OC with new EVGA FTW 670

[Pablo 54]

Story: Giga-Bjorn (sig) is going to become my main F@H box in the next week or so. I am replacing it with a z68 but am having problems doing some basic OC’ing on it.

Here are the specs:

• Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 64-bit
• Asus P8z68-V Pro (BIOS up to date with all settings ready to go for an Auto OC)
• i7-2600k
• 8 GB (4 by 2) DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800 G Skill Intl F3-12800CL7-2GBPI XMP: 1.50V, Clk: 800.0MHz, Timings 7-8-7-24
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670, Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 (670 BIOS: Version 80.4.4b.0.71 Driver version: 9.18.13.697)
• Disk drives: Mushkin MKNSSDCL90GB-DX (OS); OCZ-VERTEX2 (Programs); RAID 1 for storage (2 WD 2 TB’s)

I have not OC’ed a z68 before so I am using Asus’ AI Suite. Everything is fine until the system OC’s the 670. It will hang indefinitely. It’ won’t crash, it just hangs and the LED next to the card on the MOBO will flash indicating an error.

Two Questions:
1. Since it is an EVGA and I have Precision X on my system, should I just tweak it that way?
2. Would the fact that I am using Virtu MVP (combo the onboard HD 3000 with the 670) be creating the problem?

Thanks,

Paul

[peti1212]

I'm not an OC Guru, but it could be the Virtu MVP. I never used AI Suite for overclocking a video card, so I would give PrecisionX a try. You might need to raise the voltage on the card. Also, I hope you're not messing with BCLK on you Z68 cause that can really make certain hardware run unstable even with just very small variations. But one way to really test it would be by just setting your system to stock settings, like Default BIOS settings, but making sure your memory is running with XMP settings or whatever the actual timings and speed are, and see if you can mess around with the video card then. If it still causes problems, check temperatures, and if temperatures are fine, you might just have a card that doesn't like to be overclocked at all.

[ShannonR]

Hi there,

One place you may run into issues is stabbility with the memory as it is much older with a spec of well over the new standard 1.5-1.65V as that one is over 1.85-1.9V

I would not recommend running these modules at the spec 1.9V as you can degrade the CPU and Internal memory controller. but at 1.65you can probably still get some decent performance.

With these issues known you will have to likely manually tune the system as the memory will try to push for something that is beyond its capability with the IMC/memory used.

As for tuning the whole system via AIsuite you are introducing the OS as a possible place for instability as well so i would recommend maybe going step by step in the bios in small increments (Starting with CPU OC) until you find where your CPU is happy.

Just remember that the memory for 24/7 use I would not recommend over 1.65V as you can cause soem degradation and inherent stability issues.

I have no problem helping you tune it some but the memory is going to be one area I cannot be sure what the capability is due to the much older modules used.

[Pablo 54]

Thank you both.

I felt “icky” using the AISuite so I think I will just dump it and focus solely on the 670 using the Precision app. The juice going into the memory does make me paranoid. I am using the XMP Profile1 for the memory and it seems pretty stable – and it is holding at 1.502. In a perfect world, I would be using only two 4GB sticks instead of populating all 4 slots but I could not reason shelving 6 sticks of good 1600 memory.

Any suggestions for some starting numbers with the 670?

Thanks again.

Paul

[najiro]

For GPU:
I used ASUS AIsuite II before and evga's precision. Some overclockers I know use MSI Afterburner, i hear experts say its the best as well.

For CPU overclocking:
Do it in the bios. To you want maximum overclock or just a achieve a particular core speed? I OCed my i5-2500k using AIsuite II autoOC thingy and reached 4.8Ghz and it also OCed the rams and gpu. Not really what I wanted since it only OCed the rams less than 1600mhz which was odd. (or perhaps it was the corsair vengeance giving me a hard time). Anyway, I just OCed my processor alone in the bios. It's easier to do there.

[peti1212]

najiro, the reason why your OC on the memory might have been lower was because as far as I know the AI Suite II Auto OC tool adjusts for best CPU overclock, and sometimes it adjusts other parameters too like BCLK, and adjusts memory settings accordingly so the memory would not be the cause of the bad overclock. After all Memory is not a major improvement in performance, once you get to 1600MHz. 1866 and 2133 might have a bit of performance increase but anything past that is not really worth it in my opinion unless you're going to break the world record with LN2.