[Overclock] i7 860 @ 4ghz - is this cool?

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OriGiNaL

Contributor
Veteran XX
I'm pretty new to overclocking. I tried to spend my money on stuff that would be favorable to overclocking. I have the Asus Maximus III board, i7 860, Dark Knight CPU cooler, etc...

Anyway I OC'd this bitch and I have it running at 4ghz. I put it into Prime, ran a full load and it never went above 72 degrees (C). At idle I'm hovering around 33 degrees in windows.

My stats to overclock were:
BCLK: 191
Multiplier: 21
VTT/DRAM: 1.4
PLL: 1.925

So assuming I have a stable overclock and my temps remain the same, is this pretty safe to keep my system at?
 
nigafool said:
in a month you're going to wonder why you did this
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This is actually a good point. Again, I'm a total newb with this shit. I figured I would get better FPS in shit like Bad Company 2? Or am I being stupid? Will I notice any difference between this and just leaving it all stock?

:|
 
OriGiNaL said:
This is actually a good point. Again, I'm a total newb with this shit. I figured I would get better FPS in shit like Bad Company 2? Or am I being stupid? Will I notice any difference between this and just leaving it all stock?

:|
Click to expand...

i doubt you would be able to tell the difference if you didnt have an fps calculator honestly
 
OriGiNaL said:
I figured I would get better FPS in shit like Bad Company 2?
:|
Click to expand...

this would only be possible with a complete client-side overhaul of your onboard graphical RAMDACs.

in combination of with to your memory overhaul, it would be mostly simplistic to underclock your ram in an attempt to free up system resources to more effectively cater to the needs of the RAMDAC
 
SpenZ0r said:
this would only be possible with a complete client-side overhaul of your onboard graphical RAMDACs.

in combination of with to your memory overhaul, it would be mostly simplistic to underclock your ram in an attempt to free up system resources to more effectively cater to the needs of the RAMDAC
Click to expand...

Ok... you got way over my head. underclock my ram? RAMDAC? I think I have my RAM speed set to auto or some shit. Part of the reason I got the Maximus III board is because people said its easy as shit to overclock even if you're a dumb shit like me.
 
Go post on Anandtech or HardOCP if you want real advice.

You're just going to get trolled here.
 
^^^ This. And running your system at that speed is like a race car engine. It may run fine, then die with out any warning. The I-7 920 is more like a V8, runs slower, but gets the car to the same speed (NASCAR). What you're doing is like a formula one engine (smaller, higher RPMs). It's fun to tinker with this stuff and see how far you can push it, but I wouldn't leave it there unless there was some game that needed the extra power. And at that point I'd upgrade the video card. I've found that OCing the CPU only adds a few frames, while the video cards adds more.
 
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My race car engine has been running fine for 3 years. At one point i had it revved up to 5GHz.


I have never not overclocked. None of my shit has died for no reason.



Also, your overclock is just fine.
 
I overclocked my i5 750 to 4ghz. I was able to get it stable - with more volts than I was interested in running - but I only saw a 5% increase in FPS with BFBC2.

I decided to clock back to 3.8ghz, with considerably less volts, and leave it there. Finding the max OC is fun, but I feel that going to 1.43v for an extra 200mhz is a bit stupid. I only had to go up .07v for 3.8ghz.

You'll get more out of OC'ing your video. I attempted to do that, but even a 25mhz OC on either ram or core caused issues with my VC, so it must not be very OC'able. :(

It's also not considered a stable OC unless you can run PRIME. Reason I say this, is I am able to hit 4ghz with 1.32v (1.25 is stock for my chip) but when I run PRIME I get core errors on proc #2 (the third). Then I'll go into a game and it'll actually stutter/hang more. If I increase the volts and get it so that PRIME does not encounter issues, the game will run stable.
 
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I oc'd my 860 to 3.5 and it worked great for about a month and a half. Then suddenly last week my video card drivers started crashing over and over and over again. We're talking mutiple times per minute. After uninstalling and reinstalling the newest drivers I saw no change.

The moment I set my cpu back to stock speeds all the crashes stopped. I'm not sure what exactly caused the instability after a month and a half of solid performance, but I'm glad it's working again.

I'm not saying this will happen to you, but it is within the realm of possibility sometime in the future.
 
I would recommend buying and playing whatever game you're aiming for first (BC2 in this case) and then OC'ing and seeing if you think the gains are worth it or not.

Never OC just for the heck of it. It always shaves times off the life of the components (not much sometimes but still some) and if you're getting no gain out of it, it isn't worth it.
 
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