i7 920 can't OC to 3.8/4Ghz

T

TuN

New member
I have i7 920 ( 2.66ghz stock )
Asus P6T Deluxe
3 x 4GB 1600 Mhz RAM
Dark Rock Pro 3 CPU Cooler

I'm trying to achieve 4 Ghz, or at least 3.8 Ghz with temps below 70C in Prime95

But it seems that my chip isn't too good, I require a lot more voltage than any of the guides out there.

3.8 Ghz is only possible on above 1.4 volts, which causes processor to get to 79 C

Is there anything I'm missing ? I have disabled all the power saving functions in bios, set multiplier to 20x, and BCLK to 190 Mhz, voltage to 1.406v and left everything else on AUTO.

Thanks in advance
 
Some units are just dogs, mine struggled to achieve 3.6 and that was it.

If you have some spare pennies I recommend getting a westmere-EP cpu from ebay.
 
Hm, looks interesting!

Any hints on what to get? I was kinda planning to go for Kaby Lake/Ryzen this year, but if I can get something a processor that would fit this board and with decent performance, I could delay it for a year.

There is a lot of choices. Should I get a Xeon? I kinda don't need HT as much as I need the frequency, mostly playing games, and i7 920 was bottlenecking at 2.66ghz.

But then again, I still don't even have SATA3 and USB3, which isn't mandatory, but it's slowing my SSD speeds

EDIT: I could get something like Intel Xeon X5677 for 70€ from china
 
Last edited:
Well, what I got my grubby hands on is the X5670 which is basically node shrinked nehalem, making it more energy efficient but not faster clock-per-clock. It generally overclocks well up until 4 gigs, but my motherboard didn't support overvolting it so I fell way short. Google is your friend in this matter.

But it can extend the lifetime of your 1366 rig for a reasonable price.
 
It's C0. When OCed to 3.8Ghz, it freezes on 1.4V, but on 1.408V it seems to be stable. Really can't push it to 4ghz, would probably require more than 1.5 V, too much even for a beefy cooler like Dark Rock Pro 3. Shame.

I bought it pretty much instantly when it came out, so it's the first version, yes. Saw somewhere that there were newer C0 chips that came out, and needed less frequency.

EDIT: I'll actually maybe disable HT, don't really need it at this point, since I mostly play games.
 
TuN said:
It's C0. When OCed to 3.8Ghz, it freezes on 1.4V, but on 1.408V it seems to be stable. Really can't push it to 4ghz, would probably require more than 1.5 V, too much even for a beefy cooler like Dark Rock Pro 3. Shame.

I bought it pretty much instantly when it came out, so it's the first version, yes. Saw somewhere that there were newer C0 chips that came out, and needed less frequency.

EDIT: I'll actually maybe disable HT, don't really need it at this point, since I mostly play games.
Click to expand...

Your not gonna get any higher with that chip. Try and get yourself a D0, they go for peanuts on eBay.. Disabling hyper-threading may get you a little higher, dont forget to disable the spread spectrum. drop your memory speed to try and bring a some stability. Disable any unnecessary chip-set features. Good luck
 
Memory was always below the rated 1600 Mhz, C1E, Spread Spectrum, CPU TM, C-State, Speedstep, all disabled before I started OC

Just checked, I can get :
i7 920 D0 stepping for 46€ with shipping
Xeon W5580 for 40€ with shipping
i7 950 for 63€ with shipping
 
TuN said:
Memory was always below the rated 1600 Mhz, C1E, Spread Spectrum, CPU TM, C-State, Speedstep, all disabled before I started OC

Just checked, I can get :
i7 920 D0 stepping for 46€ with shipping
Xeon W5580 for 40€ with shipping
i7 950 for 63€ with shipping
Click to expand...


Save your money, sell you motherboard / cpu then upgrade. Overclocking is less fun on more recent chips though :(
 
Well I was gonna get a new computer soon, but I really don't wanna rush and wait what AMD has to offer compared to Kaby Lake. The purpuse of getting Dark Rock Pro 3 was to get some more time before I'll get an upgrade, so getting a new processor at this moment doesn't seem rational, but then again, for only 46€ I can get past 4 Ghz, but it's still 46€, and since I'm upgrading quite soon, seems almost a waste :)

Too bad I didn't check the d0 prices about 2 years ago, I'd definitely get one. Had no idea they're so cheap :)
 
TuN said:
Well I was gonna get a new computer soon, but I really don't wanna rush and wait what AMD has to offer compared to Kaby Lake. The purpuse of getting Dark Rock Pro 3 was to get some more time before I'll get an upgrade, so getting a new processor at this moment doesn't seem rational, but then again, for only 46€ I can get past 4 Ghz, but it's still 46€, and since I'm upgrading quite soon, seems almost a waste :)

Too bad I didn't check the d0 prices about 2 years ago, I'd definitely get one. Had no idea they're so cheap :)
Click to expand...

Yeah it is a tough time to upgrade, with so many things being released just far enough to make the wait agonising. Ryzen should be out before March. Should be worth it if going by what we know so far. Start saving up for that board,CPU, and DDR4 memory!
 
NeverBackDown said:
Yeah it is a tough time to upgrade, with so many things being released just far enough to make the wait agonising. Ryzen should be out before March. Should be worth it if going by what we know so far. Start saving up for that board,CPU, and DDR4 memory!
Click to expand...

Which is what exactly? (Love your explanations, totally my type of English :))
 
Mine won't go past 3.7ghz and I have a D0, but I have every memory slot full which can make it harder to OC apparently.

I was thinking about a 970 but 6 cores will make next to no difference in the games I play. It will improve my handbrake conversions but just seems pointless to invest in a 9 year old platform.
 
Well the settings I tried for 3.8ghz:

bclk: 190
multi: 20

core voltage: 1.28

12gb ram at 1520mhz 9-9-9-24
at 1.64v

Everything else is on auto, yes I disabled turbo boost. I did try load line calibration enabled but it didn't seem to help.

Cooled by NH-D14 temps are fine but just crashes straight away in OCCT.

Someone suggested using odd multiplayers but I haven't tried that yet.
 
This is what I have for 3.7ghz

n2erex.jpg


262xs1x.jpg
 
I would drop your multiplier and work towards 200BCLK

I cant remember specific voltages on this platform now where it has been so long but Im sure you would be able to find some info in my guides and reviews
 
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