A tale of three 920's and their OC results

yenniedn said:
In the last month, I purchased three Intel i7 920 CPU's with the intention of keeping the one that OC'ed the best. My initial X58 motherboard was the Gigabyte EX58 Extreme and I had so many problems with those boards that I couldn't individually test each CPU. I RMA'ed both of the Gigabyte boards back and got an open box ASUS P6T Deluxe, which has been so much better. So without a wonky mobo to worry about, I was able to start sorting out the CPU's and the results were fairly interesting (full system specs are in my signature).

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i7 920 #1 (Purchased from Mwave on the week of its launch for $310 plus tax. Batch #3836A866 and pack date of 11/06/08.):

24/7 Prime95 Stable OC: 3.8GHz (20x190) @ 1.2875v. (CoreTemps) Idle temps = 36 - 40*c, Prime95 small FFT load temps = 70 - 76*c.

Highest OC tested: 4.0GHz @ >1.4250v. Idle temps = 45 - 50*c, load temps = 86 - 90*C AND NOT PRIME95 STABLE

Summary: this CPU was the earliest pack date and got to 3.6GHz with no effort. 3.8GHz was the sweet spot because BIOS vCore was relatively low at 1.2875v and idle temps were decent. At all speeds, load temps were always higher than I like to see but at 4.0GHz getting near and sometimes over 90* was very disturbing for me. The increase in voltage it needed to get from 3.8GHz to 4.0GHz was substantial (over 0.15v) with ridiculously hot temps and was definitely not worth it for me. And even then, it still wasn't Prime stable. I wasn't going to give it more voltage when temps were into the 90's as is!
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ah similar results to my i7 920 3836A756,

On TRUE120 AIR cooling
  • 3.8ghz 1.232v prime95
  • 4,0ghz 1.328v prime95
  • 4473Mhz max 3d benchable
  • 4610Mhz max super pi 32m stable
 
burningrave101 said:
I actually have a new P6T Deluxe sitting here beside me that hasn't been opened. Getting ready to sell it since I already installed the EX58-Extreme.

Something I don't like about the Asus boards though is that users are reporting that Turbo mode doesn't work like it does on the Gigabyte boards and some of the other X58 boards. Asus has it set to only enable Turbo when you're under a certain TDP and when you go over that it disables. That's probably why your 21x multi wasn't working even if you had Turbo enabled in the BIOS. On my Gigabyte board the 21x multi is on all the time when I enable Turbo regardless of what the TDP or temps reach.
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Yes, I'm thoroughly aware of the pros and cons of the Gigabyte Extreme board. Here's my other thread that recounts my whole experience with it and why I got rid of them:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1373505

Perma-Turbo is nice if the board would work like it should to begin with. Hopefully you don't have any of the problems I had . . . and the worst part was that both boards worked perfectly fine for some time and then the issues started to show up.

For what was their top-of-the-line OC'ing board, the G. Extreme recovered horribly from OC'ing mishaps. I got tired of having to re-install my OS multiple times because of corruption caused by crashes. And if you're using any of their BETA BIOS'es be weary of which one you get because some of them are just crap. F4J and F4M are the only two decent versions for the Extreme; most of the other will only reduce your OC or worse.

Good luck with it though.
 
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