Weird Budget CPU Overclocking

[Mantis41]

I have been out of the game for a while but have recently decided to build a very, very budget system.

Don't laugh....

CPU - G620
VID - 6770 DDR5 1GB
Ram -8gb Kingston value
Board - ASUS P8H61-M LE/USB3

Ok.... Once you have stopped laughing. I did say budget!


Now for the story.
When I saw most components running around 20c I decided to turn things up a little. Yep! Old habits die hard. The Sapphire VID over-clocked easily with the overdrive utility so no problems there. I then had a go at the CPU. I ran the BIOS autotune and gained an extra 100Mhz at a base frequency of 103Mhz.

Once I was in windows I ran up the TurboV EVO utility. I ran the auto tune from windows and ended up with the same 103Mhz base clock setting. I then manualy adjusted the base clock to 107 and CPU voltage 1.21 and supprisingly the settings took leaving me with a 2.8 Ghz CPU. I tested quite a few runs of 3D mark and a few games and everything seemed stable and still reasonably cool. Happy with my efforts I saved the overclocked profile in TurboV. 3Dmark gained a subtle improvement with the jump from 2.7Ghz to 2.8Ghz and reports the CPU as a G620 @ 28xx Mhz. I wish I had a web link but apparently my display driver is not WHQL.

Now for the weird bit.
If I soft reset the system the 107Mhz settings stick and everything is good. If I do a cold reset then the system will revert back to 103Mhz BCLK.

After the cold reset I attempted to apply the saved 107Mhz profile and windows froze. I then tried the same settings directly in the BIOS and the system froze. Somewhat perplexed, I discovered the only way to get the previous 107Mhz settings to run was to run an auto tune from windows again and then apply the 107 BCLK settings. Once again the system runs very well and stably at just over 2.8Ghz. This is somewhat annoying as I have to do this each time the system is powered off if I want to use the higher settings.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on? From everything I have read, I should not be able to run a 107Mhz BCLK on this system anyway. So, why does it appear to work and why does it only work after an autotune has been run from TurboV?

 

[ssjwizard]

My guess would be that the higher PCI-E clock is causing something(GPU probably) from failing to POST properly. However after the system comes up once your gear is initialized it might be a bit more tolerant of the bus being out of spec.

 

[xsuperbgx]

That is a pretty good overclock as far as bclk is concerned.
If you are interested in submitting results to hwbot or just comparing some overclock results: http://hwbot.org/hardware/processor/pentium_g620/
I have benched a couple of these cheapies: g840 and G440, but I have never used them for more than benching, so I can't really say how to solve your problem.
But I would suspect that it is not 100% stable at that speed. Sometimes getting into windows is more stressful on the cpu than running the benches.

 

[Mantis41]

@xsuperbgx, I will try that web site and see if I can upload some scores.

I have included a screen shot of the last 3D Run in the spoiler. I am not sure if the link will work.
http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3231753

Spoiler

I might see if the CPU will go a little higher.

I am still weirded out that it will not over clock to this extent without first running the autotune after every re-boot.

 

[EarthDog]

The bclk/FSB on Sandybridge you cannot push like past generations. Less than 110, usually 107 or so is the limit.

 

[Bobnova]

I have yet to make it over 106, personally.
I've seen with my own eyes 108.xx.
I think the record is 111?

 

[Mantis41]

Yep! 107Mhz appears to be max for me. Anything else freezes.