Core i7 950 Bloomfield Overclocking

[Ddlysergis]

Hi all. I recently decided to get a little more out of my CPU. I had been studying for the A+ certifications and it covered a great deal on the new core i7s which i have. I decided it sounded like a good time to get familiar with it. I upgraded my CPU cooler to a Cooler Master 212 and started from there. As i stated, this is my first overclock. I learned the basics myself from forums, and got a good start on the OC. I was able to get a bootable overclock up to 4.53ghz using about 1.4125 volts and there was no overheating issue, but i could not get it to remain stable when attempting to benchmark a game or OCCT. I ended up settling on a more modest 4.18 with 3.8125 volts. With that i am able to run a pretty graphics intensive video game for quite a while. In about 4-5 hours of straight play, i experienced 1 total crash/reboot (no apparent blue screen) and one instance where the game flat crashed to desktop (though Steam was acting funny, so it could have been them) Mainly i am on here to post my settings and see if anyone has any suggestions weather it be to stabilize what i have, or maybe get a little higher and make it stable. Right now, even though i can run a game, if i try OCCT, as soon as the test starts, i hard reboot. Not sure why that is myself; which is partly why i am on here. I will post my specs and current bios settings below. Thanks in advance for any input.

 

PC:

Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366 Intel X58

Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W

OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W Modular

CORSAIR Vengeance 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

SAPPHIRE 100315L Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16

 

BIOS settings right now:

--Overclock Tuner (XMP) *this setting is something i dont totally understand, but when this setting is turned on, my ram runs at proper timing-off and ram is at 8.8.8.20 instead of 9.9.9.24--please feel free to tell me what to do with this,i just set it this way because it seemed right to me.

--Ratio (22)

--Speed Step (disabled)

--Xtreme Phase Full Power Mode (auto)

--BCLK (190)

--PCIE (100)

--DRAM (1523

--UCLK (3047)

--QPI Link (auto)

--Asus UI priority (Asus Utility) *though i am not using this to OC, i did it by hand in Bios)

--Voltage (manual)

--CPU (1.38125v)

--CPU PLL (auto)

--QPI/DRAM Core (1.4)

--IOH (auto)

--IOH PCIE (auto)

--ICH (auto)

--ICH PCIE (auto)

--DRAM Bus (1.5)

--DRAM data ref. Voltage (there are a bunch of these including CHB, CHC and other terms i dont understand-not sure if i mess with these settings anyway)

--Load Line Calibration (auto)

--CPU differential Amplitude (auto)

--CPU clock skew (auto)

--CPU spread spectrum (auto)

--IOH clock skew (auto)

--PCI spread spectrum (auto)

 

***all c1e and other power saving modes are off, turbo and speed stepping are disabled. Ram timings are 9.9.9.24 in bios to match stock settings.

 

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I am up for increasing my OC a little more if anyone thinks i can with this cooler. It didnt seem to get too hot when i was running at 4.5, but it just would not take any load; and crashed instantly when starting a game or a benchmark.

 

Thanks all.

 

i7 newcomer

[wevsspot]

Hey Ddly - welcome to the OCC forums. Most of your settings are pretty good, but just be aware that 4.5Ghz for 24/7 probably isn't too realistic. It's ok for benchmarking and the likes, but honestly on the i7 950 somewhere between 4.0Ghz and 4.2Ghz is ideal for 24/7. Anyway, here are your current settings with my recommendations in bold (if I don't mention it leave it the way you have it);

 

XMP - disable and manually enter your four primary memory timings and vdimm as specified on your memory modules - your BIOS will take care of the remainder sub and secondary timings

xTREME Phase Full Power - High or Extreme (updated per Boinker's recommendation)

CPU PLL - Try 1.86 to 1.88v and see if it helps (auto is usually fine in most situations up to 200+ bclk)

QPI Voltage - You might need that much but I'd start backing that down until you get a BSOD 0x124 error then bump it up slowly from there. Believe it or not too much QPI or CPU voltage can actually cause instability on the 1366 platform

IOH - set to 1.2v and increase up to 1.3v as needed

ICH - set to 1.2v and increase up to 1.3v as needed

CPU Spread Spectrum - disabled

PCI Spread Spectrum - disabled

 

 

 

 

[Ddlysergis]

many thanks for the input. At work now. Will do some testing when i get home. Quick question though. In regards to OCCT crashing immediately after testing starts. Any thoughts? Are the settings you recommended possibly the answer to that? And one honest question--truly opinion...For a first time--how did i do?

[wevsspot]

For a first timer I thought you did Great!

 

OCCT can be a real bear. Trust me on that one. The nice thing about OCCT is that it will error out fairly quickly if there is a problem so you don't have to wait three hours into a test for it to fail.

 

In my experience the QPI voltage is where most problems stem from. It is very sensitive to under and over voltage. To further complicate the issue it is one of the voltages that seems to suffer the most from voltage droop. I didn't see in your settings whether you have an option for load line calibration. If so please enable it.

[Ddlysergis]

So far so good. Made the recommended adjustments. Thanks again. I will let you know if I run into any new obstacles.

[Boinker]

--Ratio (22) (set this one to 21. 21 multi seems always alot more stable)

--Speed Step (disabled) (Good deal)

--Xtreme Phase Full Power Mode (auto) I would move it to extreme or high

--BCLK (190) (180 = 3.60) 191 = 4.01 (196 = 4.10 and change) 200 = 4.20

--PCIE (100)

--DRAM (1523) I would keep this below 1600Mhz if you can avoid it until your chip overclock is either maxed out or stable where you want it.

--UCLK (3047) After you get the chip stable move this one up a few notched and test stability. It will increase performance.

--QPI Link (auto) Lowest setting

--Asus UI priority (Asus Utility) *though i am not using this to OC, i did it by hand in Bios)

--Voltage (manual)

--CPU (1.38125v) should be able to get 4.00Ghz out of that voltage.

--CPU PLL (auto) 1.88

--QPI/DRAM Core (1.4) You may need to increase this BUT it may be fine right where it is though

--IOH (auto) 1.25-1.40

--IOH PCIE (auto)

--ICH (auto) 1.20

--ICH PCIE (auto)

--DRAM Bus (1.5) (manufacture specs as per the sticker on the ram)

--DRAM data ref. Voltage (leave it alone)

--Load Line Calibration (auto). If you are going to go above 3.60Ghz just go ahead and set this to Enabled and remember your temps will come up a little.

--CPU differential Amplitude (auto) Leave it

--CPU clock skew (auto) leave it

--CPU spread spectrum (auto) OFF

--IOH clock skew (auto) Leave it

--PCI spread spectrum (auto) OFF

 

Keep the temperatures Below 90c and you should be good. Make sure you monitor them. You can usually get 4ghz out of a 1366 I7 with the hyper 212+ But its a BIG stretch.

 

Here is a BSOD code decoder. these adjustments have Been 99.9% correct for me.

0x101 = increase vcore

0x124 = increase/decrease vcore or QPI/VTT...have to test to see which one it is

0x0A = unstable RAM/IMC, increase QPI first, if that doesn't work increase vcore

0x1E = increase vcore

0x3B = increase vcore

0x3D = increase vcore

0xD1 = QPI/VTT, increase/decrease as necessary

0x9C = QPI/VTT most likely, but increasing vcore has helped in some instances

0x50 = RAM timings/Frequency or uncore multi unstable, increase RAM voltage or adjust QPI/VTT, or lower uncore if you're higher than 2x

0x109 = Not enough or too Much memory voltage

0x116 = Low IOH (NB) voltage, GPU issue (most common when running multi-GPU/overclocking GPU)

[Tjj226_Angel]

You also might want to try a multiplier of 21 instead. I was noticing that on my 950 it seemed to like odd multipliers and I was able to get better voltages out of it. There have been some other people who find this to be true as well. Mine........when I get my board back one of these days (I sort of screwed up the RMA process )........... runs at multiplier of 21 with 193 base clock. Try fiddling around with that and see if you can lower your voltages.

 

Your QPI seems a little too high too. at 1.5v on the Dram, you should be able to bring that down from 1.4 to about 1.35-1.38 somewhere in that region. I learned that from Wev Spot, so I am pretty much telling you what he has told me. Thanks again wev

 

I do have a question for you though, what sort of temps are you getting?

[Tjj226_Angel]

^^ huh, boinker beat me to it.

[Ddlysergis]

So i ran fine all night. No issues or crashes at all. So the specs laid out in Razorback's guide seem to work. The problem i ran into was later when i was off to bed. My computer will no longer sleep. The monitors go to sleep like the signal is lost (normal), but the cpu and all other chasie fans don't shut down. It doesnt make much sense to me given the settings that were changed, but it did go to sleep before with the previous settings. Not truly sure what could have changed.....maybe the xtreme phase power mode? Any suggestions?

[Ddlysergis]

Also, i have heard the odd multiplier thing before. Someone mentioned it in a comment on Newegg where i got the CPU. I think i will give that a try as well.

[Boinker]

Try reinabling c1e and speedstep and that should reallies the system to go I to sleep again. After that run some stability tests and make sure That has not jacked up you stability.

[Ddlysergis]

I will have to give it a try when i get home. A point of interest though, near as i can recall (and granted i partake in recreational herbology) it went to sleep just fine before i made the adjustments in the first post to this thread. C1E and speed stepping were already off and it seemed ok.(i would say 85% sure it went to sleep fine)