Ivy Bridge hits the streets--post your results here

[Ben Cap 89]

I was surprised by the measurable performance difference with faster RAM as well, Ben. Now I'm on to PCI-e 2 vs. 3 testing.

 

:Nerd: :Nerd: :Nerd: :Nerd:

[Evan Banalian 5]

As far as FSX goes, is there any ,kind of improvement having PCI-3 compared to earlier CPU's ? FPS, stutter, very dens areas, over the water, HD clouds... etc ... ?

 

Thanks for the early results.

 

Evan Bananlian.

[dazz 69]

As far as FSX goes, is there any ,kind of improvement having PCI-3 compared to earlier CPU's ? FPS, stutter, very dens areas, over the water, HD clouds... etc ... ?

 

Thanks for the early results.

 

Evan Bananlian.

 

 

That's one of the main reasons why we're here waiting for Tech's results Evan. Welcome to Nerd Town

[TechguyMaxC 516]

Bad news, PCI-e 2 testing is not possible without swapping to a Sandy Bridge CPU. The PCI-e controller is on the CPU and cannot be forced from gen 3 to gen 2 by the UEFI. :( All I can do is give you guys best possible scores and you can compare to current Sandy Bridge systems. Unless someone has a spare 2600K or 2700K laying around and wants to ship it to me for testing I could do that.

[dazz 69]

Bad news, PCI-e 2 testing is not possible without swapping to a Sandy Bridge CPU. The PCI-e controller is on the CPU and cannot be forced from gen 3 to gen 2 by the UEFI. All I can do is give you guys best possible scores and you can compare to current Sandy Bridge systems. Unless someone has a spare 2600K or 2700K laying around and wants to ship it to me for testing I could do that.

 

 

No worries man. This is all very much appreciated.

Can you please confirm GPU-Z reports PCI 3.0 is in operation?

 

if you have a second GPU laying around yo can force the 1st PCIe slot to 8x and test 2.0 speeds.

You can also tape some pins in the GTX680 connector to downgrade it to PCIe 2.0, but I don't think that's worth the hassle

[TechguyMaxC 516]

I have confirmed the GPU is running at x16 PCI-e 3 speed via GPU-z. The only other card I have handy is an 8800 GTS 512 that's been volt-modded and had its BIOS flashed to much higher speeds than it can handle, it's basically worthless now. I actually had it in this system for a couple days until I got sick of the Nvidia driver crashes and pulled it out. Couldn't even handle severely underclocked speeds by the end.

 

Continuing to push Vcore down, only at +.07V offset now, quite impressive actually, at least compared to the +.11 it needs w/HT.

 

Looks like 4.7GHz is the usable limit on my Ivy sample, that's with or without HT. I could tweak a lot more and maybe bump BCLK up 1-2MHz for another 1-2% overclock but I think I'll be happy with 4.7GHz for now. At least temps and voltage come way down without HT so it's not too bad. If Intel ever fixed the thermal paste problem there really wouldn't be any question over SB vs. IB.

[dazz 69]

I have confirmed the GPU is running at x16 PCI-e 3 speed via GPU-z. The only other card I have handy is an 8800 GTS 512 that's been volt-modded and had its BIOS flashed to much higher speeds than it can handle, it's basically worthless now. I actually had it in this system for a couple days until I got sick of the Nvidia driver crashes and pulled it out. Couldn't even handle severely underclocked speeds by the end.

 

Continuing to push Vcore down, only at +.07V offset now, quite impressive actually, at least compared to the +.11 it needs w/HT.

 

Well, if you can plug it in and the system is stable, that should be enough to have the first slot at 2.0 speeds for test purposes. Your call, of course.

Do you notice improved smoothness or faster texture loading with PCIe 3.0?

[TechguyMaxC 516]

Hard to say, my previous system was a Core 2 Quad 9550 @ 4GHz with an OC'd GTX 570. Subjectively, the answer is undoubtedly yes. I can't quantify it though.

[Evan Banalian 5]

what is your temp running prim95 and FSX under load ?

 

Thanks.

 

Evan

[Kosta 122]

Why don't you make a FSXMark11 run on that 4.7 machine?

 

 

I am just wondering how long is it going to take for someone from here to get a chip, pop up the hood, put in some crazy coolant like that japanese site and run it cool!

[dazz 69]

Why don't you make a FSXMark11 run on that 4.7 machine?

 

Sorry, was typing up a response and had a BSOD because I still had C3 and C6 enabled. Things look solid now! Temps under IBT load testing will cause thermal throttling to kick in, as 105 degrees is reached on occasion. During OCCT testing this gets up to about 92. FSX hits 82 on the hottest core at 4.7GHz during an extended FSXMark 11 run, the other cores peak between 76 and 81. Initial FPS results:

 

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

14218, 300000, 27, 66, 47

 

Keep in mind this is with no GPU overclocking at all. That is next. I expect results to be near identical to those of 5+ GHz Sandy Bridge systems. I can say with full confidence that the sim is very smooth and pleasing to the eye. I will start GPU overclocking and post results as soon as I have them.

 

Quick question: for the purposes of FSXMark 11 testing, what Affinity Mask is to be used for a 4c/8t CPU? Mine is set to 84 currently, which equates to using all 8 threads if I'm not mistaken. Isn't that less than optimal for FSX? HT is enabled, btw.

 

[Anxu00 176]

So short of someone who already has a SB system moving to IB, we won't know :Money Eyes: Raw FPS as reflected by FSXMark11 showed that there is no advantage to move up. However, the smoothness factor is what counts, right? On that regard, the newer driver from Nvidia that would give the same adaptive Vsync to GTX 500 system seems to have done the tricks, with a lot less heat.

[Kosta 122]

Ah, thanks Dario, seemingly missed that.

[Manny 1,293]

So whats the verdict for someone with a Core 2 Duo relic.

 

Do I go i7 2700K or the i7 3770k.

 

:)

 

I am still not sure

 

Manny

[Ben Cap 89]

So whats the verdict for someone with a Core 2 Duo relic.

 

Do I go i7 2700K or the i7 3770k.

 

:)

 

I am still not sure

 

Manny

 

If you want great OC'ing get the 2700K.

 

But, if you are willing to get less OC'ng but really good memory performance get IB.