• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

x58 i7 overclocks

A

atreidesgoldenpath

Gawd
Joined
Jul 20, 2008
Messages
525
I have a simple question, and maybe I just couldn't get the right keywords to get an answer from Google.

If all x58 i7 processors are (over)clocked to the same speed (3.8 ghz for example), will they all have the same performance? Or is there truly better performance in some way from the more expensive CPUs all at the same clock?

Thanks.
 
Depends on a a lot of things. What settings your running your ram at will affect performance as will timinigs.

Certain motherboards will perform slightly better than others..although not a huge difference.
With that said all 4 core i7s will perform generally about the same at the same clock speed.
 
If you have different LGA 1366 i7 chips and test them at the same exact speed with all the other hardware and settings not changing, the performance will be the same.
 
If they have the same performance at the same clock, why are the reasons to purchase the high end $900 version (quad not hex)? I'm guessing you can push it a few more MHz, but probably not much. Probably because some people don't want to overclock at all, or want to squeeze those extra few juices out.
 
atreidesgoldenpath said:
If they have the same performance at the same clock, why are the reasons to purchase the high end $900 version (quad not hex)? I'm guessing you can push it a few more MHz, but probably not much. Probably because some people don't want to overclock at all, or want to squeeze those extra few juices out.
Click to expand...

The EE chips basically let you choose any settings you want. You can turn different settings up and down to get the best overall performance. With the cheaper chips, certain settings are locked. For example, the 920 is locked at a 20x multiplier and you can't set it higher. If you want to overclock it, you need to raise the BCLK, which in turn overclocks the uncore and other parts of the CPU.

Depending on exactly how you overclock, you might actually get better performance. For example, turning a 920 up to 200x20 should be faster than setting a 975 to 133x30 (if that's even an option). On the 920, you'd be overclocking a lot of different parts of the CPU for more performance, while the 975 would only be running the core itself faster. Most overclockers know that it's better to raise the FSB than the multiplier if possible, but the extra complexity of the i7 means that increasing the BCLK is actually overclocking a lot of other CPU parts too.
 
Because most folks can't/won't overclock the CPUs. I imagine that the OEM market for the higher-end CPUs makes up a large chunk of sales too, e.g. someone with cash to burn can upgrade the CPU from a 920 to a 975x when they purchase on dell.com. Also, the better-binned (higher-clock) CPUs may overclock higher or overclock the same but at lower core voltages.

As others have said, in general, with other settings/hardware the same, quad-core i7s at the same clocks are going to perform about the same.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top