What's the difference?

[backdraft61]

My friend and I were talking about overclocking limits, and I was curious, just because the Core i7-920 isn't clocked as high as the Core i7-975 Extreme Edition, the highest overclock for each of those is pretty close, right (as in not 4.5 GHz for the EE and ~3.8GHz for the 920- example speeds only )?

[guyrichi247]

My friend and I were talking about overclocking limits, and I was curious, just because the Core i7-920 isn't clocked as high as the Core i7-975 Extreme Edition, the highest overclock for each of those is pretty close, right (as in not 4.5 GHz for the EE and ~3.8GHz for the 920- example speeds only )?

 

The extreme edition has an unlocked multiplier so you should be able to get a higher stable overclock with that. I think its a different chip as well or at least has a larger QPI of 6.4GT/s compared with 4.8GT/s of the 920 but i dont know if that would give you a higher overclock ??

[Zertz]

the highest overclock for each of those is pretty close, right

Right, if you're overclocking on air or water. Once you cool them down with DICE, phase change or LN2 and can thus pump a ton of voltage into the chip, the higher end 950/960 and 975's generally clock better