Gigabyte Sandy Bridge Overclocking Guide

[manHands]

I ran across this guide doing some searching today. I don't have a lot of experience overclocking, but I'd like to get the most out of my i7-2600K. The guide is written for P67 boards, and looks to be written prior to the Z68 boards coming out. It comes from the official Gigabyte forum. I'm going to do some testing on my GA-Z68XP-UD3 board, and post my results in a couple days. Enjoy!

Gigabyte Sandy Bridge Overclocking Guide

EDIT (1-31-12):

Here's a screen shot of my most recent Geekbench score. Stock, with no modifications to the BIOS, I got a score of 11785. By enabling the Intel Turbo Boost Technology, setting the Turbo Ratios of all 4 cores to 45, and changing the Turbo Power Limit to 120, I got a score of 14809. Not too shabby. I'm going to run a Prime95 stress test tomorrow, to test stability. If all goes smooth, I'll up the turbo ratios. I'm leaning more towards the "Stage 1: Conservative Dynamic Overclocking" section. This way the processors are able to idle at moderate speeds and safe temperatures.

 

[manHands]

I'm all set now. After doing some research in this forum and many others, I'm comfortable with my overclock. I've made the following changes:

Intel(R) Turbo Boost Tech. - Enabled
Turbo Ratio(1-core) - 48
Turbo Ratio(2-core) - 47
Turbo Ratio(3-core) - 46
Turbo Ratio(4-core) - 45
Turbo Power Limit(Watts) - 120

That's it. Nothing else was changed. Every other setting is set to the default. I ran a Blend Torture Test in Prime95 for 12 hours with no problems. Max temperature during this test was 73C. I'm happy with these results

 

[vanwinkle]

You can get lower temps at those speeds if you upgrade your cooling. I can run stable 4.6-4.8GHz and never break 60C with a self-contained Corsair water-cooling rig. (I have the H70 which is discontinued; the newer H80 is the improved version of what I use.)

 

[elnino]

I get Freezed with the same settings as you´ve done. How come?

I'm all set now. After doing some research in this forum and many others, I'm comfortable with my overclock. I've made the following changes:

Intel(R) Turbo Boost Tech. - Enabled
Turbo Ratio(1-core) - 48
Turbo Ratio(2-core) - 47
Turbo Ratio(3-core) - 46
Turbo Ratio(4-core) - 45
Turbo Power Limit(Watts) - 120

That's it. Nothing else was changed. Every other setting is set to the default. I ran a Blend Torture Test in Prime95 for 12 hours with no problems. Max temperature during this test was 73C. I'm happy with these results

 

[manHands]

I get Freezed with the same settings as you´ve done. How come?

It could be several reasons. All CPU's are not created equal. You may not be able to get to these speeds without adjusting the VCore. All MB's are not created equal either. I noticed you had the 1.0 revision and different BIOS than I am running (1.3, F6).

As you can see from the guide, the speeds I have posted are greater than the recommended settings. But, at the same time my temps are about as high as I'm comfortable going. I'm using a Cooler Master 212 Evo air cooler. I'd only adjust the VCore if I was using liquid cooling as vanwinkle suggested.

 

[manHands]

You can get lower temps at those speeds if you upgrade your cooling. I can run stable 4.6-4.8GHz and never break 60C with a self-contained Corsair water-cooling rig. (I have the H70 which is discontinued; the newer H80 is the improved version of what I use.)

I do have the Cooler Master 212 Evo installed on the CPU. How is the sound with the Corsair water-cooling? The 212 Evo is virtually silent, and is very highly rated.

 

[elnino]

Hey, Thanks for you response!!!

I´m trying this TurboBoost set:
0core =45
1core =44
2core =43
3core =42

My load line is set to 7

My RAM is running at 1333 Mhz

So far so good. I´m using a Corsair H100 for cooling.

I get Freezed with the same settings as you´ve done. How come?

It could be several reasons. All CPU's are not created equal. You may not be able to get to these speeds without adjusting the VCore. All MB's are not created equal either. I noticed you had the 1.0 revision and different BIOS than I am running (1.3, F6).

As you can see from the guide, the speeds I have posted are greater than the recommended settings. But, at the same time my temps are about as high as I'm comfortable going. I'm using a Cooler Master 212 Evo air cooler. I'd only adjust the VCore if I was using liquid cooling as vanwinkle suggested.

 

[manHands]

My load line is set to 7

Good to hear you're making progress. Here's a little graphical information on Gigabyte's Multi-level Load-line setting. It may give you a little more info on what exactly you're changing.

 

[elnino]

My load line is set to 7

Good to hear you're making progress. Here's a little graphical information on Gigabyte's Multi-level Load-line setting. It may give you a little more info on what exactly you're changing.

Mmmmm...Very interesting!!!

I had freezes with my last set up. Now I have overclocked my 16 GB of RAM from 1333 to 1600 Mhz and I get 3.8Ghz of my CPU Speed with very decent temperatures.
I still want to reach the 4.5Ghz but I´ll do some more research since I only have Lion 10.7.3 installed on this machine.

I have another hard drive with Windows XP from my old computer,it is a 32bit OS. Thinking on installing it on tihis machine and run Prime95 or some program like it ,to see if my orverclocks are stable.
Question: Can I run Prime 95 on a Windows 32bits OS to get a stable overclock and then have my Mac OS X 64bit running stable?

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[mmaenpaa]

You do know that Prime95 is also available for OS X ? ftp://mersenne.org/gimps/Prime95-MacOSX-266.zip