From i920 to 2600K

[DescendDescend 25]

Hi AllJust built a 2600K machine. It was forced on me (so I told the wife) because my son's machine (an old Core 2 Duo PC) was being un co-operative. As a consequence he inherited my old X58/i920 machine with 4Gb of RAM.The new build was quite easy. On my old machine, after uninstalling as many X58 chipset devices as possible in Device Manager I shut it down and removed the SSD (which has windows 7 and FSX on it). Having read the reviews on coolers I settled on the Thermalright Archon. I also replaced my GTX285 with a GTX580. I transferred the CORSAIR XMS memory from the X58 machine (with the voltage lowered to 1.5V at the moment to minimise the risk to the 2600K. It now runs at 1333). Next I attached the SSD to the new PC. It booted into Windows straight away after setting bios optimised defaults and, after installing the latest drivers from Asus and updating to the latest beta bios, here are some results.With respect to FSX the (fairly subjective) results (on my standard test flight; PMDG 747 in VC, UK2000 Gatwick Approach, Ultimate Traffic 2, GEX, UTX, REX and using an unchanged FSX.cfg) at stock speed it performs similarly or slightly better than my over-clocked (3.78Ghz,12Gb RAM) i7 920. It was noticeably smoother, probably due to the GTX580. Frame rates mid 20's dipping to around 13-15 occasionally. The i7 used to dip into the teens for prolonged periods. With a comfortable over-clock of 4.6 Ghz, frame rates are now in the low 30's to high 20's and hardly ever going below 20. Taxying at Gatwick would have been around 15 and is now in the low 20's.All of the above on the analogue TH2GO at 3840x1024x32. CPU Volts = 1.35 which is the maximum I am prepared to risk at the moment. Note that you would almost certainly will have to reactivate Windows, Office, FSX etc if you follow this process.Running Prime 95 Torture test at 4.6 Ghz gives a temperature of 60C with full hyperthreading, something I never achieved on the i7 at 4Ghz.The usual disclaimers apply.

[simon747 185]

Nice post, similar process to what I am going to do. Results are inline with what I predicted. I am happy I finally get windows 7 64 from vista 64 too, if it makes any difference :Drooling: Keep us posted who she blows at 4.6 over the next couple of weeks to reduce these burn out rumors!!

[dazz 69]

Is that 1.34 Vcore the minumum you can run your SB at 4.6GHz or do you think you can still get it stable at a lower Vcore?

[jackcnd 0]

Thanks.Does sleep work correctly when overclocked, it never did on my evga x58 ?What did you change in the bios just the multiplier and cpu and ram voltage ?Any comment on micro stutters in FSX vs the old setup?

[simon747 185]

Interesting you did not have have to fresh install windows with the new mb, chip set, and cpu? I guess technology is getting better in that respect; is your ram now running in single or dual mode if it triple channel from an x58 chipset? May not make a noticebale difference if we are just talking visable fps in fsx..

[DescendDescend 25]

Is that 1.34 Vcore the minumum you can run your SB at 4.6GHz or do you think you can still get it stable at a lower Vcore?

I probably could force it lower and may try soon. That voltage is being set automatically and not by me at present. Not sure if another couple of hundred Ghz is worth it although 5Ghz looks awfully tempting.

[DescendDescend 25]

Interesting you did not have have to fresh install windows with the new mb, chip set, and cpu? I guess technology is getting better in that respect; is your ram now running in single or dual mode if it triple channel from an x58 chipset? May not make a noticebale difference if we are just talking visable fps in fsx..

It not the first time I have avoided a fresh install of everything.Dual channel mode. The effect of the slower RAM relative to the overclock is small in my view. I will eventually tweak it up a bit but I dont think it will run at 1600 with less than 1.65 volts which may be a bit too high.

Thanks.Does sleep work correctly when overclocked, it never did on my evga x58 ?What did you change in the bios just the multiplier and cpu and ram voltage ?Any comment on micro stutters in FSX vs the old setup?

Not sure about sleep yet. Will let you know. It was troublesome on the i7.Only the multiplier and RAM plus PLL setting.No microstutters but still get occasional short pauses. More FSX tweaking needed

[Guest freebird77]

"It was noticeably smoother, probably due to the GTX580"Why not do apples to apples and put your old card back in?

[David Roch 1,983]

"It was noticeably smoother, probably due to the GTX580"Why not do apples to apples and put your old card back in?

Yeap!

[UlfB 7]

"It was noticeably smoother, probably due to the GTX580"Why not do apples to apples and put your old card back in?

+1 :Praying:

[SpiritFlyer 987]

"It was noticeably smoother, probably due to the GTX580"Why not do apples to apples and put your old card back in?

Please! Most important to get as accurate and direct a comparison as possible.Kind regards,

[DescendDescend 25]

"It was noticeably smoother, probably due to the GTX580"Why not do apples to apples and put your old card back in?

Because it is on my sons PC which I would need to dismantle and I would also have to dismantle mine. However a large cheque made payable to.......

[Guest chris493]

Swapping a graphics card should only take 1 or 2 minutes. I don't see how you would have to dismantle your system.

[David Roch 1,983]

Because it is on my sons PC which I would need to dismantle and I would also have to dismantle mine. However a large cheque made payable to.......

I can manage a Paypal button on your account and we do fifty-fifty!!

[Tabs 2,790]

Regarding voltage - please do be careful, the SB chips have LOWER max voltages than the older i7s. There's a lot of people on the overclocking sites destroying their chips in the first few days here by thinking they could just crank it up to the old values from their 920s and 860s.Here's the quote from a guy who runs an enthusiast PC shop in Europe about it:

"myself and our technical guys have spent the entire weekend and this morning in discussions with Intel regarding the alarming amount of reports of Sandybridge CPU's dying and have been conducting our own testing as have Intel to find out what is a definite no no.Sandybridge maximum safe voltagesCore Voltage - Not recommended to exceed 1.38v, doing so could kill the CPU, we therefor recommend a range of 1.325-1.350v if overclocking.Memory Voltage - Intel recommend 1.50v plus/minus 5% which means upto 1.58v is the safe recommended limit. In our testing we have found 1.65v has caused no issues.BCLK Base Clock - This is strictly a NO, anyone using base clock overclocking could/will cause damange to CPU/Mainboard. (Set manually to 100)PLL Voltage - Do not exceed 1.9v!!Processor - Basically we recommend customers not to exceed 1.35v to play it safe, all our bundles are set at 1.3250v or lower, any competitors offering bundles above 4.6GHz you should be enquiring as to what voltage they are using as we believe anything over 1.38v will limit CPU lifespan and anything over 1.42v will likely kill the CPU or severely limit its lifespan.Memory - Intel recommend 1.50v plus/minus 5% which means 1.60v is the ideal safe maximum, but we have found in our testing all 1.65v memory is fine. We have also found most new 1.65v like Corsair XMS3 will run at its rated timings with just 1.50-1.55v which is well within Intel specifications. So people upgrading to Sandybridge you can still use your old DDR3, but we do recommend you run it at 1.60v or less. We are shipping most of our bundles which feature Corsair XMS at 1.50v-1.55v at rated timings. We've also discussed with Asus and MSI regarding voltages for memory and they also confirm in their testing 1.65v caused no issues with reliability.Base Clock - To put it simple if you value the life of your components, do not overclock using base clock!PLL Voltage - Again do not exceed 1.9v!"

You could do 1.4+ on the vcore and 1.65+ on the memory on the older chips and it was safe - not the case here.