Overclocking CPU/GPU
Vetinari
Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
in Off-Topic
I might want to start looking into overclocking my PC soon-ish. Star Citizen's Alpha is about to be released, and my hardware is becoming dated (i7-2600k, AMD 6950)...
I have no experience about OCing whatsoever, and I thought maybe I ask some of you for advice/some clues where to start research, before actually starting to search...
Does anyone have experience with overclocking, know any good guides, etc? Please share.
I have no experience about OCing whatsoever, and I thought maybe I ask some of you for advice/some clues where to start research, before actually starting to search...
Does anyone have experience with overclocking, know any good guides, etc? Please share.
Comments
So get yourself Prime95: http://www.computerbase.de/downloads/system/prime95/
Or (better in my experience, because it produces results much faster) InterBurnTest: https://www.xgamingstudio.com/forum/showthread.php?9-RELEASE-IntelBurnTest-v2-53
The how-tos I could link you to are in German, but I guess you'd prefer English ones...
Second: Star Citizen is still light years away from release and even if you just want to play that dogfight module, it will probably run much better 12/18/24 months down the line. We gotta see what performance benefits Mantle brings to Battlefield 4 soon and can draw conclusions for CryEngine/StarCitizen from that.. but you'd need a GPU with GCN, of course...
Third: TSMC didn't get their 20nm process done in time. That's why we have seen only recycled chips with a new sticker this "generation" (if you even wanna call it one). Example: A GTX770 is nothing but a recycled GTX680. A R9 280X is nothing but a HD7970. Only the R9 290(X) are genuinely new chips (which could have profited from the shrink enourmously).
20nm will come out this summer and then we'll see some REAL progress across all sectors, not just 2 ultra-high-end cards that are still stuck with 28nm... so my recommendation is easy: Hold your horses and get your new GPU when 20nm is ready.
Fourth and last: With their announcement that they are celebrating the American "Veteran's Day" by funnelling money to the American military and calling it "charity", I'm done with backing RSI. Their incessant "Support the troops" and "God bless America" each time some professional murderer showed up on Wingman's Hangar was obnoxious, but this is taking the cake: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13366-Veterans-Day-Hornet-Upgrade-Offer
As a German, we have some experience with blind nationalism and zealous right-wing patriotism... and we all know how well that episode ended.
The biggest joke that a braindead-obedient SOLDIER who would kill his own parents if ordered to is the polar opposite of a critical CITIZEN...
If a refund was possible, I'd have taken it the very moment I found out how they are spending my Euros.
I had made plans to gift SC to my brother, but that's out of the question now - they won't see another cent from me.
I'm also gonna notify all of my friends and strongly advise against backing Star Citizen.
I realize SC is still in the far future. It's not only about SC...
What's TSMC? Google says it's a semiconductor company? (would make sense)
I don't like the way SC is going, either (all the false praise about that horrible community, too much focus on big clans in the recent stretch goals, voyager direct store (seriously WTF), it's all shameless money-making now), but I think I'm going to play it anyway, in the end... A refund is possible, afaik, though. We have a thread for the game over here: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/121870/roberts-space-industries#latest
(Oh, and pro-tip: Don't go into the official forums... I used to be there. I turned them my back in disgust.)
Neat.
TSMC is the big chip company where both AMD and Nvidia are ordering their chips from.
If TSMC can't make progress, we're stuck. As it looks like, the intervals between each shrink will grow bigger and bigger because it becomes exponentially more expensive and costly to make those transistors smaller and smaller. That's why we are sitting @ 28nm for, well, 2 years now.
(The first 28nm GPU was the HD7970 which entered the market in December 2011).
Before that impasse, node shrinks would usually occur once a year. Then it slowed down to 1.5 years.
As you can see: It's about time for the next shrink - it will open the door for cramming more transistors into the same area and maybe saving some power on top of that. The shrinks are essential for performance leaps. Without them, AMD and Nvidia can only churn out bigger chips that become more and more uneconomical (too much heat, too much power draw, too hard to manufacture). Titan and the new R9 290X are examples for that brute force approach...
And there is another problem: The 28nm is mature now, that's why we are seeing the R9 290X now. They can build such a big chip with that process.
When 20nm comes out, it will be suffering from a high failure rate that will go down gradually, but that means that it would be very inefficient and risky to make a big chip like a GTX780Ti out of it...
Imho a GPU (no matter how few percent faster than a reasonable upper midrange or lower high-end range GPU) just isn't worth 500€... let alone 999€.
http://msi-forum.de/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=82115
IntelBurnTest got an excellent readme.
Once I raised my volts high enough all crashing stopped
I started at -0.0065v and then worked my way up, I also used offset load calibration level 5/not fixed or whatever, so that when I'm not gaming my cpu underclocks so when I'm idle I'm at about 1.6~ghz, but when a game or application launches it goes to 4.2ghz
Btw, I use the standard fan to cool the CPU, so I will have to look into that, too...
edit: Might add that my PC was somewhat idling at that time (browser, skype, steam running). But I use three screens, so maybe it's that...
edit2: Wo. It's interesting to see temperature rise when I start NS2 - the CPU went to 65-67°C. Strangely enough, the GPU stayed at 67 the entire time, until I closed the game. Now it's on 78 and won't come down.
Nevermind me, I'm just happily messing around here...
Minimize power consumption and waste heat
I see you have a Core i7-2600K, those old 32nm buggers like quite a bit of juice, but they're fine up to 101 °C (optimally, should be 10 °C below this at full load), my brother owns this processor and well, when I overclocked it for him it required an extremely high 1,51V for ~4.8 GHz with HT. Stock voltage should be about 1.25 for this chip, but the stock HSF (heat sink) is very very very bad and you should never ever use it for overclocking (and preferably not use it at all).
Maximum safe operating voltage for this particular CPU is 1,375V per Intel specification much alike it's Gulftown siblings, but you can run it safely up to 1.45 provided you cooled it well enough, and your motherboard's caps aren't overstressed (my bro's machine has a Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3, pretty much the highest end motherboard ever made for Sandy Bridge on 6-series chipsets).
I recall that to stably hit 5.06 GHz on my old i7-990X processor I required something like 1.71V, totally unsustainable due to unreal amount of dissipated heat, power consumption and actual strain on the silicon itself. Finding your maximum 24/7 can be a lengthy and tedious process, since you need to try out, stress test a bit (for me, 3 hours of Prime95 is enough, though you may want more "stability" than that), but it's worth it.
If you ever wanna venture into overclocking, K (Unlocked) and X (Extreme) SKUs make it easy, just bump multiplier and the vcore (core voltage) accordingly, up to the safe maximums or, if you're feeling adventurous, until some 1.5V or so, the important thing is finding the sweet spot between performance, power consumption, heat and voltage (the latter two will lower your processor's lifespan), just get yourself a high end cooler like a monstrous, loud Noctua air cooler or a closed loop Corsair H100/H110 and you'll be good to go
I will have to get a new cooler, then. Although before I look into that I will softmod my 6950 to a 6970 and see what happens.
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/159
good article to help ya out
I haven't checked the date yet.
I think actually they donate to a charity which gives US soldiers video games. They only donate the money they currently earn.
Technically, we are all "donating" to RSI, but I pity all the fools who still believe this shit.
"sends video game care packages to soldiers in high combat areas as well as soldiers recovering in medical facilities" and "transports veterans of past wars to Washington D.C. to visit and reflect at the memorials that were created for them" is called charity? Maybe I don't get this because I am not American.
Why would it not be? The recipients are a bit questionable, but apart from that?
Don't get me wrong. I don't support this.
They are soldiers. That's not what you usually associate with a charity.
Don't you think that's a bit overboard? In the link you posted earlier they inform you that they are only sending donations from the money that one specific ship earns. if you're against it, just don't buy the ship. perhaps i'm a bit biased though, as i've lived on a military base for 18 years of my life.
The result is not that great tho. Tomb Raider benchmark 59.7 to 59.9, 3D Mark 2011 from 3602 to 3671, ARMA 3 from 20 fps to 22 fps. Biggest leap was in Tomb Raider by upgrading from Win7 to Win8.1: 35.9 to 59.7. So you should think about this, too. I was kinda lazy with further benchmarks, esp. in NS2.
The dogfight module is being referred to as "Dogfight Alpha".
@frantix that's helpful. Any site for tutorials you can recommend?
I have to get decent fan, though. Maybe for christmas...
http://geizhals.de/enermax-t-b-silence-manual-120x120x25mm-a-uctb12a-a621923.html
-> One in the front to suck cool air in and one in the back to push hot air out.
Your HDDs can't thank you enough just as each other component inside your case that WILL get too hot and break down earlier than you'd like to.
This CPU cooler doesn't break the bank and achieves superior cooling results to many that cost more than 5 times as much.
http://geizhals.de/thermalright-hr-02-macho-rev-a-bw-a830474.html
Test: http://www.pc-experience.de/wbb2/thread.php?postid=251815624#post251815624
(As long as I don't come across anything better, the Macho will go into every PC I build)
I followed this one: http://www.techreaction.net/2010/09/07/3-step-overclocking-guide-lynnfield/2/
For your Sandy Bridge, this is the fitting: http://www.techreaction.net/2011/01/04/3-step-overclocking-guide-–-sandy-bridge-v0-1beta/
Good luck!