I currently have 6th 1333 ram and have my rig running at 3.2 ghz with a h50 waterblock Wondering if getting 1600 MHz ram and going for 4ghz is worth the money and also is the over clock that much easier/better then? Also with ram timings does it matter? Cheers in advance peeps
is 3.2Ghz the highest you can go without overclocking the memory ? does your RAM have XMP ? The perfromance difference between 3.2Ghz and 4Ghz will depend on what programs you run but it should be significant for anything remotely demanding. You would also get a performance boost by just swithcing the RAM to 1600mhz not a great deal but certainly a boost performance gains drop significantly after 1600mhz which is the sweet spot at the moment. RAM timings tend not to matter nowadays as speed trumps it hands down. The only time timings will matter is in benchmarking to obtain that highest score. Day to day programs will make no difrence if your timings are say 7-7-7-20 or 9-9-9-24
It depends how high the memory wants to go - I first had a Kingston 1333MHz kit which went to 1420MHz allowing for a 3.7GHz CPU clock (177x21), but in the end I bought 2000MHz memory specifically for benching/high bclk etc. and I run it daily at 1530MHz 9-9-9-24. There's no guarantee that your CPU will oc easily; you just have to find the sweet spot and the right voltages. Some 920 DOs do 4GHz without big voltage bumps, but mine needs the QPI at 1.4v before it is stable (especially with 9GB of memory). Incidentally, you can still get 4GHz with 1333MHz memory by setting your memory to 6x and BCLK to 200MHz, giving you a slower ram speed of 1200MHz and allowing you to test BCLK and CPU stability.
Have a read of this forum thread. The chap on here was in the same predicament as you and some helpful guys posted up BIOS screenshots and helped him tweak his OC. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1535656 Sentinel.
DON'T!!! You will fry your CPU even with water cooling... you must tweak your system and set the voltage manually. This is the golden rule of overclocking: NEVER use auto voltage for the CPU!
Hmm ok at what point does vcore become 'unsafe'? On voltage is says -auto +0.1v +0.2v Etc etc These might not Be the exact increments but I though that would be auto+0.1v no? Cheers
I would setr your voltages manuals, you might find your chip to be a good one as its a do. I would not go more then 1.35 tho. But you might find it will be happy hitting 4Ghz with as little as 1.2. its trail and error and lots of writing down stuff and testing.
