i7 860 Over-clocking

[IceBear]

Hi All,

I've done a little tampering with my settings and the results seems to be well worth the short testing period... Firstly, I don't know much about OC'ing and I've really just copied others work.

I left on both SpeedStep and TurboBoost because I'm not looking for a machine that will run at full-tilt continuously, nor do I want to install a sub-station outside my house.

I do mostly photography related processing and for short burst I want my machine to break into full gallop, then slow again to a gentle walk until required to sprint for home once more.

I am running an aftermarket cooler but just a cheapy.

My initial Geekbench scores was:

After conservative OC'ing I'm now besting 10,300 on most GB scores:

I'm idling at about 43Deg and touching 91-92 on sustained mprime runs. With normal workloads I don't ever get above 70Deg.

SpeedStep still works nicely with the DSDT edits, and everything has been good so far.

 

[IceBear]

Ok, so I decided that I wasn't entirely happy with the heat being generated by my machine. It wasn't the CPU temps so much as the room heating up during the day. I can only imagine what that was going to do to the power bills!

So, I spent a bit more time today and followed a proper methodology of sorts. I'm now scoring ~9500 in Geekbench (32 bit) and running the chip at a more reasonable 3.36GHz.

My normal working temps are below 40Deg and under mprime32 the temp sits at around 80 after about 5 minutes and are stable there for hours.

Much more conservative but very happy.

 

[VectorZ]

Interesting.

I'm getting very crappy scores by comparison...

What are your settings and what do I have to do with the dsdt if I modify my bios settings?

I have a ud2 and an i7-860...
Boots fine with optimized defaults and I have my ram running at 1598mhz too...

cia2 prevents me from booting up...

 

[IceBear]

Interesting.

I'm getting very crappy scores by comparison...

What are your settings and what do I have to do with the dsdt if I modify my bios settings?

I have a ud2 and an i7-860...
Boots fine with optimized defaults and I have my ram running at 1598mhz too...

cia2 prevents me from booting up...

All I did was a 'simple' OC, starting with the BCLK which I put at 160. My CPU multiplier is at 22, memory at 10. Vcore is 1.3V and Vtt is 1.21V.

Everything else is standard. EIST and Turboboost etc are all enabled.

I was able to run stable with a BCLK of 175 but I needed Vcore of 1.4 and Vtt of 1.33. I still used a memory multiplier of 10 pushing the memory to 1750MHz. It worked beautifully but I was worried about temperatues. My office isn't well vented and it was noticeable.

My DSDT is Tony's standard with the SpeedStep adjustments added. I've used MSRTools to validate that SpeedStep is still working and adjusting cores appropriately.

Temperatures are much better now, idling around 37Deg, running Lightroom at about 42-45Deg. All quite acceptable.

What settings did you try and what where you results?

 

[VectorZ]

Okay, so I've been playing with my settings a bit - is the turboboost in the CIA2 menu?
I tried bclk at 166, and with turbo off I have no problem running at 3.5ghz (I think)...would it be better to go to the lower bclk and see if the CIA2 settings work at turbo?

Without turbo I'm only scoring like 4400.

Haven't touched vcore at all or any of the advanced settings (bidirectional prochot? WTF does that mean?) lol.

Thanks for the tips. When I get this figured out maybe I can help post a guide.

 

[lectrcman]

Okay, so I've been playing with my settings a bit - is the turboboost in the CIA2 menu?
I tried bclk at 166, and with turbo off I have no problem running at 3.5ghz (I think)...would it be better to go to the lower bclk and see if the CIA2 settings work at turbo?

Without turbo I'm only scoring like 4400.

Haven't touched vcore at all or any of the advanced settings (bidirectional prochot? WTF does that mean?) lol.

Thanks for the tips. When I get this figured out maybe I can help post a guide.

Hmmm. I'm not over-clocking at all and I am getting in the 9600s with several services running in background. I don't see why you would be getting 4400. My teperature at idle is around 32 to 34 degrees depending on ambient. It rarely goes over 44. I reach 50 when doing some intense video encoding etc... I am happy to keep it stock and running cool. My 20" iMac late 06 only gets in the 3500 range so this thing screams in comparison.

 

[VectorZ]

Temporarily removing my intelcpupowermanagement kexts i get around 9300 now in geekbench with minor fluctuations.

I think I need to look at my bios settings, my dsdt and my powermanagement kexts...

This is on a ud2-f8 using tony's osinstall.mpkg method annmultibeast without any changes to my dsdt... Gonna mess with it tonight when I ge off work.

 

[IceBear]

Can those with i7 860s post some Geekbench scores with stock settings and with over-clocked settings.

It seems we have a wide range of performance numbers and I'm a little surprised. I was getting around 8000 before I over-clocked. I've got it up to ~10500 running stable but too hot for my liking.

I'm now running at 9500 with substantially cooler performance and I'm quite happy.

I looks like some people have over 9000 on standard settings however - this makes me think I'm not running my standard machine as efficiently as I should be????

 

[IceBear]

Hmmm. I'm not over-clocking at all and I am getting in the 9600s with several services running in background. I don't see why you would be getting 4400. My teperature at idle is around 32 to 34 degrees depending on ambient. It rarely goes over 44. I reach 50 when doing some intense video encoding etc... I am happy to keep it stock and running cool. My 20" iMac late 06 only gets in the 3500 range so this thing screams in comparison.

This is impressive. What kexts are you running in /E/E?? Also, what DSDT edits do you have? Are you running NVEnabler?

Does anybody know what different 4gb and 8gb of memory will make to Geekbench?

Thanks

 

[lectrcman]

I only have fakesmc.kext, JMicronSATA.kext, and LegacyHDA.kext in my Extra/Extentions
The DSDT.aml is the one I DLed from this site for my MB. I have 8 Gigs G.Skil 1333 DDR3 ram. My CPU cooler is a Thermaltake Silent 1156 (which is NOT silent by any measure but livable) which cools my CPU about 10 degrees cooler than stock. I think the version of Chameleon I am using (Chameleon RC4-AsereBLN-1.1.9) enables my video card without need of NVenabler.