Intel Core i7 980X Overclocking Update: Breaking 4GHz With 6 Cores
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 11, 2010 9:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
So how does it feel to have the worst Core i7 980X overclocking scores online?I can't say that it's what I'm most proud of. That award would have to go to the time I wrote a review and left out the 'l' in overclocking. Needless to say after everyone pointed out how abysmal our overclocks were and after even Intel called to let us know that we should be seeing better, we gave it another shot.
Intel's DX58SO Motherboard
A motherboard swap, a little more voltage and backing off the un-core clock a bit yielded something a bit more respectable out of our Core i7 980X sample:
Keep an eye on what we're talking about here. Six cores, 12MB of L3 cache, all running at 4.13GHz with Intel's stock heatsink. With more voltage, even higher frequencies should be possible - but at the expense of increased power consumption.
The performance at 4.13GHz is even more ridiculous than the stock Core i7 980X:
Another ~17% improvement over the already bonkers 980X is just crazy. At 53.7 fps in the second pass of our encoding test we're more than twice as fast as a Core i7 920. As much as we hate that Intel is maintaining two different sockets for its desktop CPUs, the Core i7 980X makes LGA-1366 worth it. Now if Intel could only get that price down.
The performance doesn't come for free though. At 1.359V the 980X draws quite a bit more power:
The 17% performance improvement comes at the expense of a 20% increase in total system power. It's not the most efficient way to get more speed, but if for some reason you're not happy with your 980X's default performance this is the sacrifice you'll have to make.
Thanks for bearing with us as we tried to push our chip further and got some more respectable results :)
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aigomorla - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
they are unlocked.But you get better scores from a higher QPI then a higher multi because of the reduced latency when having a higher QPI.
;)
vol7ron - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
Just because you can max the multiplier, doesn't mean it's limitless on its overclock. Otherwise it would max to an infinite Hz.Sometimes it's better to lower the clock and raise the multiplier, sometimes it's not. Though, todays Intel CPUs have other things going on then simply raising/lowering clocks and adjusting multipliers, just because of the L3 Cache and other nuances.
PyroHoltz - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
I agree its not infinite(limitless as you put it). But, why didn't Anand explore the option? That's my point...I do understand it's not his intention to reach overclocking limits though, thats left to other sites. I just feel the topic should have been discussed.Foggg - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
When will we have the ability to just 'overclock' the TurboBoost maximums (for 1 core, 2 cores, 4 cores, etc.)?Why should any Corei5/i7 chip, with all its smarts, be forced to idle at +4Ghz?
strikeback03 - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
With the power gating and all it might not be the cores drawing that power, could be either uncore stuff or other motherboard components (like the RAM).Spivonious - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
What mobo did you switch to? I'd like to see an analysis as to why the Intel board was so much more limited.7Enigma - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
This was the first thing that came to mind as well. Your original review placed a lot of the benefit of this chip in the fact that you could use an 18-month old mobo and get great performance. Now, yes at stock and slightly elevated OC-levels you can, I'm just wondering if the new mobo has something that the ones meant for the 920 don't or whether it's just a bios issue that can be fixed/improved with a firmware update.mapesdhs - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
Why are all these tests being done with the stock cooler? Anyone
spending $1K on this CPU is not going to overclock with the supplied
cooler. Until we have numbers from using a better cooler like a TRUE
or something, it's hard to judge the chip's proper oc potential.
Re video encoding (the review article), more cores are all very well,
but not many apps support more than 4. Indeed, some codec paths
don't even support 2 (eg. MJPEG). Given the cost involved with an
X58/980X setup, it may be more sensible to simply get two separate
Lynfield i7 860 systems, process more than one video file at a time.
Just a shame the price is so high for the 980X, but until AMD has
some kind of performance option, Intel doesn't need to sell for
anything less (sensible business practice from their point of view
I suppose). I'd originally planned to get a 920 system last year
for video encoding, with an eye toward the 6-core upgrade option,
but I'm glad I didn't; with hindsight, Lynfield looks far more
sensible, the 860 inparticular. At the budget end of course, an oc'd
Athlon2 X4 630 is hard to ignore.
Btw, how high does the POV-ray test scale? ie. how many threads can
it spawn? I was wondering how the test would behave on an SGI
UltraViolet system which will take the new 6-core Gulftown, ie. a
single combined shared-memory system with up to 256 x 6-core XEONs.
Hmm... :D
Ian.
Shadowmaster625 - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
No need to use two systems. You can process more than one video file on the same system. If you have 8 cores but the program only uses 4, then you can run two instances and it will use all 8. I've done it many times. As long as the program can run more than one instance. Most can be made to.Nfarce - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
"Why are all these tests being done with the stock cooler? Anyonespending $1K on this CPU is not going to overclock with the supplied
cooler. Until we have numbers from using a better cooler like a TRUE
or something, it's hard to judge the chip's proper oc potential."
Oh good grief. Have you ever heard of "base line" overclocking? You establish a base line for future reference (IE: how high can you get without raising voltage or how high can you get on the stock cooler, etc.). From that point you then upgrade the cooler, raise the voltage, and on and on. Overclock much?