The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

Shaff,
No offense, but I wouldn't buy another MSI product if they were giving them away for $10! They have replaced my 9500GT/512GDDR3 card 5 times now, and I'm worse off than if I had kept the original! They refuse to send me any more. They claim that there is nothing wrong with the card, yet I've tried it in 9 different computers, and the result is the same! Fail!!! What good is a 3 Year Warranty, if they won't honor it? I've now spent almost as much in shipping the defective ones back, as the Card originally cost me! Their Technical Service is terrible, as they don't know their products. They have disabled fan control on the last 3 they sent me, and the fan screams, all the time. With the first 2 the fan screamed only until the Video Driver software loaded, and then became very quiet. The newer three will not let you adjust the fan speed at all! Avoid like the Plague!

Russ

 

I'm not sure I relish the prospect of running a 190W GPU at 250W+ long-term though.
The 22% gain in performance running at the typical max of 1.01Ghz gives you, brings the GTX560Ti's performance up to the standard of the HD6970, just under. Or more accurately, up to the standard of a 6950 unlocked into a 6970. With 1GB GTX560Tis at $253 and 2GB GTX560Tis at $288, and 1GB HD6950s at $273 and 2GB HD6950s at $290, the 560 is basically a slightly cheaper, but slightly slower card at stock, and when you overclock it to the max, it competes with an unlocked version of its rival as well. The only difference being, you can't unlock a 1GB HD6950 so you are limited to its innate overclocking performance, and how long you will still be able to unlock 2GB 6950s for is in question.

Long story short the GTX560Ti is about the same as an HD6950. It's slightly cheaper, but slightly slower. In the current overclocking arena, it's about equal to it, but less efficient.

 

Well for starters, I'm staying with nVidia for sure due to my use with the Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 plugins as well as other apps utilizing the multi CUDA cores & Mercury Playback Engine (MPE). I dont know if fps count for much in real world editing (except maybe in After Effects but then it would have to be a big change to be noticed by the average eye). I know for sure Premiere Pro likes 1g min to take advantage of these plugins enabled on the nVidia card and CS5. So I'm just wanting to see if the mild stretch to a GTX-560 in a 1g GDDR5 is worth the upgrade from the 460 of simular.

 

the extra cores, no doubt.

 

I don't know how game performance translates to CUDA performance, but the GTX560Ti is about 35% faster than a GTX460 1GB, so your call on whether that's a worthwhile upgrade or not. The most you can get out of a single card is 70% more, which means buying a GTX580, twice the price of the 560Ti (and imo, almost never worth buying)

 

I'm not asking from a gaming aspect. I am shopping with full intent to rendor in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, After Effects, Adobe Audition and of the rest of the CS5 suite. I didn't budget in more then $275 this time around. So the GTX580 or even GTX570 were not really in the budget to start. I would concider 2 GTX460's since I can do a 2nd one later in a few months as cost comes down w/ rebates or a single GTX560. I Never really tested my old SLI for editing in Premiere Pro. does SLI really add any benifits to video editing and real time playback? I want to stay under $260 so I have room for other upgrades. I am changing to Intel SSD 128 drives soon in RAID 0 as I did it in a notebook and it added a very nice performance boost in CS5.

Let's say I did do "2" GTX460's (seperately) and spent about $300.00 after rebates. It's still less then a single 570, but will it outperform it in much and if so, in what areas?

 

All I can say is I believe you can use two cards concurrently for CUDA without needing SLI, depending on if the program will recognise them.

 

I tried to OC my 930, but it's stuck at 3.8Ghz (on water) unless I don't mind really high load temps.

I can hardly afford the electricity to run the sucker anymore too, it's really sad lol.

 

wow! Really? What batch or Rev? Cause I had 2 and each hit 4G out of the box before doing much to the mobo. I'll check my old notes on vcore but if I remember correct, it didnt need much above auto. It uses now 1.33v to keep 4.3G stable, and another at respectful 4.2 is like 1.31v I do know some were needing 1.35+ but it would also depend on your RAM divider and speed since it is all tied into and loaded on the CPU now. DDR1700+ takes a toll of vcore and QPI on these Xore i7's They will need juice. I find mine do fine at DDR-1650~1700 with tighter timings but higher CPU clock for media encoding.

The mobo BIOS options may limit some stable overclock as we know by now. What mobo and BIOS do you use?

As well, the stock coolers barely help at stock with turbo on. I'd use better cooling. Mine started out on a copper ThermalRight Ultra 120 Extreme with dual fans but I migrated to the Noctua NH-U 12 . Last year I posted a nicely priced tower cooler that really gave the ThermalRight a run for its money at just under $40. We're talking 1~3C differances on my 4.3GHz 930 at the time so not bad. I'll find that model and share again because it truely is a great cooler for the money spent. Can be used in dual puch/pull fan config just like the Noctua or ThermalRight.

I went ahead with a set of GTX460's for the great price with rebate ($300.00 for 2 after rebate from the Egg). I did see Premiere CS5 doesnt utilize SLI but it can share cores for multi monitor and not sure about multi GPU for rendoring yet. I think not, or at least not in CS4 when I did with dual 9500GTX+'s

EDIT: Thermolab Baram Universal CPU Cooler $37.99 from SideWinder or simular of your choice. I paid $39.99 8 months ago.

 

I don't remember my batch, but it's a D0. rev. If I wasn't so conservative on my load temps I'm pretty sure I could get to 4+ pretty easy unless my MB (UD3R) causes problems. There's been a few stability issues on this setup a few times in the past which leave me inclined to leave it where it is for now until I have a decent amount of spare time to dedicate to it.


For now I'm must bidding my time praying for a low power, affordable 8c/16t beast to come along (we can all dream eh?).

 

Then your water setup isn't working. Define 'temperature problems' because the amount of heat an i7 920 puts out at 4.5Ghz is no match for even a simple watercooling setup.

 

Could be true, I've always wondered if I mounted the WB properly (all other aspects of my setup are fine). Technically your are right sam, a WC i7 920 can hit 4.5Ghz pretty easy granted you don't mind the max temp reaching the 80C area (could be lower if you have a good OCer), however I'm weird and like to keep my cpu's max operating temperature below 70C. As it is right now during winter I'm below 60C for the most part and peak at 66C in the summer. I'd love to always have it below or at least not exceed low 60s but keeping a fully loaded OC i7 920/930 below 60C in room with high ambient temperature is probably impossible without chilled water or better.

btw my vcore right now is around 1.33-1.35v, so imo I have a rather poor OCing 930. It's plenty fast for everything I do though since I don't have any high res monitors to game on.

 

You shouldn't even be seeing 50C with water.

 

Did I mention I don't live in a fridge?

I haven't seen any WC setups with temps that good, what are you basing that off?

edit: well there was that one guy in Alaska with his rad in the open window....

 

Key word is "shouldn't" Sam I've seen 920s run in the low 80s under water. They just run that hot. I know that seems like a very wide blanket phrase but it most certainly is true. Never seen more people with heat issues than with the i7. It is one of the hottest running CPUs I have ever seen.

 

My mate jon had his 940 [an early batch preceding the 920 D0] at 4Ghz on air at 75C. 80 on water just doesn't happen unless you're using an outrageous voltage.

Just to give you an example, the people I know with watercooling, i7s included, all get less than 40C full load on their CPUs, including the overclocked ones.

 

My watercooled 965 never goes over 50. But you're speaking of intels :S I like to see temps under 50. But seeing 60 wouldn't bother me too much.

80C! Now THAT'S a furnace LOL!

 

With my push/pull setup my water cooled 955 does just under 55C IBT load. Sits about 50-ish after several hours of gaming. Also consider my room is fairly warm this winter so I'm also idling at about 35C. With any sort of cold airflow or if I close my heating vent I can idle at about 25 and load in the mid 40s. But I choose being warm for now over having a cold computer ;P

Also consider if I shut off the heat vent, this PC can heat it back up under load in ~20 minutes. My Q6600 has spent most of it's life folding for Team 32(overclockers forum folding team) so that quickly adds to the heat too. When we have big points drives, I'll run both machines on CPU/GPU folding all weekend. So at this point my temps on both machines stay rather warm idle or not.

For the record my 8800GTS does not get used for folding, support for it or not. I simply don't trust it not to die under that kind of load.

 

I'll stress these are real watercooled systems, not the basic integrated systems like the coolIT Eco and the Corsair H50. Those are better than air coolers, but not by that much.

 

We understand this. But I'll also point out that I have seen a LOT of the 920 specifically with major heat issues. A lot of them just run hot. It's how the chip is.