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.

[Cody_Irwin]

I hate asus OC stuff, My comp cant even do the Auto Tune to 4.6ghz from the motherboard

If they made it fine tune to your Specific processor to what it can actually do that would be awesome, but sadly it does not still.

[peti1212]

Auto Tune is not meant to put your at 4.6GHz. It really depends on motherboard, CPU, memory, and luck. The thing is that Auto Tune doesn't change your voltage settings. It finds your highest OC with the auto voltage setting which keeps the voltage within Intel Specs. At least that's how I know it. With this said, your CPU will probably be set at around 4 GHz to about 4.3 GHz. Depending on how lucky you are with your CPU and other hardware. You can always go in and add a bit of voltage and readjust the multiplier to higher numbers to get more out of your CPU. Then run a few stress tests for a few hours to see if you're stable.

[najiro]

Auto Tune is not meant to put your at 4.6GHz. It really depends on motherboard, CPU, memory, and luck.

true.. when I used it, I just watched it do its thing.. Didn't change voltage settings and so on, it will just achieve the highest "stable" overclock based on the current voltage settings your pre-set before clicking AutoOC.. So I preferred doing that in the bios.

About the rams, yeah I think it did that since vengeance rams need to be in X.M.P. mode to run @ 1600mhz.. Anyway, I hated AISuiteII overclocking thing.

[peti1212]

I don't hate AI Suite II. I look at it as an additional option that ASUS gives you to tweak your system. I like to use it to manually overclock my system, and the nice thing is that you can overclock the system on the fly instead of having to restart your system and then change the settings then.

The reason why overclocking on the fly is interesting is because those that like to compete in overclocking sometimes are able to run their system on a much higher clock speed when running GPU intensive benchmarks, but then when they run CPU intensive benchmarks those settings would be unstable. I'm referring to 3DMark Vantage or 11 right now. So you can for example run GPU benchmarks at 5 GHz, and then when the benchmark gets to the CPU test, you press a hotkey and it will switch over to 4.8 GHz for example. Just a nice little feature you can use.

GIGABYTE also has this feature on their boards, though I haven't played around with it much but seen live examples of it.

[najiro]

Yeah it does give you options to add "profiles" wherein you can set different OC speeds. That would be nice for benchmarking and stuff. For my work purposes, I just like it OCed at 4.0Ghz. Some of my friends would even recommend pushing it to 4.5Ghz but I am already satisfied with 4.0Ghz. One expert also said that overclocking reduces the life of the processor. I kinda believe in that so I guess light overclocking is my limit unless somebody else contradicts that.

[peti1212]

Of course, no matter what you run past it's designed speeds, it will reduce its lifetime. At 4.0 GHz probably not that much, but at 4.5 you need to run higher voltages so it makes sense. What I've also heard is having your temperatures 10C lower than normal can drastically elongate the lifetime of your CPU, which is why it's nice to invest into a good cooler if you're planning on using your system for a long time.

[PP Mguire]

It's my opinion that if you need a program to OC for you, you shouldn't be OCing at all.

[Pablo 54]

It's my opinion that if you need a program to OC for you, you shouldn't be OCing at all.

I agree 100%. I took the easy way out in hopes of saving some time. I might do some tweaking on Sunday. I will post what I get.

[PP Mguire]

Yea I meant purely CPU. You have no real idea what these programs are doing to your setup even if they are geared to OC your specific board. You don't know exactly how many volts are going to your CPU ect. It is my belief everybody should research and learn how to properly OC through the bios before attempting anything. Once you get that down OCing the GPU through software is easy.