WOW...OCing with power saving features is getting better with Gigabyte!

Just wanted to report my successes with the Gigabyte X58A-UD7. Many people have been talking about the possibilities of OCing while leaving power saving features enabled. I'd been wanting to play with it a bit, but hadn't had much motivation. But the hot summer days are taking a toll on me, and my room being in the mid 30s has prompted me to turn down the heater under my desk

I haven't been playing many games these days, but my 295 GTX and 8800GTS pump out a lot of heat at idle. So, change #1 was to pull out the 295 altogether. I think I'll put a 5850 in it which is WAY more power efficient!

Then I upgraded my motherboard from the EX58-EXTREME to the newer X58A-UD7 (Rev 1.0). One of the memory slots apears to be dead, so I'll be running in dual channel mode until I can get the motherboard replaced. I'm running Crucial DDR3-1066 7-7-7-16 memory. I'm still using the same i7 920 I've been using for over a year. These are the BIOS settings I changed to achive my overclock:

• I set all voltages to "normal" (except vDIMM to 1.6V)
• I set load line calibration to "mode 1"
• I set "Dynamic Vcore" to +0.10V
• I set bclock to 200MHz
• I set uncore multiplier to x16
• I manually configured the memory to DDR3-1600 8-8-8-24

That's it!

My system is now running at 2.4GHz with 1.05V at idle, and 4.2GHz with 1.35V at load

With the EX58-EXTREME I couldn't get over 181MHz bclock without extra VTT....but that was in triple channel mode. I think if I go back to triple channel, I may need more VTT voltage.

It's not LinX stable at the moment, but it seems fine for regular use. But I'll work on it a bit more and update here

OK, so I had a bit of time to play with my OC today, and was able to get it pretty stable at 4.2GHz. I also tightened up my memory timings while I was at it
This OC did require a couple changes. First, I enabled LLC LV1, then I gave it a slight bump in VTT voltage to 1.215V, and last I upped the DRAM voltage to 1.7V

At load, my Vcore is at about 1.3V and my AC power draw at the wall is about 540W max.



At idle, the Vcore is at about 1V and my AC power draw drops down to 230W

reserve 2

Gigabytes X58 models are pimp!

Miah, this is good news indeed. Especially for those that like to keep 24/7 oc's as it will let them keep some decent temps while also keeping performance potential at maximum. nice work as usual

Yeah, but I gotta get it working in triple channel before I'm really impressed I'll keep you guys posted

if I were a betting man, I would wager that the memory wont affect the outcome. it seems to me that it is the rapid movement of cpu voltage change or clock speed that caused the issue with older boards. On my board, if I remove the affected memory and replace several times the memory comes back to life.

Very interesting results!!! I wonder if its just that board/series though? I wonder how this works across other brands.

As we all know, we disable this stuff, at least until we find our 'stable' overclock, then turn it on...

my a-ud3 is fine until about 4.1 and then starts getting flaky

EarthDog said:

Very interesting results!!! I wonder if its just that board/series though? I wonder how this works across other brands.

As we all know, we disable this stuff, at least until we find our 'stable' overclock, then turn it on...

Click to expand...

That's never worked for me. The transition between higher voltages and lower voltages with C-states has always caused trouble in the past. Sure, EIST isn't too hard to get working....but both EIST and C-states is another story

And I have had good luck with that across e8400, Q9650 (on p45 UD3P), and now this i7 860 (P55 FTW). My clocks arent pushing it tremendously, but... it does work when enabled...in my 3 experiences. NOt saying people should do that, just that it worked. And if they want the power saving features, maybe try it. If it doesnt work, tough luck, and turn them off.

EarthDog said:

My clocks arent pushing it tremendously, but... it does work when enabled...in my 3 experiences.

Click to expand...

This is key.....what were your clocks?

All were 4Ghz actually... From 3Ghz (e8400 - 400x10 / Q9650 - ~450x9), and same with i7 860 (200x20) from 2.8Ghz. Its good through 4.2Ghz though on i7 860. But yeah these arent monster 24/7 clocks with massive FSB/Bclk. for benching or pushing much past 24/7 clocks, no way would I enable it...ever.

I don't have any boards that will let me try.
That said, I did manage to keep power saving features intact while OCing an e1200 on a ecs G31 board.
Turns out a padmod doesn't force them off
So at full load it was 2.66ghz(333x8) 1.34vcore, at idle it was 2ghz(333x6) 1.01vcore.

EarthDog said:

All were 4Ghz actually... From 3Ghz (e8400 - 400x10 / Q9650 - ~450x9), and same with i7 860 (200x20) from 2.8Ghz. Its good through 4.2Ghz though on i7 860. But yeah these arent monster 24/7 clocks with massive FSB/Bclk. for benching or pushing much past 24/7 clocks, no way would I enable it...ever.

Click to expand...

Still, those clocks aren't too shabby

What type's of voltage changes were made in the BIOS for our 860? I haven't seen a dynamic vcore setting with eVGA boards

Naa, nice 24/7 clocks, but not pushing that envelope. I would imagine the higher the voltage changes, the more difficult it would be to change voltage states and thus more instability.

i7 860 - Ram manually set (1.6), Vtt manually set (1.27?), Vcore manually set 1.2875v bios (1.28v after droop), and PLL on auto I think.

I dont believe there is a dynamic vcore setting in this board... If there is, I havent touched it.

Then how were C-states working? What was your idle Vcore? Was it dropping down?

TBH, I've not played with this much on other boards, only the Gigabytes and the MSI Xpower board, but with either one, when you manually set Vcore, C-states don't work, even when you leave them enabled in the BIOS. So your idle and load Vcore doesn't change much.

Idle vcore was down to 1.1v IIRC and clocks to 2.6Ghz????? I dont recall. I honestly dont watch it.

I will have to double check.. Im second guessing that now...but it does drop, C1 and EIST are enabled (I have to have C states enabled to maintain my RAID0 SSD's with GC). I decided to do that automatically now.

Hummm, thanks for the info Joe ....I'll look forward to your reply.

I have all the power saving features on with E1200 clocked to 2.6 Ghz for a year with no problem, it's a Gigabyte board.