w870cu 920xm and 5870m overclocking benchmarks

Does the eleet utility work for ocing the 920xm. Are you guys seeing any good results from ocing.

Right now, just from using the street fighter bench at the highest settings, I get about a 10 fps improvement overclocking the 5870m to 825/1125. I wonder if that's safe 24/7 clocks, because the highest the gpu got was 75c.

Using the eleet utility to oc the cpu, this is where I get mixed results.

Prime for some reason, the multiplier won't go above 17x on each core. It's really weird. And when each core is at 27x, eleet utility reports the core speed at 3.6ghz, but core temp reports it at 1.2ghz.

I'm confused as far as ocing the 920xm. The 5870m seems like it has a lot of head room. I know there is a benchmark thread but I can't dig through 1000 posts. Also anyone know where I can download load tester?

And does turbo boost need to be on for the eleet utility to work. I'd like to OC so that each core is at 3.2ghz stable. It has four cores though...and I understand why there are 8 thread with prime 95. With my old desktop quad, there is only 4 threads going with prime 95.

 

Load Tester is part of the Real Temp download package, which also includes a useful little utility called i7 Turbo that shows the load/speed/multiplier on each core/thread which can be adjusted with Load Tester. Another useful program is Argus Monitor, which has a graphic representation of the core speed and load. A good program/benchmark to help understand how turbo boost works is Cinebench 10 (or 11.5, or both). These are rendering models which can use either a single core or all cores. Coupled with the Cinebench programs, Argus Monitor will show how a single thread is distributed across all cores serially to limit heat and stress. Using eLeet you can experiment with overclocking and then watch the results.

You will also see the operation of that 17x limitation (2.26MHz)). That of course is the normal multiplier using 3 or 4 cores. The higher multipliers are available when only one or two cores are in use (up to 28x thru eLeet), but only if and to the extent that power and temp restrictions are observed. When all 4 cores are fully loaded, power requirements and heat generated drops the multipliers back to 17 (sometimes even slightly less), and it doesn't matter where you have set the multipliers. The processor will protect itself.

eLeet only adjusts the turbo multipliers. If you disable turbo boost, all 4 cores will operate at 15x -- no more, no less. The only way known to affect that number is to increase Bclk (similar to FSB). The W870CU's BIOS does not currently provide that option. eLeet certainly works and can be useful in limited situations, but there is not a lot of headroom.

 

Man that is weak, turbo boost basically ruins everything.

 

LOL. No, it really doesn't. The more you learn about it, the more you appreciate the capabilities it offers. Remember, the 920XM can operate in single or dual core mode at up to 3.73MHz, subject to power and heat limits. That's pretty strong, and a lot of software and games are still predominantly single or dual core. The 17x limit I referred to only happens at or near full load -- meaning 8 threads of data being processed at or near 100% capacity, which is a massive amount of data. If you have increased the 3-4 core multipliers to say 20 or 22, then it will operate at those higher levels if all cores are used but with relatively light loads. The strength of the 920XM is the scaling flexibility to provide the most processing power practical without frying itself or sucking up all the power available and crashing the computer. The BIOS in these Clevos (and most all laptops) further restrict the operating room for the extreme processors and limits the benefits that might otherwise be available. Still, they're pretty cool (or hot, depending upon how you look at it).

 

Why my computer freeze or give a bsod when I set the 3th or 4th core to higher than 17x ? Is that a limitation or my cpu is just a piece of crap for O/C?
My temp are great by the way. I have a 160w psu too so power requierment should not be a problem.

 

Well let me just say I have had no problem setting all four cores on the 920xm to 24x if i wanted to (using the eleet utility). However, this makes no difference since the BIOS is what is limiting us, I am fairly certain of that. Without proper bios support to OC, there is no sure-fire way to OC on software alone.

 

What I've seen with the Asus and Alienware systems is that the turbo mode multipliers are still dynamic even if you set the multipliers to a specific number. It all depends on the amount of stress on the CPU and the thermal limits of the system. The Asus G73 is the only system I know of that let's you set those limits in the bios if you have a 920XM.

 

Same here, no issues, just the amount of stress that determines clock speed unfortunately, so it almost seems futile to even OC. Maybe the only performance difference is a benchnark like Vantage? Is there documented performance difference by raising the 920xm clock?

 

Agree with all that has been said. In the Clevo W870CU at least there appears to be a strict, presumably BIOS based CPU power budget that limits the power available to the 920XM and which prevents it from drawing more than a set amount (variously reported as 55W or 65W depending upon the monitoring program). It is my understanding that a 920XM operating with all cores at 24X (or less, but above the design turbo boost levels) requires substantially more power than is being provided. So while the processor itself can operate at levels well in excess of the basic design parameters, it is denied the power required to do it. If it got that power, it would of course soon collide with the thermal limitations, but at least we could dance around those limits to capture some of the additional potential.

Edit: I can set all multipliers to 24x (or more) on my computer. It can't do that of course for the reasons discussed, but it will give you all it has to give, subject to the limitations it is operating under.

 

Exactly, I believe it is reaching some power draw peak and it doesn't let me surpass it. And when I did try to do it, it bluescreened on me.

 

Ok, so would the consensus be that ocing the 920xm is futile? Or will ocing with el33t give me a tad more performance. And should I turn intel turbo boost off in the bios?

 

Unfortunately the answer is....depends. It depends on the app/game you are using and how much stress it puts on the system and the amount of heat. If you do whatever you can to keep it cool you will get better performance even when not OC'ing.

 

I don't believe the bios has this option, at least I didn't see it in the latest bios.

 

No, it's not futile, but the benefits are limited. Do not turn off Turbo Boost. Doing so will seriously degrade performance.