CPU overclocking?

[Vic]

hello. first of all. i have an i7 3770 (NON K). it comes stock with 3.3 ghz, but i think the store i bought it from had overclocked it, beacuse it says that i am running 3.9 ghz. my question is. should i overclock it more? yesterday i played planetside 2 (witch we all know are the most cpu intense game right now) for 7 hourst straight. i tabbed out of my game to see my temps. my cpu was only at 40 degrees celsius. can i overclock it more? i dont have liquid cooling, but i have this big metalbox thingy cooler, on top of my cpu. dont know what it is called. (the brand is Coolermaster)

please help!

[banzaigtv]

The CPU is running at 3.9 GHz because it is running on Intel Turbo Boost mode. My CPU is the same way, but the turbo gain is small. It happens during CPU-intense applications with all i5 / i7 CPUs.

[Vic]

Publicado originalmente por banzaigtv:

The CPU is running at 3.9 GHz because it is running on Intel Turbo Boost mode. My CPU is the same way, but the turbo gain is small. It happens during CPU-intense applications with all i5 / i7 CPUs.

but can i still overclock it then?

[The Grapist]

Publicado originalmente por ATNOE3:

Publicado originalmente por banzaigtv:

The CPU is running at 3.9 GHz because it is running on Intel Turbo Boost mode. My CPU is the same way, but the turbo gain is small. It happens during CPU-intense applications with all i5 / i7 CPUs.

but can i still overclock it then?

Yes, Turbo mode just means when your not using all the cores it disables some and boosts the clock speed on the others.

I think you could expect 4.5Ghz to be possible if you have a Z77 Chipset. An your motherboard has powerful Phases.

[Vic]

i have a ASUS P8Z77-V LX S1155 Z77 motherboard. can i OC to 4.5 you think?

[The Grapist]

Publicado originalmente por ATNOE3:

i have a ASUS P8Z77-V LX S1155 Z77 motherboard. can i OC to 4.5 you think?

Looking over the board, I think you are going to be limited to your cooling solution for the CPU.
That board should be able to get you the max speed that CPU has to offer as long as it's cooled properly.

[gnoj]

Publicado originalmente por ATNOE3:

but can i still overclock it then?

Short answer: No, not really. You should have bought a 3770K if you wanted to overclock.

Longer answer: The clock speed of a CPU is a function of base clock (BCLK) x a multiplier. In the old days you didn't need a -K edition or extreme CPU with an adjustable multiplier to overclock because you could just change the base clock. With Sandy and Ivy Bridge CPUs this is no longer the case because Intel tied the speed of every bus (USB, SATA, PCIe, CPU cores, etc.) to the same internal clock generator. Therefore, your system will become unstable if you move the BCLK more than a mHz or two. There are rumors this will change a bit in the future with Haswell introducing oc-friendly features to the mainstream LGA 1150 boards that are currently only available on the high-end LGA 2011 Sandy Bridge-E boards. However, for the time being, you are limited to the Turbo Boost frequency of 3.9 Ghz (or perhaps up to 4.0 Ghz with the slightest of BCLK tweaks) unless you have one of the following processors: i5-3570K, i7-3770K, i7-3820, i7-3930K, i7-3960X, or i7-3970X.

[The Grapist]

Publicado originalmente por gnoj:

Publicado originalmente por ATNOE3:

but can i still overclock it then?

Lots of text here...

That simply is not true. Everyone knows we are not going to be breaking records with a non unlocked CPU. He is simply asking if overclocking via the FSB is possible. The one answer is yes, since he has a high end chipset, and assuming he has decent ram, he should have no problem getting an extra 500Mhz.

[gnoj]

Publicado originalmente por Asaggynoodle:

That simply is not true. Everyone knows we are not going to be breaking records with a non unlocked CPU. He is simply asking if overclocking via the FSB is possible. The one answer is yes, since he has a high end chipset, and assuming he has decent ram, he should have no problem getting an extra 500Mhz.

I did say he could adjust his BCLK slightly, but doing so on an 1155 system is more risky because, unlike LGA 2011, you can't use a divider to separate it out from things like PCIe which don't like to be touched.

I did, however, miss one important thing- you should be able to increase the turbo freq multiplier in your bios by up to 4 bins on non-K chips. That is, you should be able to make that 43 rather than 39, which would make your clock speeds the following:

3.4/4.1/4.2/4.3/4.3 GHz (Base/4 cores/3 cores/2 cores/1 core)
rather than the stock speeds of: 3.4/3.7/3.8/3.9/3.9 GHz

So your base clock speed is unaffected but when running a program that only utilizes one or two cores your speed will increase up to 4.3GHz.

[Vic]

thank you very much for the answers, guys! i really apriciate it!