1366 x58 Xeon Enthusiast overclocks club

There is a very good reason the ROG motherboards don't have this feature and I mentioned it here

Because someone can can accidentally set it to high?

That's rubbish

I mean, it's cool if u don't want to use the feature but the fact you set it to +.2 and left it, that is all on you. Every voltage setting in your bios is a liability if your not careful. This was not a fault of the feature but a result of changing settings in the bios and not being careful enough. This is probably not a setting you want to be using when u are still trying to find your stable clocks and voltages. This is a feature you would use after you find the speeds and voltages you want to run. Along with all the other power savings options, turn them off while you are learning your chip boundaries.

I am not saying you should use it, some say it doesn't make a lot of difference. I have a killawatt and intend on finding out exactly how much or if there is any power savings at all. Logic tells me that lowing voltage will have meaningful power savings results. There surely is a reason that intel, AMD, nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung, via, IBM, and every other chip maker has voltage reduction in their low power states. But I am not here to argue. Just saying.

Also I dont think you ever come close to killing your chip booting into windows at 1.5v. There are a lot of people who have used 1.5v on both gulftown and westmere. Some argue it is safe as long as your cooling is appropriate. I personally wouldn't recommend running that much vcore for daily use, heck I am not even comfortable with it that high at all. I dont want my CPU with such high vcore.

But you know what, I have booted to find my vcore all the way up to 1.5v as well. But guess why, it had nothing to do with dynamic voltage. I was trying to find my blck limit. With my CPU multiplier all the way down, I had my blck 220 and was stressing to find my vcore at 1.5v. The culprit? Simply leaving my voltages at auto instead of normal. I had no idea my vcore was so high and was running ibt. The voltage caught my eye watching my temps in HWmonitor. What is crazy still, my temps were not thru the roof. I guess it was the low CPU speed.

So, now. Do you think gigabyte removed their auto voltage because something like this could happen? No way.
Anytime you overclock, it is at your own risk. You have to be careful and mindful of your settings. I had no idea my mother board would jack up my vcore in auto just because I had a high blck. I assumed the overall CPU speed is what mattered. It was my own ignorance. See, everyone should know auto voltage is to be avoided when overclocking....especially when overclocking high. With my multiplier set low, I assumed the low overall clock speed wouldnt cause my voltages to sky rocket if i left them on auto. I was wrong, And whether it was a bios quark or not, i just will always remember to watch out for that kind of thing. See, if your working your clocks up like your supposed to.....you know, taking your time......then there will be a slow trending that one can notice far in advance. Much before your at 1.5vcore. I was in a hurry and jumping thru to the end without paying much attention. And thats how these things happen.

I don't recommend anyone use auto voltages when trying to find their chip's speed and voltage limits. I also don't recommend using dynamic voltage when your still experimenting with multipliers and blck. It's just another variable and too many elements at play. But once you have dialed in your desired clock speeds, and you choose to use power savings features as well. Having voltages dynamically shift with clock speed is not dangerous and it is easily applied. Of course you might have to do some simple math.

But there is nothing wrong with dynamic voltage as a feature. You just have to be mindful of what your doing. That's with all things when you overclock, not just dynamic voltage control.

I am not advocating anyone use it, it just doesn't matter to me what you do. But I personally find it a neat feature. I enjoy knowing my chip is running more like its a stock 4.2ghz chip than overclocked. I also don't use it or any power savings when I am running my max overclocks, and that is my choice as well. But for my daily driver speeds, I love having this feature.

To each there own, it's cool u choose not to use it. But it is absolutely not this terrible thing, you just have to pay attention to what your doing in the environment your working in. I haven't used an asus x58, but I find dynamic voltage control something I really enjoy on my "budget" gigabyte UD3R
 
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Who the hell buy's Xeon to overclock anyway? These processor's are expensive, designed for servers, and not intended for overclocking. Who the hell even has the money to blow on these processors to even do such a wasteful thing?

Just curious why you would post that in this thread when this WHOLE entire thread proves you wrong? I mean thats like going into a mosh pit at a concert and saying the band sucks!
 
Okay, I'm a bit frustrated here... I got my x5670 in on Friday, and just tried to drop it in on the first rig in the signature (Asus P6T Deluxe V2 mobo for reference) - and nothing. I tried the standard removing all but 1 stick of RAM, remove CMOS battery, etc, and all it would do for me was power up for ~1 second then shut down. All fans would spin, power & HD lights would flash, but nothing more. Pulled the x5670 and dropped the 950 back in, and it fired right up. 10 seconds in the BIOS resetting the date and reloading my OC settings, and I'm right back here running 3.8 at 34*C at idle... Any suggestions for something I might have missed? I'm using the 1108 BIOS - didn't update to the 1202, as it looked like the only thing it did was fix a keyboard issue... Does it also sneak in Xeon support? I'm about ready to send this back and pay the $10 restock fee rather than fight with this much more, but like often happens, I'm hoping one of you might see something stupid I overlooked in the process and while reading this thread...
 
I have the Asus P6T deluxe v2 you have to update the bios to the newest one.
Then put the new chip in, pull the plug from the wall and push the start button to discharge the caps.
Reset the bios and it will work.
I am running a x5660 and I had a x5650 and they do woek real well on that board.
 
Okay, I'm a bit frustrated here... I got my x5670 in on Friday, and just tried to drop it in on the first rig in the signature (Asus P6T Deluxe V2 mobo for reference) - and nothing. I tried the standard removing all but 1 stick of RAM, remove CMOS battery, etc, and all it would do for me was power up for ~1 second then shut down. All fans would spin, power & HD lights would flash, but nothing more. Pulled the x5670 and dropped the 950 back in, and it fired right up. 10 seconds in the BIOS resetting the date and reloading my OC settings, and I'm right back here running 3.8 at 34*C at idle... Any suggestions for something I might have missed? I'm using the 1108 BIOS - didn't update to the 1202, as it looked like the only thing it did was fix a keyboard issue... Does it also sneak in Xeon support? I'm about ready to send this back and pay the $10 restock fee rather than fight with this much more, but like often happens, I'm hoping one of you might see something stupid I overlooked in the process and while reading this thread...

Yes you HAVE to have the latest bios. Then reset your settings. Then try out the Xeon. THEN if it still doesn't work after all the trouble shooting you could have a bad chip.
 
Okay, sounds good, thanks guys - I'll give it a go in the morning. Figures that they'd stick something like that in the newest BIOS but not say it on their webpage!

FWIW, I also got a GTX680 from the forums that doesn't want to work, either... Been a long night...
 
I have the Asus P6T deluxe v2 you have to update the bios to the newest one.
Then put the new chip in, pull the plug from the wall and push the start button to discharge the caps.
Reset the bios and it will work.
I am running a x5660 and I had a x5650 and they do woek real well on that board.
Have you found a way to get the 22x multiplier working? I have the same motherboard and it won't stay at 22x for more than about 10 seconds without throttling down to 20x, despite using sensible voltages (~1.25 V) and low temperatures (55-65 °C).
 
Have you found a way to get the 22x multiplier working? I have the same motherboard and it won't stay at 22x for more than about 10 seconds without throttling down to 20x, despite using sensible voltages (~1.25 V) and low temperatures (55-65 °C).

My vanilla P6T does the same thing. It will only lock in the CPU's base multiplier, not any of the "turbo" multipliers no matter what I try. I've even swapped in the Asus P6T Workstation bios chip and still nothing works. I've seen reports of a modified bios floating around but have yet to track one down.

In other words, I feel your pain, but I have no solution.
 
I know there's the "0006" BIOS version that fixes the problem but AFAIK it's based on an older BIOS version that doesn't support the Westmere-EP Xeons.
 
Bummer. Wonder if anyone has tested that xeon support? I've got a spare bio chip I could crossflash and see.
 
The original 0006 BIOS does not work with six core Core i7 or Xeon processors. I've also tried adding the 32nm processors microcode support to the 0006, but it did not work, either. I own the P6T Deluxe v1 board and it's been two months since I crossflashed it with P6T WS PRO BIOS in order to be able to lock in turbo multis under load just because my motherboard does not "like" high BLCK. You can read more on crossflashing here.
 
Who the hell buy's Xeon to overclock anyway? These processor's are expensive, designed for servers, and not intended for overclocking. Who the hell even has the money to blow on these processors to even do such a wasteful thing?

This is the dumbest post i have ever read on hard forum.......And i think everybody here would agree its true.......i had to read a few of your posts to figure out what kind of guy your are and its all there in black and white.....Do us all a favor and think about what you post cause thats just plain bullshit and terrible if not intentional misleading advice.....try to argue and im betting many will flame you for shit advice like this...People here know better and i plan to make sure your potentional customers know as well

i sold my last hexacore here in under 2 hours (for exactly what i paid for it) so don't tell me that hard ocp is not a great place to sell goods...as long as its priced accordingly....a 4 core xeon is worth maybe 40 bucks like it or not and its not even in the same category as the 6 core xeons like the x5670 series
 
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He's trying to rip people off by selling his crap 4 core Xeon E5603 chips on ebay for $200+, then gets pissed off at this thread because people are getting the better 6 core Xeon X56xx cpus for much cheaper at $100 +/-
 
This is the dumbest post i have ever read on hard forum.......And i think everybody here would agree its true.......i had to read a few of your posts to figure out what kind of guy your are and its all there in black and white.....Do us all a favor and think about what you post cause thats just plain bullshit and terrible if not intentional misleading advice.....try to argue and im betting many will flame you for shit advice like this...People here know better and i plan to make sure your potentional customers know as well

i sold my last hexacore here in under 2 hours (for exactly what i paid for it) so don't tell me that hard ocp is not a great place to sell goods...as long as its priced accordingly....a 4 core xeon is worth maybe 40 bucks like it or not and its not even in the same category as the 6 core xeons like the x5670 series

I guess he doesn't know the xeon x5650 are selling used for 70$ and the 5660-70 under 100$ U.S.$
They overclock to 4ghz with ease, up to 4.4 and higher on good boards. Most boards will run them, some better than others.
Being 32nm run cooler than the 45nm chips.
These CPUs are coming out of older servers that are most likely being upgraded..
 
Have you found a way to get the 22x multiplier working? I have the same motherboard and it won't stay at 22x for more than about 10 seconds without throttling down to 20x, despite using sensible voltages (~1.25 V) and low temperatures (55-65 °C).

With the x5660 I run 175 x 23 4ghz. Running BOINC 24/7 100% loaded
I found on WCG work units it stays at 23, on Primegrid units it throttles to 21.7.
Doesn't bother me so I just let it run.
As posted I have heard of crossflashing to the Work Station bios, but cross flashing has not worked out so well for me,
I bricked a new Radeon 800 flashed to the 850,
so for a few MHZ, I can not even tell the difference in points from my EVGA FTW3 that holds 175 x 23 no matter what I throw at it.
 
The original 0006 BIOS does not work with six core Core i7 or Xeon processors. I've also tried adding the 32nm processors microcode support to the 0006, but it did not work, either. I own the P6T Deluxe v1 board and it's been two months since I crossflashed it with P6T WS PRO BIOS in order to be able to lock in turbo multis under load just because my motherboard does not "like" high BLCK. You can read more on crossflashing here.

Holy Crap, you are my hero! I crossflashed over the the WS bios you had posted and viola, the 18x multiplier on my L5639 sticks under full load! Now to toss in the x5670 I just bought and see what it can do. I already know the board is stable at a 211 BCLK, so here's hoping for 5GHz! :D
 
Holy Crap, you are my hero! I crossflashed over the the WS bios you had posted and viola, the 18x multiplier on my L5639 sticks under full load! Now to toss in the x5670 I just bought and see what it can do. I already know the board is stable at a 211 BCLK, so here's hoping for 5GHz! :D

be very nice but very hard to accomplish......but its all about the challenge right:D
 
Holy Crap, you are my hero! I crossflashed over the the WS bios you had posted and viola, the 18x multiplier on my L5639 sticks under full load! Now to toss in the x5670 I just bought and see what it can do. I already know the board is stable at a 211 BCLK, so here's hoping for 5GHz! :D

Nice to hear it works nicely on your vanilla P6T board. 5GHz is very steep, let us know how close you can get. ;)
 
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Nice to hear it works nicely on your vanilla P6T board. 5GHz is very steep, let us know how close you can get. ;)

Yeah, 5ghz is probably never going to happen on my lowly P6T, but hey, a man can dream right!

And thanks again for the bios flash guide. The only thing that's a little weird with it is that the "High TDP Turbo Mode" option only shows up is if I leave the overclocking setting on Auto. If I try to dial in the multiplier manually it disappears and I haven't tested whether or not I can still lock in the turbo multiplier when it's in manual mode. More things to test I guess.
 
Just wondering if the Turbo Mode Throttling issue is only for Asus P6T series motherboard?

Do other models have this issue with the multiplier throttling like the Asus p6x58d? What about Gigabyte motherboards, like the x58a-UD3R?
 
only boards that would not would be the Enthusiast and or pro grade like rampage 3 but i don't have specific knowledge of the other vendors....its very common issue for the budget boards
 
The only thing that's a little weird with it is that the "High TDP Turbo Mode" option only shows up is if I leave the overclocking setting on Auto. If I try to dial in the multiplier manually it disappears and I haven't tested whether or not I can still lock in the turbo multiplier when it's in manual mode. More things to test I guess.

Don't worry, you can easily punch in multiplier manually and still have the "High TDP Turbo Mode" working even though it doesn't show up. Just make sure it is enabled before you set multiplier manually.
 
Don't worry, you can easily punch in multiplier manually and still have the "High TDP Turbo Mode" working even though it doesn't show up. Just make sure it is enabled before you set multiplier manually.

That's great! Thanks for letting me know. I thought it was weird that it would just vanish, but I was too excited about the higher multiplier to mess with it.
 
I personally tried the special bios form the pro board but in my tests it had irq errors and disabled at least one of the pci express slots. I also noticed it seemed to take longer than normal for the turbo to kick in and as such almost seemed a side grade or downgrade vs. using the normal bios. I get the same or better scores even at a lower freq so for me it was not a hard choice. But i don't blame anyone for trying it out......now if i was still using the l5639 then it be all together different since it had such a low multi it might have been worth it.


My question is what is the highest UCLK (north bridge) freq people have been getting away with. Higher it is seems to boost power/speed but to high is unstable. Just wondering if anyone had experience with this setting or if there was any danger (currently running 3465 Mhz) wierd is hwinfo and cpu z both report it lower
 
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Speaking of too high values causing instability, I was a bit bemused when first overclocking my Xeon that I couldn't get it stable at 3.8 GHz even with 1.3 V but it was because I raising both the VCore and Uncore voltages. If I leave the Uncore at ~1.23 V and just increase the VCore to ~1.25 V, it's perfectly stable at 182x22. I also noticed that my RAM voltage was set to 1.60 V, even though it's rated for 1.65 V. I have no idea when/how this happened...maybe it was set automatically when the CPUs were swapped but I'm not gonna touch it unless I get errors since it's working fine.

I've been really busy this week but come Friday I'll have lots of time to try reaching 200 MHz BCLK to get around the stupid turbo throttling problem. Should be fun cos I've never tried going that high before.
 
This is interesting. Currently running an 860@4ghz and a P55A-UD4P. A quick look on ebay and I can grab to a x5650 and GA-EX58-UD4P for a total of about $10 after selling my current board/cpu. It looks like it'd be quite an upgrade if it clocks well. :D

I guess my only concern would be the bios and whether it has been updated to the latest version.

I'm guessing most of these boards can run triple channel with 4 dimms, but the last channel will be shared between two dimms?
 
This is interesting. Currently running an 860@4ghz and a P55A-UD4P. A quick look on ebay and I can grab to a x5650 and GA-EX58-UD4P for a total of about $10 after selling my current board/cpu. It looks like it'd be quite an upgrade if it clocks well. :D

I guess my only concern would be the bios and whether it has been updated to the latest version.

I'm guessing most of these boards can run triple channel with 4 dimms, but the last channel will be shared between two dimms?

You can't be sure about BIOS unless seller sells as a kit and states support.
Also you can't do triple channel with 4 films, it would run dual channel with 2 sticks per channel. Triple channel would need 3 or 6 sticks. I once put 2 triple channel kits together with 3 dual channel kits for 6 total
 
You can't be sure about BIOS unless seller sells as a kit and states support.
Also you can't do triple channel with 4 films, it would run dual channel with 2 sticks per channel. Triple channel would need 3 or 6 sticks. I once put 2 triple channel kits together with 3 dual channel kits for 6 total

Yeah, it might be a bit of a risk.

I thought one channel would just run interleaved? If there are four 8gb dimms like so:
A1, A2, B1, C1
24gb should be running in triple channel and 8gb would be running in single channel. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something? :confused:
 
Yeah, it might be a bit of a risk.

I thought one channel would just run interleaved? If there are four 8gb chips like so:
A1, A2, B1, C1
24gb should be running in triple channel and 8gb would be running in single channel. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something? :confused:

My understanding is interleaved is within a stick of ram, basically it comes to number of connections. Multiple ram channel is like RAID for HDDs, you can't run raid 5 with just 2 drives and say just used last 33% of first 2 for that last 3rd of space.
 
My understanding is interleaved is within a stick of ram, basically it comes to number of connections. Multiple ram channel is like RAID for HDDs, you can't run raid 5 with just 2 drives and say just used last 33% of first 2 for that last 3rd of space.

Hmm ok. I'm currently running 2x Viper 3 2400mhz. It's a bit easier to find a dual channel kit rather than a single stick.

Maybe I'll just find a kit and sell one stick. The other option to get full triple channel would be to run 48gb, but I think 24gb would be plenty.. Even 16gb is enough for me most of the time (VM's, Lightroom, and Photoshop can eat it up pretty quick). :)
 
Make sense, careful with 48gbs though, even 24gbs is pushing limits for x58 and some boards even struggle with that. I've seen folks getting 48 to work but seems very YMMV, esp trying to overclock on top of that
 
Make sense, careful with 48gbs though, even 24gbs is pushing limits for x58 and some boards even struggle with that. I've seen folks getting 48 to work but seems very YMMV, esp trying to overclock on top of that

Ahh ok. I'll keep that in mind. That sig brings back memories. I still have an unlocked Mobile 2400+ w/pin mod and a Abit NF7-S rev 2.0 around somewhere (my last bench). ;)
 
This is interesting. Currently running an 860@4ghz and a P55A-UD4P. A quick look on ebay and I can grab to a x5650 and GA-EX58-UD4P for a total of about $10 after selling my current board/cpu. It looks like it'd be quite an upgrade if it clocks well. :D

I'm guessing most of these boards can run triple channel with 4 dimms, but the last channel will be shared between two dimms?

This is exactly what I did. I sold my Core i7 870 + ASUS P7P55D PRO combo for the price of a manufacturer refurbished, spotless ASUS P6T Deluxe + Xeon X5670 processor. I know I probably lucked out on the motherboard because it cost me just $100 bucks and looked just like new.

Yes, these boards should do triple-channel with 4 sticks installed, however, there will be some limitations. Here's what my ASUS User's manual says: "You may install varying memory sizes in Channel A, Channel B and Channel C. The system maps the total size of the lower-sized channel for the dual-channel or triple-channel configuration. Any excess memory from the higher-sized channel is then mapped for single-channel operation.". So at first I took all the memory from my P55 machine (4GB+4GB+2GB+2GB) and threw it into the X58 one in following configuration: A0-4GB B0-4GB C0-2GB A1-2GB. The computer booted without any problems and reported I was running in triple-channel mode. Anyway, I few days later I ended up selling those two 2GB sticks and getting one 4GB module.
 
This is exactly what I did. I sold my Core i7 870 + ASUS P7P55D PRO combo for the price of a manufacturer refurbished, spotless ASUS P6T Deluxe + Xeon X5670 processor. I know I probably lucked out on the motherboard because it cost me just $100 bucks and looked just like new.

Yes, these boards should do triple-channel with 4 sticks installed, however, there will be some limitations. Here's what my ASUS User's manual says: "You may install varying memory sizes in Channel A, Channel B and Channel C. The system maps the total size of the lower-sized channel for the dual-channel or triple-channel configuration. Any excess memory from the higher-sized channel is then mapped for single-channel operation.". So at first I took all the memory from my P55 machine (4GB+4GB+2GB+2GB) and threw it into the X58 one in following configuration: A0-4GB B0-4GB C0-2GB A1-2GB. The computer booted without any problems and reported I was running in triple-channel mode. Anyway, I few days later I ended up selling those two 2GB sticks and getting one 4GB module.

Nice, sounds good.. I'll give it a try when I get my second kit.
I know it'll take a little patience to get a good deal on a board, prices are all over the place. The chip is super easy to find cheap though. I'd really like a decent board so I don't have to worry about overloading it and to make overclocking a bit easier. :)

My current P55A-UD4 overclocks way better than my original P55A-USB3. The UD4 only needs about 1.25v for 4ghz stable, but the USB3 needed 1.32 or so. The chip I have now can get up to about [email protected], but with HT on I just don't have to cooling to keep temps under control.

I'd be happy if I can get 4ghz out of the x5650 as I know I'd notice a huge improvement in productivity applications.
 
You'll definitely notice the difference in that kind of apps. Apart from that, expect the Xeon to run much cooler than the i7 860 you have now given the same core speed.
 
You'll definitely notice the difference in that kind of apps. Apart from that, expect the Xeon to run much cooler than the i7 860 you have now given the same core speed.

That's.. Surprising given that it has 2 more cores.
 
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That's.. Surprising given that it has 2 more cores.

2 more cores but built on a 32 nm process rather than 45 nm, hence less heat dissipation. Unfortunately that was pretty much the last process jump that came with an automatic reduction in heat, as became evident with Ivy Bridge.
 
2 more cores but built on a 32 nm process rather than 45 nm, hence less heat dissipation. Unfortunately that was pretty much the last process jump that came with an automatic reduction in heat, as became evident with Ivy Bridge.

Ahh that's right, forgot about that. :)
 
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