Overclocking an i5 2500k in OSX?

[rerouted]

I am really struggling to understand how OSX 10.8 and overclocking works. I Currently have a Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 with U1H Bios and an i5 2500k CPU. I have the i5/i7 SSDT from MultiBeast installed. I have read through many of the forms on tonymac about how I should setup my BIOS, multipliers and Cores 1-4 at. I have tried what many recommend or worked for them. None of my changes seem to have any impact on my setup. About this Mac always reports back 3.3 GHz i5. My Geekbench scores remain the same at around 4882. Any suggestions on how to bump this baby up to 4.2 GHz or more? I know OSX currently can only report 4.2GHZ max. I am still trying to understand the SSDT.aml file and how it defines the P-States as I think this it what the limitation might be?

Current Setup:
Mobo: Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 (UEFI BIOS)
CPU: Intel i5 2500k w/ 212 EVO Cooler
Graphics: Base Intel 3000 HD
RAM: 16GB CORSAIR Vengeance DDR3 1600
Primary HD: Corsair Force Series 3 60GB SATA III SSD

Any thoughts or feedback would be great.

 

[bthall]

I am really struggling to understand how OSX 10.8 and overclocking works. I Currently have a Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 with U1H Bios and an i5 2500k CPU. I have the i5/i7 SSDT from MultiBeast installed. I have read through many of the forms on tonymac about how I should setup my BIOS, multipliers and Cores 1-4 at. I have tried what many recommend or worked for them. None of my changes seem to have any impact on my setup. About this Mac always reports back 3.3 GHz i5. My Geekbench scores remain the same at around 4882. Any suggestions on how to bump this baby up to 4.2 GHz or more? I know OSX currently can only report 4.2GHZ max. I am still trying to understand the SSDT.aml file and how it defines the P-States as I think this it what the limitation might be?

Current Setup:
Mobo: Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 (UEFI BIOS)
CPU: Intel i5 2500k w/ 212 EVO Cooler
Graphics: Base Intel 3000 HD
RAM: 16GB CORSAIR Vengeance DDR3 1600
Primary HD: Corsair Force Series 3 60GB SATA III SSD

Any thoughts or feedback would be great.

I think you have other issues going on if you're only getting a ~4900 Geekbench score on an i5-2500K. I was getting similar scores on an i3-2310M (2 cores/no Turbo) laptop before I upgraded the CPU to an i7-2670QM (~9700 on Geekbench). Do you have Hardware Monitor installed to see at what speeds your processor cores are actually running during benchmarking? I would expect your i5-2500K to be at least comparable to (if not actually better than) the i7-2670QM.

You may want to try to create your own SSDT using this: Native DSDT/AML IDE & Compiler: MaciASL Open Beta and see if it does anything.

-bth

 

[rerouted]

Ok, as suggested I had HWMonitor open when running Geekbench and it did show the "CPU Package" @ 4.1GHz and a score of 10702 for (32-bit) and 11419 (64-bit) now. I guess I kept checking the "About This Mac" and seeing the 3.3 GHz and assumed it's not over clocking even through the BIOS says it is. Is there any way to show that or does OSX see that I have a 2500k and know that it's stock at 3.3GHz so that's what it's going to report in About My Mac?

Is a Geekbench of 10000 to 11000 what I should expect from a 4.2GHz i5-2500k?

Also to test that it's stable I know people swear by Prime95 in Win. Does the stress test built into Geekbench for OSX hold any merit if you run that for 24hrs and don't get a system crash or errors?

Thanks for your help thus far.

 

[bthall]

Ok, as suggested I had HWMonitor open when running Geekbench and it did show the "CPU Package" @ 4.1GHz and a score of 10702 for (32-bit) and 11419 (64-bit) now. I guess I kept checking the "About This Mac" and seeing the 3.3 GHz and assumed it's not over clocking even through the BIOS says it is. Is there any way to show that or does OSX see that I have a 2500k and know that it's stock at 3.3GHz so that's what it's going to report in About My Mac?

Is a Geekbench of 10000 to 11000 what I should expect from a 4.2GHz i5-2500k?

Also to test that it's stable I know people swear by Prime95 in Win. Does the stress test built into Geekbench for OSX hold any merit if you run that for 24hrs and don't get a system crash or errors?

Thanks for your help thus far.

Your current Geekbench scores (64-bit) are about where I'd expect them to see them. I'm getting ~14,600 on a (non over-clocked) i7-3370K @ 3.5 GHz (Max Turbo of 3.9 GHz), so I would expect an over-clocked i5 to be a little below that, but on par or better than the i7-2670QM in my laptop.

As for at the "About My Mac" display, I believe it only shows what the 'stock' processor speed is and not the max OC speed. I haven't tried to OC my machine yet to confirm that this is true. The fact that HW monitor is showing 4.1 GHz confirms that your CPU is over-clocking since a non-OC'ed i5-2500K maxes out at 3.7 GHz.

People do seem to swear by Prime95, but if you did an overnight stress test with Geekbench and it showed no problems, I think you are probably good to go.

Good Luck!
-bth