Sandy vs ivy bridge overclocking

[Haswellbeast]

Hey, so I am in general interested in overclocking old systems, and I usually get a good deal on something, play around with it, and then sell it as "retro" and get most of my money back. Anyway, to the point, I want to mess around with LGA 1155 and I have heard the stories of sandy bridge hitting 5 ghz all core, and I am wondering if ivy bridge could do the same, but it was hampered by the TIM.

TLDR, if I delid the ihs on ivy bridge, does it get back the o/c headroom that sandy bridge had? Or does the 22nm node reduce it to headroom similar to Haswell, as in, you're lucky to get 4.6 at a voltage that doesn't fry the chip?

 

[Dopamin3]

So delidding Ivy Bridge gives you more thermal headroom and 4.6Ghz should usually be achievable unless you lose the silicon lottery (or buy a degraded chip somebody ran at high voltage for multiple years.) Even delidded ones didn't often hit 5GHz, but it was achievable with some chips on higher voltages (like maybe 1.45v - 1.55v). Not sure on long term use on voltages and what would cause degradation.

Sandy Bridge didn't need a delid, and in general could scale higher. I remember doing 5Ghz on a 2500k and 4.8Ghz on a 2700k. If you're going to use a decent cooler, I would just avoid Ivy Bridge if you're intending to overclock. There is around a ~5% IPC improvement and if you factor in the higher speeds on Sandy Bridge OC it will usually give better performance anyway. Fun platform to OC on.

 

[Haswellbeast]

So delidding Ivy Bridge gives you more thermal headroom and 4.6Ghz should usually be achievable unless you lose the silicon lottery (or buy a degraded chip somebody ran at high voltage for multiple years.) Even delidded ones didn't often hit 5GHz, but it was achievable with some chips on higher voltages (like maybe 1.45v - 1.55v). Not sure on long term use on voltages and what would cause degradation.

Sandy Bridge didn't need a delid, and in general could scale higher. I remember doing 5Ghz on a 2500k and 4.8Ghz on a 2700k. If you're going to use a decent cooler, I would just avoid Ivy Bridge if you're intending to overclock. There is around a ~5% IPC improvement and if you factor in the higher speeds on Sandy Bridge OC it will usually give better performance anyway. Fun platform to OC on.

I mean, I'll probably get an i5 anyway, the i7s are still kinda overvalued imo, $10 i5 vs $35-40 i7

 

[Haswellbeast]

So delidding Ivy Bridge gives you more thermal headroom and 4.6Ghz should usually be achievable unless you lose the silicon lottery (or buy a degraded chip somebody ran at high voltage for multiple years.) Even delidded ones didn't often hit 5GHz, but it was achievable with some chips on higher voltages (like maybe 1.45v - 1.55v). Not sure on long term use on voltages and what would cause degradation.

Sandy Bridge didn't need a delid, and in general could scale higher. I remember doing 5Ghz on a 2500k and 4.8Ghz on a 2700k. If you're going to use a decent cooler, I would just avoid Ivy Bridge if you're intending to overclock. There is around a ~5% IPC improvement and if you factor in the higher speeds on Sandy Bridge OC it will usually give better performance anyway. Fun platform to OC on.

Also, why would that be? I do not understand how a 22nm chip clocks worse than a 32nm one, even with a delid and good TIM

 

[Starfalcon]

Also, why would that be? I do not understand how a 22nm chip clocks worse than a 32nm one

The sandy bridge chips used a soldered IHS, while the ivy and later ones used thermal paste on their IHS. That is why delidding became a thing, to get better heat transfer due to intel cheaping out on their cpus.

 

[Dopamin3]

Also, why would that be? I do not understand how a 22nm chip clocks worse than a 32nm one, even with a delid and good TIM

It just be how it do. Sandy Bridge could get higher overclocks (and didn't need a delid). Even if you get the best thermals possible on Ivy Bridge (delid + TIM + beast cooling) it's not going to go as high.

Essentially, it's just difference in architecture. I think we all got lucky that Sandy Bridge had so much headroom. Ivy Bridge had less potential, but out of the box it had 5% IPC boost and a little better efficiency. Shame for using crappy TIN under the IHS instead of fluxless solder.

So for overclocking this era, go Sandy Bridge for the best end result performance. Even with the 5% IPC boost on Ivy Bridge the 200 - 400MHz less you'll get on final clockspeed makes it overall slower.

 

[El_Capitan]

Haswellbeast
I found my old overclock screenshots. My golden 2700K was stable at 5.1GHz (which is a crazy 40.74% overclock), but I think I preferred it at 5.0GHz because I could run the memory at 1866MHz at 8-9-9-24-1T. My 2600K at 4.8GHz could run 2133MHz at 10-10-10-28-1T.

 

[El_Capitan]

My golden 3770K was also able to get 5.1GHz. However, I preferred it at 5.0GHz since I could run it at 0.7V lower.

 

[El_Capitan]

I never had a great 3930K, but used to run it at 4.8GHz daily. I was able to get it to 5.0GHz to get a Y-Cruncher time, but I didn't think I liked the voltage and temps.