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rave.fmIf you didn’t know yet, I have a XFX 790i SLI Ultra motherboard that I run my computer on. It’s s775, sadly I’m too poor to get anything else, but it runs along fine with my 8gb DDR3 1600mhz-ram.
I actually got it for around 700 SEK, which is about 100 USD, and it’s originally sold for about 3000 SEK, when it was new. So I’m really happy about getting it. I got my Q8300 processor sometime before i got the motherboard itself, and it didn’t cost me more then 1200 SEK or something like that. My current GPU is a GTX570, which I got for 1800 SEK, which is about 1000 SEK less then it’s original cost. A new GTX560Ti (which I also have) is on the market for slightly under 2000 SEK right now, so you can see I made quite the deal!
Anyway. When I checked with PerfOverlay in BF3, my game was not as stabile as I had hope it would’ve been. I believe (but Im not sure) that the variables shown in it indicates execution time or likewise, however, the lower the better! So I started looking at the values. My CPU had an average of 17-20 somewhere, and the gpu laid steady around 14. This means, basiclly, that my gpu was floating more decently then my cpu (which is not weird since I’m running a GTX570 versus a quadcore on 2.5 ghz). I thought about this for a couple of days, and then I realised I had not yet overclocked my computer, even tho I’m running Liquid Cooling…
One or two days later I sat down and begun inspecting the stability of my rig, and realized that my motherboard had a vital function turned off, the N/2 multiplier mapping (don’t know the exact name of it). This means basiclly that instead of running on a multiplier of 7.5 like it should, it was running on a multiplier of just 7. Thus, my cpu was running on 2.3ghz instead of 2.5ghz. So yeah, I was afraid my mobo did not support half multipliers, but it did, it was just a bios settings.
I turned up the vcore a bit and started pushing the rig. Since I have an overclockers mobo, it did not complain at all, and everything went smoothly. Northbridge is well-cooled too, even if it’s not liquid there. I reached 2.6 ghz before finding the N/2 multiplier setting (half multipliers), so I runned Intel Burn Test for about an hour, and then tried out BF3. The performance was greatly improved, you can see the results below:
When I continued to push the system, I reached 3.0 ghz without any problem at all (it’s said these cpus and a good mobo can reach 3.6 ghz stabile without problems if you just have cooling equipment for it), but after 3ghz I did not recognize any improvement (weird enough?) when looking at the performance overlay in bf3. Picture of it running on 3ghz:
I am afraid that I didn’t turn the vcore up high enough, probably vfsb too, as the maxvalue is increased (stuttering?) and there is more or less no performance difference in average. I was running the same map, but I just might’ve been unlcky with stuttering – too.
However, I stopped at 3ghz, so yeah, it should just be a 500mhz difference, but since I was running at just 2.3ghz at first, it’s quite the difference.
Now I’m stuck in a train, and will save this to upload photos later and attach. [Done!]
battlefield 3 · intel core 2 quad · overclocking · Q8300
