 1.382V that don't bother me or the gigantic heat removal unit bolted onto my motherboard as far as I can tell. Now, as you've noted, I don't have a true picture of the voltage conditions because their polling frequency is deeply insufficient to capture the much smaller scale, quicker overvolting that occurs with LLC... But I'm not going nuts with it. Anyway, the question is, where the hell does the voltage come from? It's never explained in the manual but it changes with LLC, it changes with Phase Control, and the thing that affects it least of all seems to be the damned Offset value. But I am concerned about running my processor at 1.365V all day long including when it's parking at 1600mhz just so it has the juice at 4.7GHz stably...But if you can explain to me some more about how I'm being very, very dumb because *drops knowledge* I will be happy to listen and appreciate the insight, maybe you can solve the mystery of Asus overclocking for me and some of the other guys in the overclocking thread. It's a silly maze right now and guides will tell you to do completely absurd poo poo like FEED IT MORE CURRENT, etc. Also, PLL Overvolting: Bad thing? Was another key to getting my OC at 4.7GHz to not screw the pooch in Prime95 on one hyperthread after a few hours (and only one, which was frustrating - the rest would keep on truckin' but that one part of that one core really wasn't up for it). I can't sleep the PC (thanks Asus) but with an SSD and a lean installation and all the screens after the BIOS turned off the limiting factor is still "how fast after hitting power on can I get the monitor to warm up." It's very fast, it finally exhibits perfect stability in synthetic and real world processing, and it runs cool and quiet thanks to the Noctua NH-14D big bastard of a heat sink. But tell me how I'm loving up and I will  , you clearly know what you're talking about, formal electrical education or no. And thank you.
Agreed fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jul 24, 2011 |
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Jul 24, 2011 17:53
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Agreed posted:Yeah after reading that article last night I checked on what my config had LLC set for, and it was 'normal', which like you seems like my only option besides ramping it up. I assume this means 'disabled' or 'intel spec' at least. I'm sitting on 4.3ghz without doing anything drastic and I haven't really seen a need to do much else and want this computer to last a while, so I don't want to go crazy. Plus with the big gently caress off 212+ in there it stays very cool (I didn't believe the whole 'thermal paste burn-in', but my temps really did drop a lot after about a day of running) and quiet. Compared to my E8500 stock HSF I can barely tell the thing is on unless the GPU fan kicks in on Crysis 2 or something. Plus I wear my HD555s that are Xonar STX powered, so it's not like I can hear anything else while I'm gaming anyway.
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Jul 24, 2011 20:38
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Agreed posted:Also, PLL Overvolting: Bad thing?...I can't sleep the PC (thanks Asus)
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Jul 24, 2011 20:50
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El Bandit posted:I had this problem and disabling PLL overvolting fixed it. It may limit overclocking (I've no idea), but it's worth it for the convenience. It is a known issue with Asus and Sandy Bridge. Since my computer never sleeps and it was part of taking it from 4.5GHz to 4.7GHz I am reticent to remove it without good reason. I also have my VCCSA and VCCIO very, very slightly overvolted which allowed a stable change from 2T to 1T on my RAM. An extra 200MHz per HT-enabled core and real-world speed improvement with my RAM (unlike synthetic-only improvements if I go past 9-9-9-24) makes a lot of difference in the DAW where I am working in real time with very resource intensive plugins at extremely low latencies. If I need to change my approach from what has worked out to be an extremely fast and stable overclock, I will do it. But I would like to understand why I am abandoning a working setup that seems to have some practical differences in implementation from the bad Gigabyte LLC issue. And despite the smaller process I am having difficulty finding much evidence that LLC on Asus is the big bad wolf. PLL is just a lovely known issue but my boot time is 13 seconds or so, I am okay turning it off when it isn't in use rather than hibernating. Still, if he has info on Asus like he does on gigabyte then I would like to hear him out.
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Jul 25, 2011 05:40
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Agreed posted:Still, if he has info on Asus like he does on gigabyte then I would like to hear him out.
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Jul 25, 2011 05:50
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Anandtech has posted an article testing memory bandwidth scaling with Sandy Bridge i7 processors, including at heavily overclocked speeds (4.8Ghz). This confirms previous tests showing that Sandy Bridge isn't memory bandwidth limited at all, but it's a bit surprising to see almost no scaling even when overclocked. The best bang for the buck right now is DDR3-1600 CL9, but if you REALLY need to shave off a couple bucks DDR3-1333 CL9 doesn't really hurt anything. This also confirms that we can expect no performance improvements from the quad-channel memory architecture on the LGA-2011 Sandy Bridge-E platform, just what the additional CPU cores and integrated PCI-E controller offer.
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Jul 25, 2011 12:24
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movax posted:Or are some people looking at X79 and jumping to hexa-core LGA2011 CPUs? Alereon posted:This also confirms that we can expect no performance improvements from the quad-channel memory architecture on the LGA-2011 Sandy Bridge-E platform, just what the additional CPU cores and integrated PCI-E controller offer. Combat Pretzel fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Jul 25, 2011 |
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Jul 25, 2011 14:52
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Combat Pretzel posted:I fail to see the relation between this and the Anandtech test. They didn't do tests with the system forced to single channel mode. I'd figure that multiple memory heavy threads could profit from more channels. At least with an increasing amount of cores. Some random loose Googling revealed some old tests, where there were minimal effects with dual core CPUs. If we're talking about six hyperthreaded cores, this might end up in a more noticeable effect.
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Jul 25, 2011 17:45
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There's really no workloads that have a considerable advantage from this? I'm curious as to why Intel jumps through all the hoops to make it work for no real effect. I'd figure it'd be cheaper to market something as an xxxxtreme CPUs instead of actually developing and testing one (with questionable advantages apparently). --edit: vvvv Things like video encoding and rendering can tax a CPU quite good. E.g. when running Expression Encoder or Premiere, my CPU cooler starts making funny noises. Combat Pretzel fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Jul 25, 2011 |
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Jul 25, 2011 18:02
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Agreed, what the hell are you doing that you need 8 threads running at over 4 gHz? On my OLD machine, which was only a dual core Phenom II, I could easily 2 or 3 full on VST instruments, dozens of VST plugins, all while processing 10 tracks simultaneously. You must be running some intense plugins or something. Does your DAW software actually utilize all 8 threads/cores? How low is your latency set? I was one of the people that jumped on whatever LGA 1155 board was available after the SATA bug disaster. I ended up with the Biostar TP67B+, which was one of like 3 LGA 1155 boards available. I decided to get a a Hyper 212+ and have been running with that at 4.4 gHz stable. The voltage is automatically set by the BIOS and I haven't hosed with it beyond that. Everything has worked fine since and I've never seen any instability. I'm running the whole thing under an Intel SSD too.
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Jul 25, 2011 18:09
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Alereon posted:Here's the Anandtech article I linked earlier, it's their original investigation of LLC using an Asus motherboard. They haven't done another article for newer CPUs/motherboards, but they do occasionally remind readers that disabling LLC is their standing recommendation. Asus boards are much less likely than Gigabyte to result in hardware damage or instability, but the reality is that you'll get better overclocking performance with LLC disabled and manually managing voltages, and if you're at your max safe voltage and are enabling LLC to achieve stability, you're just tricking yourself into using a higher voltage. Well, the default setting still has LLC, you cannot disable it altogether, and there is a separate adjustment to control CPU current (allowing for between 100% and 140%). Further, in offset voltage control mode, it seems you don't have especially precise control over the voltage anyway; I and many other Asus and Asrock users have noted that it has brief excursions to wherever it feels like it ought to be when overclocking. The older Core 2 processors were overclocked via changes to the bus and voltage primarily. I am not sure how much of that translates to the weird offset method... But two things I do know: one, I am not uncomfortable with higher voltages than I am using, and two, I am not willing to set the voltage manually and have it running at a constant 1.382V even when parked at 1600MHz just because it can under extraordinary stress briefly reach that above it's usual full 47x multiplier 1.36V. I wish that we had more fact-based info on offset overclocking, because it almost seems like it's just going to do what it's going to do, but for real power saving it is vastly superior to running at a manually set voltage. Interesting to read that 1600 is the sweet spot for RAM at higher clocks, I had heard 1333 before now. Guess I made an alright choice going with 1600 9-9-9-24 and kicking it up to 1T then? Agreed fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Jul 25, 2011 |
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Jul 25, 2011 19:11
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Agreed posted:Well, the default setting still has LLC, you cannot disable it altogether, quote:and there is a separate adjustment to control CPU current (allowing for between 100% and 140%). quote:Further, in offset voltage control mode, it seems you don't have especially precise control over the voltage anyway I and many other Asus and Asrock users have noted that it has brief excursions to wherever it feels like it ought to be when overclocking. quote:Interesting to read that 1600 is the sweet spot for RAM at higher clocks, I had heard 1333 before now. Guess I made an alright choice going with 1600 9-9-9-24 and kicking it up to 1T then? One interesting memory-related fact: As memory gets more complex, less and less of the chip is devoted to the DRAM cells storing data and more to logic and hardware related to maintaining signal integrity. Back in the day a DRAM chip was almost entirely memory with a small amount of other stuff, now it's mostly other stuff, and by the time DDR4 comes out there will be a tiny island of memory in the middle of logic/timing/signal hardware on each chip.
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Jul 26, 2011 06:52
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The problem is that I can use LLC set to high and get stability with voltage and thermal behavior I'm comfortable with, with only a +0.025 offset; so, my CPU when at its lowest 16x multiplier for power saving when using firefox or thunderbird for the day to day of my job it runs at a comfy 1.025V. If I turned LLC from High to Normal, I'd have to up the offset voltage to compensate and it'd be idling at 1.150V or something like that. So it's really more about managing my lowest voltage while keeping the highest voltage within my comfort zone than anything else. If it allowed more precision it'd be great. Maybe I should tell LLC to stop and just manually set the phase control steps and up the offset, but I really don't want to. I'm using an Asus Sabertooth rev3, it "only" has an 8-phase VRM but they're robust as hell and it is in general an exceptionally nice and stable board that's proved to be a great overclocking platform. The reason I don't want to turn off LLC is because it seems like the lesser of three evils here in terms of power consumption and stability. The alternatives to using LLC are either adjusting other stuff manually to try to deliver voltage and current to reach stability, basically, and result in a much higher net power draw over time since it only gets into the 1.382V maximum value once every six to ten IBT runs - even games that were CPU limited on my Q9550 don't get it above Intel's comfortable 95W TDP at the 4.7GHz overclock, and my audio software doesn't peg it like that either. I mean, unsurprising, I guess, that stuff made specifically to try to crash your damned machine pushes it harder than real-world tasks, but still, if I did a manual voltage control and it idled at 1.382V (since it does very occasionally need that, under extreme load), it'd use a lot more power overall just to get to the maximum possible voltage needed for stability. If I use the manual offset, same problem, voltage idles way higher than I want it. I've never hosed with LLC on previous chipsets, but... it seems useful with Sandy Bridge. Not because I'm "fooling myself" with the voltage, I'm fine with the voltage, but because it allows me to set the voltage without having it there all the damned time. Just on-demand.
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Jul 26, 2011 07:23
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Alereon posted:The more people who buy a product the more people complain about problems with said product, Asus still does pretty well compared to the competition. I mean look at Gigabyte, their boards have had garbage power delivery since LGA-1155 came out at least and people still buy/recommend them. This isn't even something nebulous like anecdotal product experiences, you can monitor the voltages and see exactly how out of spec they are, tell exactly what Gigabyte did wrong, and see the consequences.\ Uh wow. I've always bought Gigabyte boards (since they work well, why not?). What's a good brand to buy? Or is it chipset dependant?
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Jul 26, 2011 11:48
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4 Day Weekend posted:Uh wow. I've always bought Gigabyte boards (since they work well, why not?). What's a good brand to buy? Or is it chipset dependant? They're all going to have the same chipsets, and that's whatever shows up in trays from Intel or AMD. It comes down to a bit of personal preference (i.e. does this board have the features I want?), affordability, and then historical reliability of the brand IMHO. Everyone has seen Fry practically give away $50 ECS/Jetway/whatever mobos in promotions, and everyone has also seen the retard expensive Super Duper Premium models from eVGA, Asus, Gigabyte and the others. I think the mid-range is a nice sweet spot, especially from Asus and MSI. Also factor in RMA support; again, this is sample size n=1, but I had pretty bad dealings with Gigabyte RMAs, but Asus was wonderful and always cross-shipped. eVGA makes you pay shipping to them unless you buy an "Advanced RMA Plan" for like $35, which sucks. I got a brand-new X58 board from them and had to pay an extra $11 to ship it back to them because one of the memory channels didn't work. e: I guess I can add more. There are a lot of technical details that go into motherboard (or just high-speed logic design in general) that we as the end-user will only really see if we're pushing the board to the limit. Everyone has the minimum standards of power-delivery and signal integrity to meet. A PCB gets more expensive the more layers there are; naturally, adding layers also makes signal routing easier for the designer because hey, more layers. A board I designed was 14 layers, a colleague's was only 8 layers, our total price difference was something around $2500. If you can squeeze all your signal traces onto the fewest possible layers, you're going to have a cheaper board to manufacture. Only simulation packages from Cadence or Mentor will tell you how much crosstalk you will see exactly when you've crammed low-voltage PCI Express signals next to noisy single-ended PCI lines, or some other combination. More layers also gives you more planes (generally just a layer of pure copper the size of the board), which has obvious pay-offs in power delivery. This is stack-up dependent, but generally you will end up with these planes separating certain layers, allowing you to shield signals on either side of the plane from each other. I guess what I'm getting at is that the cheaper designs may get the job done(TM) and pass compliance testing for the signals on-board (PCIe, SATA, USB, etc all have "official" compliance tests with numerical values for UI, Jitter, etc that must be met), but the better designed boards have a better chance of functioning out-of-the-norm and handling manufacturing variances. Terrible analogy here, but kind of how like most pilots' lives are spend in boredom/tedium going from A to B, you really see what they're made of/what they can do when they have to handle the plane doing something goofy, or something goes horribly wrong. Oh and the better brands will use "better" parts when it comes to passives (resistors, caps, inductors) and generally spring for better ICs. This was pretty rambly and written stream-of-consciousness, so if there's something terribly unclear or people want to know more go ahead and post! movax fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Jul 26, 2011 |
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Jul 26, 2011 15:29
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Agreed posted:So... Help me out, it's A Bad Thing but overclocking in general is bolting big gently caress-off heat sinks and taking extraordinary measures to rip stability and performance out of exceeding the factory specifications, so isn't overclocking in general, if it exceeds stock voltage, A Bad Thing? For starters, all modern processors (pretty much everything made since the Pentium 4 or Athlon 64) is TDP limited. In other words, the speed of the processor is limited not by the capabilities of the chip, but by an agreement not to dissipate more than a certain amount of energy. An overclocker with a big heatsink can essentially tell the processor it's okay to violate that agreement, and achieve a substantial speed increase without exceeding the electrical specifications of any of the components. After that, there are different levels of badness. When you first start exceeding the specifications, you're just eating into safety margins, put there to minimize the change of marginal chips failing under poor conditions (such as motherboards that do poor power conditioning, like LLC). Past that, the increased current accelerates electromigration, reducing the lifespan of the chip. Since the rated lifespan generally greatly exceeds the useful lifespan, this generally isn't that big of a deal. If you push the voltage even higher, then you start hitting what Alereon was calling a Bad Thing(tm). Sudden voltage changes or excessively high voltages can cause transistors to open or close inappropriately, causing instability, or they can cause electricity to travel across barriers it's not intended to travel (generally destroying said barrier in the process), or excessively high current resulting from the voltage can cause various kinds of thermal runaway, destroying transistors or wires.
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Jul 26, 2011 21:30
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Zhentar posted:For starters, all modern processors (pretty much everything made since the Pentium 4 or Athlon 64) is TDP limited. In other words, the speed of the processor is limited not by the capabilities of the chip, but by an agreement not to dissipate more than a certain amount of energy. An overclocker with a big heatsink can essentially tell the processor it's okay to violate that agreement, and achieve a substantial speed increase without exceeding the electrical specifications of any of the components. Thanks very much, this is the information I was looking for. Well done pulling the right question out of the jumble, I didn't quite know how to ask what I wanted to know but you answered it nonetheless.
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Jul 26, 2011 22:02
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My i5-2500K@4.3GHz is working just fine although I have the voltage set to 1.28v otherwise its not stable at that speed. I may turn off the vDroop compensation on my MSI P67A-G45 and see if that makes a difference since its set to auto in the bios. edit: I went into the bios but it won't let me disable it. It only gives me the options of 'auto' and 'low vdroop' so that what's I get for buying an MSI board. spasticColon fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Jul 26, 2011 |
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Jul 26, 2011 23:30
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spasticColon posted:My i5-2500K@4.3GHz is working just fine although I have the voltage set to 1.28v otherwise its not stable at that speed. I may turn off the vDroop compensation on my MSI P67A-G45 and see if that makes a difference since its set to auto in the bios. I'm doing 4.4 at 1.22, I have not been in the overclocking game for over a decade so I don't know how big a difference 1.22->1.28 is. Isn't stock 1.2?
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Jul 27, 2011 00:05
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Dogen posted:I'm doing 4.4 at 1.22, I have not been in the overclocking game for over a decade so I don't know how big a difference 1.22->1.28 is. Isn't stock 1.2? Well at 4.2GHz its stable at 1.2v so I don't know what the deal is. All I know is that it at 4.3GHz it bluescreens until I pump up the voltage to 1.28v and at 4.4GHz I have to pump it up to 1.3v so I may just have a chip of lesser quality. Unless there is something I'm not doing right. Would messing with the RAM voltages and/or timings make any difference? I have them all set to auto right now. Turning off XMP doesn't make a difference either.
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Jul 27, 2011 02:21
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