I7 7700K and Asus Z170-A Overclocking vs I5 6600K

[AMDGuy]

You guys helped me pick out parts for a build a couple years back.

Here's the parts:
Asus Z170-A motherboard
I5-6600K proc
Corsair H80i V2 liquid cooling
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 memory (CMK16GX4M2B3200C16R)
A couple SSDs in R1 and a couple spinners in R0


The main purpose of this system is to render video for my YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/speedysgarage) if you're interested in automotive stuff.

Issue #1
I upgraded to an I7-7700K thinking I'd see a dramatic drop in video encoding times. X.M.P doesn't work AT ALL - like no POST even at stock CPU speeds. X.M.P worked fine with the 6600K. Thoughts?

I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio to render and I get MP4 files out of the cameras and render to MP4 in Vegas. My main issue is time to encode. I'm trying to get things down to a 1:1 ratio (1 minute video = 1 minute to encode).

I had the I5-6600K clocked to 4.6Ghz and it had been working pretty well, but a 9 minute video would take 12:30 to encode.

Issue #2
The rendering time with the I7-7700K and the same 9 minute video clip still took 10:41 even with the I7-7700K OC'd to 4.9Ghz. Why isn't this thing faster? I'm starting to think Sony Vegas Movie Studio might just have inefficient render code.

Any ideas?

 

[wingman99]

Multi thread is used in HD or stereoscopic 3D, if you are doing that? For XMP try running the Vccio at 1.15 and Vccsa at 1.20.

 

[AMDGuy]

Multi thread is used in HD or stereoscopic 3D, if you are doing that? For XMP try running the Vccio at 1.15 and Vccsa at 1.20.

Multi thread? Not sure how to check that?

Thanks, I'll try the Vccio and Vccsa settings. I did get it to run at 2800Mhz memory speed with the CAS timings of 16-18-18-36-1. Booted quite a bit faster, but render times didn't change much.

Did get it stable at 5.0Ghz as well with load line cal at level 3 and +.125 vcore. Room temperature is 82°F and CPU max temp was 82°C. Render time of that 9 minute clip was 10:08 so closer to the 1:1 I'm shooting for.

 

[wingman99]

Multi thread? Not sure how to check that?

Thanks, I'll try the Vccio and Vccsa settings. I did get it to run at 2800Mhz memory speed with the CAS timings of 16-18-18-36-1. Booted quite a bit faster, but render times didn't change much.

Did get it stable at 5.0Ghz as well with load line cal at level 3 and +.125 vcore. Room temperature is 82°F and CPU max temp was 82°C. Render time of that 9 minute clip was 10:08 so closer to the 1:1 I'm shooting for.

I was just explaining when multi threading is used by the software. If Vccio and Vccsa does not help try increasing the memory voltage to 1.4v.

 

[trents]

Sony Vegas should easily be able to use all the cores and threads of a 7700k: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/636862-how-many-cores-can-sony-vegas-use-while-rendering/ unless you might be using a very old version. Check the settings in the program to see how many cores it is set to use. At the same clock speed as the 6600k the 7700k should be rendering 25-40% faster than the older CPU because of the HT. Check program settings also for other kind of processing power limitations that might be in effect. Some software will limit itself as to how much of the CPU it will use so as to allow the user to run other tasks simultaneously without excessive impact on performance.

As Wingman already suggested, to get the 7700k to run the RAM at XMP speeds you may need to give the System Agent (CPU memory controller) a small voltage bump as well as the RAM itself. Is the motherboard bios updated to the latest version? You are using a Kaby Lake CPU on a motherboard that was originally designed for Sky Lake. It should work okay with the appropriate bios update. As you have already discovered, RAM speed will not have a lot of impact on the kind of work you are doing.

 

[AMDGuy]

Ok got it, yes Vegas Movie Studio is using all the cores/threads. When I'm encoding all 8 go to about 100%.

Yes, I did upgrade to the latest bios, which for the Asus Z170-A is 3007 I believe. That caused a couple bobbles in and of itself, like the RAID not being recognized but luckily I was able to fix.

It does recognize the CPU as a Kaby Lake and sees all the cores, etc. It's now stable at 5.0Ghz as I mentioned, I just expected the 25-40% performance increase you mentioned and so far I'm not seeing it.

My next call is to Sony Vegas Support to see if their latest version takes better advantage of processors like these and might be worth the marginal cost to upgrade. I'm on version 12.0 which is 3-4 years
old.

I'll also try those vccio and vccsa adjustments to see if I can get that extra 400Mhz out of the memory....I did get it stable at 2800Mhz by setting everything manually so I bet you're on to something.

 

[AMDGuy]

Well, I tried VCCIO at 1.15 and VCCSA (called something else in BIOS) at 1.20 and no dice with X.M.P enabled (3200Mhz). Surprising as this worked fine in the I5 I had before. The I7 just doesn't like it for some reason. I did get it to boot at 2900Mhz manually setting everything. Memory voltage is 1.35.

 

[wingman99]

Did you try Memory voltage at 1.4v for 3200 speed?

 

[AMDGuy]

I stopped at 1.35v since that's what worked with the old proc. Figured the memory was "ok" and it was some issue with the channels to the proc?

 

[wingman99]

I would just check with 1.4v to make sure the memory is okay and not degrated.