David you like this.5.2Ghz i7 2600K Overclock on ASUS Maximus IV Extreme P67 1155

Thanks Mo :--)Very impressive indeed! <_<

Newegg.com’s Return Policies.http://www.newegg.com/HelpInfo/ReturnPolicy.aspx

Very impressive! Did he use 1.5 core voltage? I think that is what he said. Is that permissable?Kind regards,

Hi Stephen, I feel your pain, I just finished building my system and she wouldn't even post. I spent the better half of yesterday troubleshooting with negative results. I rma'd the board back to Newegg, and they are going to replace it.I hope you have better luck than I. My board was an Asus P8P67-M Pro. It happens, I've had good luck with Newegg, it will get taken care of. On another note, I've used MSI boards for the last 5-10yrs and haven't had any issues with them, they were rock solid. I've always heard good things about Asus and thought I'd try them, as I only had 2 options for a Micro Atx P67 board. I wish you luck with round 2, hang in there!!! Matt

Hi,I don't post too much, mostly read to see what's happening in the FS world. I've been following all the posts regarding the new Sandybridge CPU's and got suckered into changeing my PC which, to be honest, ran FSX really well. It was an i7 965 EE @ 4GHz which I bought 2 years ago when they were released. I have spent maybe close to £1000 on FSX scenery / aircraft and my current install is 150Gb. The most demanding place for smoothness on my setup is approaching Uk2000 Heathrow Xtreme in an Aerosoft 747, flying over Horizon UK VFR Photoscenery, Aerosoft London, all the other UK2000 airports in close proximity and UT2 at 50%. After applying all the tweaks, mainly from Bojote, my FPS averaged around 17 but it was a bit 'choppy' owing to fluctuations when the FPS dipped to around 12. In other less demanding areas FSX ran smoothly and I was quite happy - until Sandybridge. I was going to wait until Stephen built his new PC and make an informed decision based on his testing before taking the plunge but my son was at school, wife at work and I'm off all week on Leave!I jumped into the car and drove 100 miles up the motorway to Overclockers UK.I decided on a 2600K as rightly or wrongly I considered it would allow for a higher Overclock. For the MB I decided on an Asus P8P67 after reading a really good review in CustomPC Magazine. When I was in the shop, a guy came in returning a P8P67 Pro version claiming it wouldn't boot and that internet forums were full of complaints regarding that model. He wanted to swap for an MSI. I've never had any issues with Asus so I stuck with the P8P67. I was going to buy 2 x 4Gb modules of Corsair Vengeance RAM @ 1600 MHz 8,8,8,24 however the sales person advised me that I would be more likely to achieve a higher overclock if I only used 4 Gb RAM, 2 x 2Gb modules. I queried this however the shop does specialise in selling overclocked systems and he assured me that they had more success using 2 x 2 Gb rather than 2 x 4Gb. It was going to save me money so I went for 2 x 2Gb of the lowest latency 1600 MHz RAM they had which was G-Skill RipJawX 6,8,6,24. Finally I needed a heatsink. I read that the Sandybridge CPU's dont't generate as much heat as their predecessors so I opted for a Corsair A50 which is alot smaller than the Thermalright cooler in my existing PC. The other reason for this was concerns over the clearance for the RAM heatsinks as the RAM slots are quite close to the CPU socket. So I put the stuff into the car hoping that the CPU was not a duffer. I even checked the CPU's batch number on an OC database via my iPhone to see if it was listed but it wasn't.Back home and deauthorised various accounts and games on my old PC before taking it apart. It wasn't too dusty as I cleaned it a few months ago when installing an SSD and 580GTX. The case is an Antec 1200. Built up the new Mb first using the heatsink compound supplied with the Corsair A50. It recommends in the Asus manual that the RAM goes into slots 2 and 4 rather than 1 and 3 which are closer to the CPU so there was a good 1/2 inch clearance between the cooler and the RAM. Maybe a bigger cooler would fit if necessary. Installed the mb assembly into the case and connected the HD's. 120Gb OCZ Vertex 2 SSD for OS and 300 Gb Velociraptor for FSX to SATA 6Gb/s (backwards compatible) 2 1Tb Samsung F3's and DVD to SATA 3Gb/s for games and backup. Finally I installed the GTX 580 and Soundblaster Titanium, checked all the connections and closed the case. Took about an hour. I powered the system up and it actually worked! At this stage I didn't care about any overclocking, I was just happy it seemed to be working and I entered the Bios. I set up the boot drive first, turned off all the stuff I didn't need like onboard sound etc and let it boot into windows 7. Amazingly W7 started without any fuss. I normally start with formatted HD's and reinstall everything but I thought I'd see what would happen doing it this way. It would certainly save alot of time if it worked. I installed a few drivers from the Asus DVD, rebooted, connected to the Internet and W7 automatically updated more drivers. W7 then flashed up a warning that I would have to reactivate this installation as the hardware in the PC had changed however I decided to leave it until I was sure I wouldn't have to start from scratch with a clean install. I downloaded a bios update from ASUS which was supposed to solve a few issues with the new mb and updated the bios. I then printed off an overclocking guide which I found after a google search, www.clunk.org.uk/reviews/sandy-bridge-overclocking-guide-for-beginners.html. There are loads of guides but this one worked for me. I followed the guide and ended up at 4.6GHz with a Vcore of 1.30 and RAM as per it's specs with Hyperthreading off. It did take a long time to reach this level as I overclocked it in stages, testing each overclock using Prime95 for an hour and adjusting the Vcore as necessary to make sure eveything was stable. An article in the forums at Overclockers.uk states that the maximum safe Vcore on these CPU's is 1.35v for continuous use. Once I reached 4.6GHz I was happy enough and the CPU temperature during Prime95 stayed between 55 - 60 C as opposed to 25 -30 when idle so the Corsair A50 cooler was good enough. I then ran Prime95 overnight without any faults so the overclock is as stable as I need it to be.The whole point of upgrading was to make FSX and DCS A10 run better. After reading loads of reviews, none of them mention any flight sims, it seemed that the new i7 CPU's were about 10% faster clock for clock than the old i7's. This coupled with the higher clock speed should give a good boost in performance to CPU limited games. Well I tried Super_pi_mod first and it calculated to 32M in 7m 51.480s. I started FSX and had to reactivate Acceleration (FSX is OK so far) as well as some essellerate addons. After that, FSX was loaded before UT2 initialised, around 10 seconds. I went to Heathrow and loaded up the 747 for a flight. On runway 9L I was getting 17 - 18 FPS, I'm now getting 22- 23 FPS. I took off and flew around London and it was very clear that the whole flying simulation was alot smoother. The FPS still fluctuate but at a higher level so I am now getting fluid movement like X-Plane rather than a slight stuttering. There's no point giving you my FSX settings (there's always someone with an older PC who gets twice your performance with the same settings) but they're not on maximum yet. There is still the occassional momentary pause or hiccup as scenery is loaded from the HD but overall I am very very pleased with the result. I have found that all the CPU intensive games I use such as Arma 2 and DCS A10 / Blackshark and Flaming Cliffs 2 run visibly faster. I now have an i7 965EE for sale!Sorry for rambling on for so long but I thought I would just pass you my Sandy Bridge experiences. Hope the wife doesn't read this, she just thought I was cleaning the computer! Good luck Stephen when you finally get all your bits.Terry

Stephen,I'm sorry to hear that you're having problems with your MSI board.I have always purchased from Newegg and I have never had a problem with a return or an exchange.Best of luck my friend.Jose

I decided on a 2600K as rightly or wrongly I considered it would allow for a higher Overclock. For the MB I decided on an Asus P8P67 after reading a really good review in CustomPC Magazine. When I was in the shop, a guy came in returning a P8P67 Pro version claiming it wouldn't boot and that internet forums were full of complaints regarding that model. He wanted to swap for an MSI... ...There is still the occassional momentary pause or hiccup as scenery is loaded from the HD but overall I am very very pleased with the result. I have found that all the CPU intensive games I use such as Arma 2 and DCS A10 / Blackshark and Flaming Cliffs 2 run visibly faster. I now have an i7 965EE for sale!Sorry for rambling on for so long but I thought I would just pass you my Sandy Bridge experiences. Hope the wife doesn't read this, she just thought I was cleaning the computer! Good luck Stephen when you finally get all your bits.Terry

Terry,What a shot in the arm your reported results are! I was sitting here trying to read a book (biography) and feeling sorry for myself and wondering if it would even be worth it to bother swapping out. After all, I had a great FSX machine. Thank you for the encouragement for us all! Great news!Kind regards,

Not sure if I asked this before, but would be cool if you guys tested FSX at the same clocks your former CPU was running at, to have an idea of FSX clock for clock performance and also how SB scales with the multiplier overclock

Not sure if I asked this before, but would be cool if you guys tested FSX at the same clocks your former CPU was running at, to have an idea of FSX clock for clock performance and also how SB scales with the multiplier overclock

Hi Dazz,I can report that the 2600K at default (3.8 GHz Turbo Mode) is noticeably faster (but not by much) than the i7 965EE @ 4Ghz in FSX so any overclock on the 2600K is a bonus. As you know, it's really hard to give exact numbers because every flight is different however I did record FPS during a 1 min takeoff at Heathrow using FRAPS on the old system and replicated it on the new system to compare results. It's not an exact science but it does represent what I'm seeing on the screen. This is (1)i7 965 @ 4GHz v (2)i7 2600K @ 4.6GHzFrames Time (ms) Min Max Avg(1)1069 60000 7 24 17.817(2)1403 60000 10 29 23.383The low FPS were slight stutters in both machines at various points as scenery loaded but most of the time things were smooth.On another matter, I reinstalled all my DCS Combat sims to the SSD the OS occupies (from a 1 TB Samsung) That made a big difference with regard to slight stuttering at certain points during missions. The whole thing is as smooth a silk now so I'm going to have to consider a 256Gb SSD for FSX and DCS, when the prices come down.Terry

Terry,Thanks for sharing with us. I'm really glad to hear that the upgrade from 1366 to 1155 was so beneficial for you! I finally got my PMDG 747 installed today and while futzing around I was amazed to see that instant replay was not full of stutters like it was with my Q9550 - it's freaking smooth! I'm still tweaking tileproxy and I still need to get all my liveries and 3rd party sounds worked into my PMDG 747. I'm really liking what I see so far though tileproxy is ticking me off a bit. Things are sharp at first but then sometimes when I change views everything goes blurry. Anybody have a solid ProxyUser file they wouldn't mind sharing?CoreyI'm thinking when some of us get fully up and running, we'll have to have a fly off using replicated flights with some of you i7-9xx users. A fully auto-piloted landing at the same runway in the PMDG 747, for example, may be a good way to replicate the flying experience. Then it's just a matter of having the same settings so that we end up with an apples-to-apples comparison. I'm willing to temporarily drop my clock speed for a clock-to-clock comparison as well.

Hi Dazz,I can report that the 2600K at default (3.8 GHz Turbo Mode) is noticeably faster (but not by much) than the i7 965EE @ 4Ghz in FSX so any overclock on the 2600K is a bonus. As you know, it's really hard to give exact numbers because every flight is different however I did record FPS during a 1 min takeoff at Heathrow using FRAPS on the old system and replicated it on the new system to compare results. It's not an exact science but it does represent what I'm seeing on the screen. This is (1)i7 965 @ 4GHz v (2)i7 2600K @ 4.6GHzFrames Time (ms) Min Max Avg(1)1069 60000 7 24 17.817(2)1403 60000 10 29 23.383The low FPS were slight stutters in both machines at various points as scenery loaded but most of the time things were smooth.On another matter, I reinstalled all my DCS Combat sims to the SSD the OS occupies (from a 1 TB Samsung) That made a big difference with regard to slight stuttering at certain points during missions. The whole thing is as smooth a silk now so I'm going to have to consider a 256Gb SSD for FSX and DCS, when the prices come down.Terry

Thanks Terry. Your results are even better than what I thought they would be. Really nice, thanks for sharing

Terry,Thanks for sharing with us. I'm really glad to hear that the upgrade from 1366 to 1155 was so beneficial for you! I finally got my PMDG 747 installed today and while futzing around I was amazed to see that instant replay was not full of stutters like it was with my Q9550 - it's freaking smooth! I'm still tweaking tileproxy and I still need to get all my liveries and 3rd party sounds worked into my PMDG 747. I'm really liking what I see so far though tileproxy is ticking me off a bit. Things are sharp at first but then sometimes when I change views everything goes blurry. Anybody have a solid ProxyUser file they wouldn't mind sharing?CoreyI'm thinking when some of us get fully up and running, we'll have to have a fly off using replicated flights with some of you i7-9xx users. A fully auto-piloted landing at the same runway in the PMDG 747, for example, may be a good way to replicate the flying experience. Then it's just a matter of having the same settings so that we end up with an apples-to-apples comparison. I'm willing to temporarily drop my clock speed for a clock-to-clock comparison as well.

I prepared one some time ago: http://www.divshare.com/download/13049680-426PMDG 747 @ Heathrow

Thanks Dazz. I'll have to check your's out and see how it compares. I just found my old file on my old hard drive. I'm going to go ahead and declare that hyperthreading and tileproxy do not play well together. At least that's my conclusion after 4hrs+ of messing with it today alone. With HT on, the sim was quite jittery regardless if I had frames limited or set to unlimited. Things are much smoother with HT off. I made sure to delete existing cached scenery before each trial.I'm still outflying my crisp textures with tileproxy, but that's been the case regardless of whether HT was on or off. I'm much more enthusiastic now as I finally see progress!EDIT: On second thought, and no offence Dazz, I don't think I'll be downloading your file as that page looks a little sketch. This is a complete aside to the conversation at hand, but you guys need to find a more legitimate way to share files other than uploading them to some popup-riddled sketchy website. People do this all the time. May I recommend dropbox, for example? I won't even leave a referral link - just go to dropbox.com and view the features and sign yourself up. You start off with 2GB for free but you can get more through referrals. I'm at 10GB! You can put files in a public folder, right click them from the windows explorer, and get a public download link to share with anybody you want. For example, I'll share all my PMDG 747 thumbnails. Try it out.Download: PMDG 747-400X thumbnails Just save it to your desktop and extract it. It's that easy. You didn't have to go to some website and close all the pop ups and worry if the download button your clicking is to the file you want or if it's some sort of bait and switch virus download. The link is directly to the download. The cool part is I didn't even have to go to the dropbox website and upload that file. I just dragged and dropped it into my dropbox public folder in windows. You can even host a webpage from the public folder. For example, I'm often asked by cyclists visiting Austin where's a good place to ride - so I made up this web page of maps with all my favorite loops in the West Austin area.Again, no offence to you Dazz, I know I come off very blunt - but this knowledge is usually received quite enthusiastically by people who weren't aware of it before.

I didn't take offence of course, and appreciate the advice. Actually I could upload it to the Avsim library itselfYou are completely right, those sites really suck so I apologise for that. About dropbox, sounds great, I'll give it a goEDIT: I just created an account in dropbox... just to realise that I could have referred you :( is there anyway I can still do that? maybe I can just delete it and start from scratch?

Edited January 23, 201115 yr by dazz

I didn't take offence of course, and appreciate the advice. Actually I could upload it to the Avsim library itselfYou are completely right, those sites really suck so I apologise for that. About dropbox, sounds great, I'll give it a goEDIT: I just created an account in dropbox... just to realise that I could have referred you :( is there anyway I can still do that? maybe I can just delete it and start from scratch?

Don't worry about it I have 10GB and I use about 4 or 5GB of it. You could leave your referral link so that you get credit from others who join! Actually, I just remembered that people who join via referral link also get 250MB extra space right away! Let us know how you like it. If you have multiple computers, install it on both and witness file synchronization at it's best! Here's my setup - I use windows live mesh to sync "my photos", "my videos", "my music", and my internet explorer favorites between my desktop and laptop. I can sync up to 25GB with windows live mesh. The only bad thing about windows live mesh is that it doesn't sync files up to the cloud - so I'm pretty sure both computers have to be on at the same time at some point for files to sync. I use dropbox to store all my most active files, school files, research files, etc. This way going from my desktop to my laptop is like using the same computer... except my laptop would balk at the thought of playing FSX.Windows live mesh also allows for easy remote desktop. I can actually play FSX on my desktop at home from my laptop at school . BUT, the framerates are terrible and I don't think joystick commands will make it to the desktop. But it's a fun idea for the future when technology improves.

Ok, here it is: http://dl.dropbox.co...AroundBench.zipI love it cmeeks, really. I'm still figuring out the features but it's really cool. Thanks again. It's not too expensive to upgrade also.

Edited January 23, 201115 yr by dazz

Perfect - you got it! Yeah, if you upgrade then windows live mesh wouldn't even be necessary. I'm just cheap. And you're right, for what the program does, the prices are actually very reasonable. By the way, if you're a student you get double referral credit, so 500MB for every person you get to join.