X5670 just won't overclock on EVGA SLI...

C

CruisD64

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 6, 2007
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Hey everyone,

So I just picked up a Xeon X5670 for a pretty sweet deal. Coming from an i7 930, I figured this would bring a little more life to my system with a decent overclock. However, it won't overclock for crap. I must admit though, my i7 ran at 4ghz with just 1.275 volts in bios with 200bclk. Only other setting was ICH voltage. It was that simple. This chip is not so simple. The most I've gotten out of it is 3.3 at 22x150...

I'm rusty now because I overclocked my 930 about 4 years ago... If anyone could steer me in the right direction that would be great. I had to do the Westmere mod on my evga sli board...

Which settings should I be focusing on? I've done a bios upgrade and everything looks totally different now... I've tried 1.35 vcore with 1.65dram voltage and 1.4 ich and ioh to no avail. The farthest it will go is the windows loading screen then reboot. At stock clocks this sucker runs at low 20's to 30's and under IBT doesn't exceed 45c. This doesn't seem right to me.What should uncore be? Could it be a simple setting I'm simply not accounting for? Sorry for the vagueness...
 
I have heard that some Westmare CPUs do not like load line calibration while others like my X5670 do not have any issues with LLC at all.

You should not need more than 1.3v core voltage (load) for 22*182 = 4000 MHz.
If you do not run 24 GB memory you should not need more than 1.3v VTT for 182 MHz BCLK. I think the problem is with your memory, change timings to auto and choose the 3x(6x) memory multiplier to rule out the memory.
Also turn off C-states and turbo. Be sure that the Uncore is set to one of the lower speeds to rule it out as the issue. Set the QPI speed to the lowest setting.

You could also try the 24x multiplier.
My X5670 only needs 1.18V (load) for 24*167 MHz, few x5670 should need more than 1.3v.

X5670 was the top binned 95W 6-core Xeon at release so they should all clock decently if they have not been abused by previous owners.
 
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Thanks for the reply! It appears to be a bad chip altogether. It's actually having stability issues at stock clocks. I am returning it.
 
Ebay is full of half broken chips sadly.
The sellers that sell lots of CPUs and have 100% good reviews are the ones to buy from.
At least then returns use to be quick and hassle free.
 
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