Do we need IBT?

I don't think its needed, but it helps you gauge exactly how stable your system is.

IBT gets me to 75 celsius and 15 mins of prime95 to 79?

ITB is better for determining if your system is stable, in a short amount of time. I think it's like 15 passes in ITB is about equal to 24 hours of Prime95?

I use both ITB and Prime95 for stress testings for a 24/7 stable OC. But I use ITB while benching to check stability quickly.

If you value your time, then yes IBT is absolutely needed. If you don't mind spending endless hours waiting for Prime95 to fail, then IBT is not needed.

I did alot of playing around with IBT a few months ago, and it turned out to be fairly innaccurate when compared to other tests. Example: [email protected] 1.3875v(bios) was unstable in IBT(Full system crash) but stable for 12hrs in prime95/OCCT. Then at 1.4000v(bios) IBT made it through the test but the numbers didn't match, whereas prime/OCCT again said stable. It took until 1.4125v(Bios) that IBT would pass, but prime/OCCT was passing at 1.3875v(bios).

I honestly trust prime95 and OCCT together more than I do IBT by itself. My best suggestion is that if you're going to use it, run other tests to confirm stability/instability. You just might finding yourself lowering voltages. So run IBT/increase volts until it's stable, then use prime95 and double check stability. Then back down the volts slowly and run prime95 each time. You may end up spending more time lowering volts that IBT said you needed than you did taking the volts up if you used prime.

IBT is a great tool from my experience at gauging and determing the optimal voltage settings for a given fsb overclock. As accurate but a lot faster compared to p95. With IBT I don't need to wait for hours to figure out if I need to bump the vcore, vtt or mch core to raise stability. Whatever was 20+ IBT runs stable for me made it through p95 24 hours+ no problem.

Like some said, Problem I have is.. I can get stable with Prime 95 at 1.384v, yet IBT needs 1.4 volts to pass..

Prime95 = 48C MAX Load
IBT = 64c MAX Load

I trust P95, over IBT myself.. But like others said, 15 IBT is 24hrs on P95. So it equals out..

either wait... or not wait...

I agree. IBT is not as accurate as P95 (for example you can't know when it fails, whether or not the problem is with the CPU or NB/RAM) but I always use IBT first when trying a different clock out for the first time. Especially when I have no idea what the voltage needs to be. I find that IBT helps me get close to the needed voltage in a very short amount of time. But after I get it semi-stable I start using P95 small fft's if I pass that then I run a blend test to test the NB/RAM. Then I run memtest several passes to make sure the memory is stable.

But if your CPU can't stay stable at IBT temps but is stable in P95 and OCCT, then this is probably because your CPU cooler can't keep the temps in IBT low enough to stay stable. If that is the case then P95/OCCT is the way to go.

I have never had to run it more than 5 times, my current overclock passed it and since then I have used it for everything: gaming, music, internet, printing/faxing, camera pictures, emailing, bill paying, etc etc etc. Completely stable and temps are very good. I did lap my TRUE and my Core i7 920 bringing temps down.

The hardest part of overclocking is no two chips are alike, even if they are the same model.

IBT takes far less time to stress test than P95. 25 runs in IBT is around and hour and half and i call it stable. P95 takes 7+ hours and can fail on the 6th hour and your square one.

Thats the only reason i use it.