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*Official* Core i3 Owners Club

271K views 2K replies 215 participants last post by  kiriakos 
#1 ·

Intel Core i3 Owners Club

Ideas/suggestions for the front page are appreciated. Anyone that wants to officially join, just post up your processor model (530, 540, or 550), your highest stable OC and, since these are supposed to be the low volt chips, your vcore - and I'll add you to this post.

Note: club now open to any Clarkdale owner. They're all the same chip, so why support Intel's intentionally confusing marketing?

All new members/posters, please include your chip model (530 or 540), batch number, and VID in your first post. Even if you don't care about "joining" the club, it would be much appreciated if all i3 owners could post this information. The information is helpful to those guests and future users browsing the thread, as well as members and guests that are doing research while shopping.

Members:
Sandy Bridge in orange

AyeYo - Core i3 530/4.0ghz/1.192v - 4.4ghz/1.328v
shnur - Core i3 530/2.93ghz/stock
kroaton - Core i3 530/4.6ghz/1.424v
Prelude - Core i3 530/4.01ghz/1.232v - 5.02ghz/1.592v
Smax4 - Core i3 530/4.00ghz/1.232v
SickStew - Core i5 650/4.60ghz/1.385v
preyash - Core i3 530/4.20ghz/1.344v
benyu - Core i3 530/4.00ghz/1.200v
Tator Tot - Core i3 330m/2.13ghz/1.050v
jtluongo - Core i3 530/3.52ghz/1.152v
boxy44 - Core i3 530/4.00ghz/1.200v
hbeevers - Core i3 530/3.99ghz/1.36v
hardly - Core i3 530/4.3ghz/1.336v
aunaturalantony - Core i3 330m/2.13ghz
col musstard - Core i3 530/3.65ghz/1.152v
4x4n - Core i3 550/4.51ghz/1.408v - 4.944ghz/1.520v (IGP enabled)
JTK21351 - Core i3 530/4.21ghz/1.328v
NAP - Core i3 530/4.31ghz/1.332v
levontraut - Core i3 330m/2.13mhz
Shev7chenko - Core i3 330m/2.13mhz
DG170775 - Core i3 530/4.00ghz/1.224v
TheOcelot - Core i3 550/4.2ghz/1.320v
ekg84 - Core i3 540/4.0ghz/1.240v
ammarmalik - Core i3 530/4.0ghz/1.25v
bahmtf - Core i3 530/4.0ghz/1.392v
camry racing - Core i3 540/3.77ghz/1.132v
Sam Maghsoodloo - Core i3 540/stock
jdmfish - Core i3 530/4.01ghz/1.294v
Razi3l - Core i3 540/3.22ghz/1.215v
michintom - Core i3 530/4.20ghz/1.312v
Ste v - Core i3 530/3.52ghz/1.152v
ben h - Core i3 530/5.01ghz/1.568v
IonFive - Core i3 530/4.12ghz/1.368v
loliarkanoid - Core i3 530/4.42ghz/1.328v
hardypham - Core i3 530/4.02ghz/1.296v
Satans Hell - Core i3 530/4.0ghz/1.23v
americanz - Core i3 530/3.99ghz/1.128v
ryanbob1234 - Core i3 330m
newpc - Core i3 540/4.7ghz/1.40v
Fletcherea - Core i3 550/4.02ghz/1.272v
1337guy - Core i3 550/4.0ghz/1.256v
anubis1127 - Core i3 530
xJavontax - Core i3 2100

Sig Tag:

Code:

Code:
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[CENTER]:wheee:[URL="http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/653618-official-core-i3-owners-club.html#post8255686"][B][U]Intel Core i3 Owners Club[/U][/B][/URL]:wheee:[/CENTER]
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Relevant threads:

i7 vs. i3 gaming performance:
http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/...ght-would.html
http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/...omparison.html

Hyperthreading on vs. off:
http://www.overclock.net/general-pro...bled-real.html

Voltage/Temperature Information:

PLEASE, observe Intel voltage specifications and do your research. These are not 45nm chips and they WILL NOT tolerate the same voltages.
Clarkdale dies with the quickness at 1.475 vcore



Keep in mind, these are MAXIMUM ABSOLUTE voltages before physical damage occures. These are NOT 24/7 save maximums - those will be substantially lower. If using LLC, your 24/7 voltage will have to be even lower still.

Tcase for these chips is 72.6C. They should not be run above this in 24/7 usage - OC and cool appropriately.

Intel spec sheet for i3 530

Core voltage tolerance in relation to current draw:




Clarkdale/H55 platform overview:


Original, pre-club first post that started this thread:

Quote:
Well, now that I've got the GPU squared away (get the easy stuff out of the way first) I'm going to give the CPU a rip.

What I'm looking for though is only a stock voltage OC. From what I've read on this site, step one is to get my base voltage by running Prime95 and checking CPU-Z, which I've done, then manually set this as the vcore. Next would be to lock the PCI bus at 100mhz, then turn off all the power saving and such stuff. Once all that is done. Should I only be upping the base clock? Do I have to worry about QPI and such?

There's so many different voltage settings on this board I'm afraid I'm going to screw something up and fry my new chip. I've read up everything I could find on my own, but, this being my first real OC, I'd feel more comfortable if someone walked me through step by step.
 
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5
#3 ·
Good link, but what I need help with is the specific BIOS settings. For example, in the BIOS, I set the CPU voltage from "offset" to "manual", which then brings up the option for "CPU fixed voltage". I'm assuming this is the vcore setting. This setting is moveable in steps of 0.00625v. This makes me overshoot my CPU-Z voltage of 1.176v to around 1.18, is this ok?

Also, there's an option for CPU PLL voltage, what is this for?

Then there's Load-line Calibration, which defaults to Auto. The ASUS manual describes the settings as:

Auto - automatic configuration
Disabled - follow Intel specs
Enabled - Improve CPU vdroop directly

Why wouldn't this default to disabled in the first place, and should I disable it while OC'ing?

Forgive the newbishness, but this MB manual is clearly written for people that already understand all the settings and I just don't want to fry my brand new chip.
 
#5 ·
The cpu pll is the cpu's internal clock generator. You can leave that at stock, but some people have found that more or less can help stability in different situations.

Load-line calibration overides intel's vdroop technology. vdroop is the motherboard artificially raising cpu volts during load, in order to protect the cpu from voltage spikes/dips when transitioning between high and low loads. Most people turn LLC on for higher overclocks, as it "lowers" the vcore required.

If you haven't already, try googleing "p7h44-m pro overclocking guide" or something like that.
 
#6 ·
Yea, there's not a whole lot on this board, it's pretty new.

I think I've got the hang of the voltage settings now, but one more question: is it safe to leave all the other voltages (like CPU PLL for example) on "auto" or is that unsafe in the same way that leaving vcore on "auto" is unsafe? This BIOS doesn't show what the actual stock settings are, it just shows things on auto.
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Yea, there's not a whole lot on this board, it's pretty new.
lol i was afraid of that.

If it were me, i'd set manual values for everything that is currently on auto... but im kinda anal retentive that way. For mild to moderate overclocks, auto shouldn't produce any weird settings/values... but when you start getting more serious OCs, manual settings are a must.
 
#9 ·
For me, mild = stock vcore, moderate = 50% or less of maximum vcore (example: stock is 1.0v, max is 1.5v, moderate = 1.25v or less). Thats by no means an official rateing or anything, but just kinda makes sense to me


If they are values for the cpu (like vcore, vtt, pll, etc), then they are determined by your cpu. If its stuff for the motherboard (IOH, ICH, pci-e, etc), then you can probably assume that similar lga1156 motherboard share the same limits/defaults.

You could download a program like Everest, which can read just about every voltage and frequency you can imagine, and write down what everything is running at.
 
#10 ·
I just bought a i3 530 and a Gigabyte P55M-UD4 motherboard, and I am in the process of trying to figure it out as well.

My last overclocking was an Athlon X2 probably 3 years ago, so things have changed a bit.

Once I get my Windows 7 issue solve (reinstalling now), I will see about overclocking.

One issue I noticed was that the board is downclocking the RAM. I have 1600MHz Corsair XMS3 RAM, and if I set the RAM multiplier to 10x, BCLK to 160, the board seems like it will run the ram at 1600, but upon rebooting it changes the RAM to 8x to run at <1300. It seems to not want to run it above 1333, which was the default.

I will report anything I find, and I look forward to hearing your experience.
 
#11 ·
An interesting tidbit that may be related to the ram issue: Bloomfield (i7 9xx) officially supported ddr3 800 and 1067 ONLY. With Lynnfield and Clarkdale (i7 8xx, and i5/i3), the official supported ram speed was increased to 1333mhz. Now you can obviously reach much higher ram speeds by overclocking, but that max supported ram speed of 1333mhz and your motherboard running your ram at 1333mhz may not be a coincidence. An updated bios may fix this though.
 
#13 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Artmasterx View Post
I just bought a i3 530 and a Gigabyte P55M-UD4 motherboard, and I am in the process of trying to figure it out as well.

My last overclocking was an Athlon X2 probably 3 years ago, so things have changed a bit.

Once I get my Windows 7 issue solve (reinstalling now), I will see about overclocking.

One issue I noticed was that the board is downclocking the RAM. I have 1600MHz Corsair XMS3 RAM, and if I set the RAM multiplier to 10x, BCLK to 160, the board seems like it will run the ram at 1600, but upon rebooting it changes the RAM to 8x to run at <1300. It seems to not want to run it above 1333, which was the default.

I will report anything I find, and I look forward to hearing your experience.

This is interesting because my MB manual mentions something about Clarkdale chips not supporting 1600mhz memory in dual channel. My board also downclocks my memory, although getting it back up to 1600mhz is actually my OC target.

My board does have a nice feature that automatically lowers the CPU multiplier and increases the BCLK to keep stock CPU speed while allowing the ram to be run at 1600mhz in dual channel. I never bothered to use it.

According to the manual though, you can put two 1600mhz sticks in separate channels and run them each in single channel at 1600mhz. Don't ask me why you would want to do this, but it says it's an option. lol I've also never tried that either.

As for my actual OC... So far I'm showing 3221mhz at stock voltage, 146mhz BLCK x22 (which I just realized adds up to 3212, not 3221, maybe CPUZ is dyslexic
), and DIMM at 1436mhz (or whatever it says in my sig rig profile). Prime95 stable for an hour, which is all the time I had to test it. I'm going to run IBT when I get home and run Prime blend for at least two hours before going higher.
 
#14 ·
I think a BIOS update would be helpful... Gigabyte has a new beta version but I am not sure I want to try it yet.

So, the memory actually does overclock. However, it appears that when in the BIOS that it is downclocked (maybe for stability), but once I boot into Windows it shows up as being overclocked. Also, running memtest shows that it is overclocked.

However, the ratios are very limited for QPI, memory, and uncore multipliers. The uncore only allows auto or a 12x multiplier, which is unfortunate given that I have read the uncore should run at twice the memory speed.

I have it stable @3.4GHz at the moment (155x22) on 1.3V.

I think an updated BIOS for Clarkdales will help to some degree. I will keep updating.
 
#15 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Artmasterx View Post
I think a BIOS update would be helpful... Gigabyte has a new beta version but I am not sure I want to try it yet.

So, the memory actually does overclock. However, it appears that when in the BIOS that it is downclocked (maybe for stability), but once I boot into Windows it shows up as being overclocked. Also, running memtest shows that it is overclocked.

However, the ratios are very limited for QPI, memory, and uncore multipliers. The uncore only allows auto or a 12x multiplier, which is unfortunate given that I have read the uncore should run at twice the memory speed.

I have it stable @3.4GHz at the moment (155x22) on 1.3V.

I think an updated BIOS for Clarkdales will help to some degree. I will keep updating.
Interesting.

ASUS has an update available, but it's simply to add RAID support.

I'm at 3375mhz, 160.7x21 (160x21 set, CPU-Z shows the 160.7) on 1.152v. QPI is at 3213 and DIMM is at 1600.

Ran Prime small FFTs for an hour, no issues. IBT run at max with no issues at all. About to run Linx on it right now. If that passes I'm going to try going to try 22x.

Your volts seem awefully high. Anandtech was doing 4ghz at that voltage.
 
#17 ·
So I installed the beta BIOS update. It doesn't have all the tweaks enabled yet, but it did add memory support for my Corsair and picks up the XMP profile now.

It seems to have made overclocking stability better as well. The BIOS mentioned something about fixing a problem that Clarkdales couldn't go over 160 BCLK, so it may have increased overclocking support in general.

I dropped the voltage back down the stock, which is 1.18V under load with LLC enabled. I am running the BCLK at 160 right now for 3.5GHz. I have my memory running at 8x, so it is downclocked a little to make sure it does not cause any issues.

Prime95 has run for 30 minute or so with no issues, max temps are around 45C.

I will keep pushing higher on stock volts and see where I can get. This new BIOS (ver.7) seems necessary to really effectively overclock the Clarkdales on the Gigabyte P55m-UD4.

I will keep you updated.
LL
 
#18 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Artmasterx View Post
I dropped the voltage back down the stock, which is 1.18V under load with LLC enabled. I am running the BCLK at 160 right now for 3.5GHz. I have my memory running at 8x, so it is downclocked a little to make sure it does not cause any issues.

Prime95 has run for 30 minute or so with no issues, max temps are around 45C.

Glad to hear you're having good luck with it.

I'm currently running the same. 160mhz BLCK and now back to the 22x multiplier, still on 1.152v (no LLC). Just went through 20 runs of Linx (1 1/2 hours) without an issue.



Given how low the voltage still is, I want to test it some more. I was really expected it to fail this time. If all is still well after some IBT and Prime I'm going to up the QPI to 3500 and see what happens.
 
#19 ·
Glad to hear your chip is doing well too. You are probably about to hit the wall on stock volts if my chip is similar.

I have just finished running 6hrs of Prime95 at a BCLK of 164 for 3.6GHz... again stock voltage with LLC.

I had 166 working, but went to 170 and it was no longer stable (crashed getting into windows).

3.6GHz seems very stable, again with the memory running at about 1310MHz. I only have the choice of an 6, 8, or 10x multiplier at the moment. I will have to see if going to a 10x on the memory will be stable as well.

I am curious what 1.25 or 1.30V will get us. So far I can't complain.

My goal may be to hit a 200 BCLK, run a 20x multi for the CPU and an 8x for the RAM.
LL
 
#20 ·
Nice job. I'm wondering if I'll hit a wall sooner due to my QPI being significantly higher. I'm going for actual usable system speed, I'm not trying to grow my e-peen or impress anyone with big CPU clock numbers. If I can't get the CPU to 3.6 on stock vcore with 3.2 on the QPI, I won't be disappointed. I'm hoping the system will be stable with the CPU and QPI at 1:1 at 3.5ghz. If I can get it stable in that config I might even just call it a day.

I did notice something odd though. My BIOS doesn't give me direct control of QPI and DIMM multipliers. Instead, it runs them at max speed based on the BLCK and then gives me about 4 options to downclock them, showing their speeds rather than a multiplier. DIMM is pretty no brainer, the speed I set is the speed I get. However, QPI is a bit odd. I get HALF the speed set in the BIOS. Is this normal? QPI is currently set in the BIOS at 6427mhz, which I'm running at half of now - it's adjustable from 1:1 with CPU downward (with the 1:1 setting actually being displayed as double CPU speed), but for some reason I have to set it to double what I want. Maybe it's simply a glich in the BIOS.

This board is obviously performing well enough, but the BIOS is a bit odd. It's as if ASUS wanted to make the OC experience more intuitive, simple, and even semi-automated (might explain the name change from "extreme tweaker" to "AI tweaker", but I'm not sure if it's actually for the better.
 
#21 ·
I have a similar thing in the BIOS. Maybe the QPI runs at double like memory? I am new to this new architecture, so I really don't know what I am doing with QPI.

Is there a particular reason to run the QPI at a given speed that you know of? I think I have options to set the QPI multiplier, and it runs anywhere from like 10 to 36x.

If you have any knowledge of general ratios that we should be using, I would be happy to here. The only thing I have read is that the "uncore" should be run at twice the RAM speed...

Oh well.
 
#22 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Artmasterx View Post
I have a similar thing in the BIOS. Maybe the QPI runs at double like memory? I am new to this new architecture, so I really don't know what I am doing with QPI.

Is there a particular reason to run the QPI at a given speed that you know of? I think I have options to set the QPI multiplier, and it runs anywhere from like 10 to 36x.

If you have any knowledge of general ratios that we should be using, I would be happy to here. The only thing I have read is that the "uncore" should be run at twice the RAM speed...

Oh well.

From what Anandtech said in the i3 OC article, QPI should be kept as close to CPU speed as possible.

I believe QPI is to the Core i chips what FSB was to everything before them. Everyone knows that the big, noticable system speeds gains were to be had from higher FSB, moreso than high CPU clock speeds.

Like you, I'm still learning this new architecture so your guess is as good as mine. Maybe someone else can help.
 
#23 ·
It looks like I may need to take my QPI off auto then, since when running at 3.6GHz on the CPU, the QPI was only doing 2.6GHz. Maybe it would be interesting to do a benchmark with my current setup and then with QPI cranked up near the CPU speed.

This may be an interesting article to read if you haven't:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fea...lem_its_limits

It says a few things I have copied below. It seems as though the QPI typically runs at a bit more than twice the "uncore" frequency. So CPUz is probably showing the uncore frequency, which has a multiplier that is half of what the QPI is... all fairly confusing.

Quote:
One important thing to remember about the base clock is that it is the main reference clock for other components in the CPU- goosing this one setting will also overclock the RAM as well as the "uncore" (i.e., the L3 cache, memory controller, and Quick Path Interconnect, or QPI).

Quote:
he Core i7 is a modular design with two main areas, the "core" and the "uncore". Inside the chip, the actual execution cores that do the heavy lifting are treated as the "core." The other parts, such as the integrated memory controller, L3 cache, and the Quick Path Interconnect are treated as the "uncore." Since they're separate entities, you can overclock the execution cores without overclocking the uncore to the same degree, in theory. This should let you hit higher speeds, since you wouldn't be running the QPI, memory controller, or L3 quite as hard. In reality, however, it doesn't work that way. Intel's non-Extreme Edition Core i7 CPUs offer limited control over the uncore multiplier, so a boost to the base clock boosts the uncore speeds as well.

Quote:
One thing to remember as you fumble around the BIOS is that the uncore must run at twice the speed of the system RAM. Here's where it gets a little confusing. The speed of the uncore is determined by multiplying the uncore multiplier by the base clock. On a Core i7-920 chip, for example, the uncore defaults to 16. The uncore thus is 16 times 133 for a total uncore speed of 2,133MHz or 2.1GHz.

Quote:
The take away here is to remember to keep the uncore speed at twice the speed the RAM runs. If you plan to run DDR3/1600, you'll need to run the uncore at 3,200MHz. On a Core i7-965, you can run that speed without overclocking. On a Core i7-920, you'll have to overclock the base clock to get the RAM at that speed

Quote:
Another new element to the Core i7 is the Quick Path Interconnect that we mentioned earlier. This high-speed interface connects the processor (or processors, in a multi-proc machine) to the chipset. Intel currently has two QPI speed iterations. The Core i7-965 Extreme Edition runs at 6.4 gigatransfers per second and the non-Extreme chips, such as the Core i7-920 and Core-i7-940, run at 4.8GT/s.

The QPI is important to watch because ramping it up too far can kill your overclock. For example, pushing the base clock from its stock 133MHz to 200MHz on a Core i7-920 means that the QPI will default to 7.2GT/s. That's quite bit more speed than the stock 4.8GT/s; however, we successfully tested a Core i7-920 running at 7.2GT/s and believe that's still within the realm of viability.

The QPI speed of the Core i7-920 and Core i7-940 is derived by multiplying the base clock (133) by 36, which equals 4788 or 4.8GT/s. The Core i7-965 uses a default QPI multiplier of 48, but unlike the non-Extreme chips, the 965's multiplier is not locked. If you believe your overclock is failing because you've cranked the QPI too far, you can try dropping the speed by changing the QPI multiplier. On some overclocking runs with a Core i7-965 Extreme Edition, we had to drop the QPI back from 7.68GT/s to 7.04GT/s to increase reliability. The bad news is that you can't do this with the budget chips.
 
#25 ·
Good find. You're right, CPU-Z must be reading the "uncore" as QPI. My actual QPI must be 6426, as shown in the bios. That seems pretty damn fast.

This is all made more confusing by the fact that my BIOS doesn't show the actual multipliers.

So, like the article says, my uncore (CPU-Z's "QPI") is twice my DIMM speed - 3213/1606.5. Then it gets weird, because this uncore speed also happens to be exactly half the BIOS set actual QPI (no CPU-Z reading for this) of 6426.

If I'm understanding this correctly, the "uncore" is basically the fequency at which the memory control communicates with the memory. Is that how it sounds to you? And the QPI connects the processor to the chipset... what chipset? The Southbridge? Who cares? Does the Southbridge even do anything important on these H55 boards?

So it's the uncore that needs to be boosted for better overall performance, not the QPI? In that case it's pretty convient that CPU-Z is actually showing the uncore rather than the QPI.

EDIT: QPI might actually matter for you because the P55 boards actually have a regular style chipset. My board only has a Southbridge and the PCIe control is integrated into the i3... although it's integrated into yours too... so does you rig use the controller on the i3 or the one on the P55 chip...

This is getting confusing quickly.


EDIT2:

Ok, did some more reading. i3 has the PCIe control and the memory control on CHIP, not on DIE. So the QPI for Clarkdale is internal with the other side of the chip, whereas the QPI for Lynnfield is external with the Northbridge. QPI still matters for Clarkdale because it's the speed at which the cores in the die communicate with the on-chip (but not on die) memory and PCIe controllers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by _GTech View Post
Have you guys ever tried to enter a drag race with a goat cart?
lol wut?
 
#26 ·
I don't have my computer in front of me, but my BIOS gave me the option to change the QPI multiplier. I think it went up to 36x, as mentioned in the i7 article. The non-beta version of my BIOS also had the uncore multiplier, but only had auto or 12x I think. It is not in the beta BIOS yet.

I will check and see what my QPI, uncore, and RAM are tonight and see if they are a similar factor of 2 apart.

My goat got smoked in the drag race, but at least it was tasty afterwards.
 
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