Finally 2600K has landed in Indian shores. Ofcourse officially it still wont be available through Intel till 1st/2nd Week of February, and for now its only available through SMC International.
Thanks to Gigabyte already had a P67A-UD7 board as a review sample. So here I would be going ahead and looking into the board into detail, with BIOS screenshot and settings, alongwith overclocking the hell out of the i7 2600K on air with V6GT, thanks to CoolerMaster. Initial impression is that its almost equal to/better than Thermalright Venomous X, which is hell of an achievement considering CoolerMaster's previous attempts at making high-end heatsinks. Also I have been told that its going to priced very low now at only Rs. 4250 from SMC which is hell of an attractive price IMO.
SYSTEM SPECS
CPU - Intel i7 2600K
Motherboard - Gigabyte P67A-UD7
Ram - Kingston Hyper X 2000Mhz CL7
CPU Cooler - CoolerMaster V6GT
Graphic Card - MSI GTX580
For now though only a few regular pictures of the Motherboard and the CPU.
Gigabyte P67A-UD7 Box, with its Black front/back and Golden side certainly looks great and is a big departure from earlier Blue scheme that Gigabyte had.
Back side of the Box which details all of the features of the motherboard.
Internal Box which keeps the motherboard safe, even if the outer box gets damaged during shipping.
And finally the board in full glory. The all black board is certainly one of the most attractive motherboard that I have seen from any manufacturer. Also would go nicely with all those black internal cabinets. The Black and Golden heatsink also adds another dimension to the looks.
Ofcourse to be honest my pathetic photography skills cannot do justice to this board which looks much better in flesh.
Feast on a few more pictures while I brush up my photography,
Finally we arrive at 2600K. Very small package, Intel is saving up on money it seems, I doubt the heatsink can handle even stock load temp,
And we have bootup. No point in booting up on stock clocks,. So booted straight up at 4Ghz. Had to leave for office, so all I was able to do is 5 minutes of testing. Will be doing much more testing and overclocking in the coming few days and will be posting results in this thread.
Do let me know if you want me to run any specific tests, other than my standard, superpi, wprime, pifast, PCMark 05/Vantage, 3dMark01/03/05/06/11, Vantage, Cinebench and Unigine Heaven
BIOS & OVERCLOCKING
Coming back to the board and overclocking on it, lets have a look at the BIOS first, wont be showing anything apart from the MIT (MB Intelligent Tweaker) section, since Gigabyte is still using Award Bios which most of us would be comfortable in navigating, though Gigabyte has confirmed a hybrid UEFI BIOS for this as well all other P/H67, x58, P/H55, P45 etc. Gigabyte boards. Though using mouse in the hybrid UEFI board would not be possible but as per Gigabyte using a hybrid BIOS would mean we would have the maturity of Award BIOS and special features of UEFI.
MIT Current Status screen which shows current status of the components like CPU and Ram
Advanced Frequency Settings Screen is one of the most important screen in the BIOS, this is where we can configure the multiplier and the Bclk.
To change Multiplier, set CPU Clock Ratio.
To change base clock change setting BCLK/DMI/PEG Clock Control to Enable and BCLK/DMI/PEG Frequency to whatever your CPU can boot up with.
***Overclocking may damage your computer, you need to ensure that you have proper Cooling on the CPU, still its never safe, perform the next step at your own risk***
Advance CPU Core Features Page where we can select the number of active cores, disable/enable HT, and disable/enable CPU features like CIE, C3/C6 State, Thermal Monitor, EIST etc.
This is also the page which brings us a new type of overclocking, purely based on Power Limit of the CPU in Watts/Amps. And though not as efficient as the tried and tested method of Bclk/Multiplier overclocking but this method also works. All we need to do is enable Turbo Boost technology. Then set up Turbo Power Limit & Core Current Limit to something like 200 ,and then either you can leave everything else on Auto(you might also need to raise up your volts) or ofcourse set the max multipliers manually. **Overclocking may damage your computer, you need to ensure that you have proper Cooling on the CPU, still its never safe, perform the next step at your own risk***
Lets move onto the next BIOS screen Advanced Memory Settings
Now we move onto the one of the most important screen in the BIOS, that is Advanced Voltage Settings
Let me explain the most Important Settings on this screen, and what all you need to change for a successful overclock till around 4.6-5Ghz(and if you are lucky maybe more)
Load Line Calibration - Options are Standard/Level1/Level2. What this settings does is it controls VDroop (Vdroop is when your CPU voltage goes lower in Operating System than the set value in BIOS, this happens due to the stress), by changing this setting to Level 1 or Level 2, what your motherboard does is controls the vdroop and overvolts the CPU a bit so as not to cause Overclocking failure.
QPI/Vtt - Havent read the new architecture completely so this might have changed but this is for the IMC of the CPU, which helps when you are overclocking your memory or trying to make it stable. 1.1V - 1.20V is safe range up from 1.05V default volts and would allow you to even go for 2133Mhz if your Ram supports the speed.
System Agent Voltage - This is equivalent to Uncore Volts in x58 platform, and is the setting for voltage of everything which is not part of the main core of the CPU. Setting it to .975 volts, up from the default of 0.925 helps again in memory overclocking
PCH Core - Setting for Southbridge, and generally doesnt need to be meddled with. Default is 1.05V.
CPU PLL - This is what helps in multiplier overclocking, that is when you are raising multiplier above 46/47 and though an important setting but doesnt need to be bumped up much above 1.88-1.92V
DRam Voltage - Depends upon your memory stick. Safe range is between 1.5V-1.7V depending upon your memory.
.
Have been playing to get max clocks instead of running benchmarks on standard speed hence results would be posting later. Though results are pretty decent I would say. Post here if you need any help in overclocking these CPUs on Gigabyte motherboards, Have a pretty good understanding of Gigabyte settings and would certainly try and help.
Thanks to Gigabyte already had a P67A-UD7 board as a review sample. So here I would be going ahead and looking into the board into detail, with BIOS screenshot and settings, alongwith overclocking the hell out of the i7 2600K on air with V6GT, thanks to CoolerMaster. Initial impression is that its almost equal to/better than Thermalright Venomous X, which is hell of an achievement considering CoolerMaster's previous attempts at making high-end heatsinks. Also I have been told that its going to priced very low now at only Rs. 4250 from SMC which is hell of an attractive price IMO.
SYSTEM SPECS
CPU - Intel i7 2600K
Motherboard - Gigabyte P67A-UD7
Ram - Kingston Hyper X 2000Mhz CL7
CPU Cooler - CoolerMaster V6GT
Graphic Card - MSI GTX580
For now though only a few regular pictures of the Motherboard and the CPU.
Gigabyte P67A-UD7 Box, with its Black front/back and Golden side certainly looks great and is a big departure from earlier Blue scheme that Gigabyte had.
Back side of the Box which details all of the features of the motherboard.
Internal Box which keeps the motherboard safe, even if the outer box gets damaged during shipping.
And finally the board in full glory. The all black board is certainly one of the most attractive motherboard that I have seen from any manufacturer. Also would go nicely with all those black internal cabinets. The Black and Golden heatsink also adds another dimension to the looks.
Ofcourse to be honest my pathetic photography skills cannot do justice to this board which looks much better in flesh.
Feast on a few more pictures while I brush up my photography,
Finally we arrive at 2600K. Very small package, Intel is saving up on money it seems, I doubt the heatsink can handle even stock load temp,
And we have bootup. No point in booting up on stock clocks,
. So booted straight up at 4Ghz. Had to leave for office, so all I was able to do is 5 minutes of testing. Will be doing much more testing and overclocking in the coming few days and will be posting results in this thread.
Do let me know if you want me to run any specific tests, other than my standard, superpi, wprime, pifast, PCMark 05/Vantage, 3dMark01/03/05/06/11, Vantage, Cinebench and Unigine Heaven
BIOS & OVERCLOCKING
Coming back to the board and overclocking on it, lets have a look at the BIOS first, wont be showing anything apart from the MIT (MB Intelligent Tweaker) section, since Gigabyte is still using Award Bios which most of us would be comfortable in navigating, though Gigabyte has confirmed a hybrid UEFI BIOS for this as well all other P/H67, x58, P/H55, P45 etc. Gigabyte boards. Though using mouse in the hybrid UEFI board would not be possible but as per Gigabyte using a hybrid BIOS would mean we would have the maturity of Award BIOS and special features of UEFI.
MIT Current Status screen which shows current status of the components like CPU and Ram
Advanced Frequency Settings Screen is one of the most important screen in the BIOS, this is where we can configure the multiplier and the Bclk.
To change Multiplier, set CPU Clock Ratio.
To change base clock change setting BCLK/DMI/PEG Clock Control to Enable and BCLK/DMI/PEG Frequency to whatever your CPU can boot up with.
***Overclocking may damage your computer, you need to ensure that you have proper Cooling on the CPU, still its never safe, perform the next step at your own risk***
Advance CPU Core Features Page where we can select the number of active cores, disable/enable HT, and disable/enable CPU features like CIE, C3/C6 State, Thermal Monitor, EIST etc.
This is also the page which brings us a new type of overclocking, purely based on Power Limit of the CPU in Watts/Amps. And though not as efficient as the tried and tested method of Bclk/Multiplier overclocking but this method also works. All we need to do is enable Turbo Boost technology. Then set up Turbo Power Limit & Core Current Limit to something like 200 ,and then either you can leave everything else on Auto(you might also need to raise up your volts) or ofcourse set the max multipliers manually. **Overclocking may damage your computer, you need to ensure that you have proper Cooling on the CPU, still its never safe, perform the next step at your own risk***
Lets move onto the next BIOS screen Advanced Memory Settings
Now we move onto the one of the most important screen in the BIOS, that is Advanced Voltage Settings
Let me explain the most Important Settings on this screen, and what all you need to change for a successful overclock till around 4.6-5Ghz(and if you are lucky maybe more)
Load Line Calibration - Options are Standard/Level1/Level2. What this settings does is it controls VDroop (Vdroop is when your CPU voltage goes lower in Operating System than the set value in BIOS, this happens due to the stress), by changing this setting to Level 1 or Level 2, what your motherboard does is controls the vdroop and overvolts the CPU a bit so as not to cause Overclocking failure.
QPI/Vtt - Havent read the new architecture completely so this might have changed but this is for the IMC of the CPU, which helps when you are overclocking your memory or trying to make it stable. 1.1V - 1.20V is safe range up from 1.05V default volts and would allow you to even go for 2133Mhz if your Ram supports the speed.
System Agent Voltage - This is equivalent to Uncore Volts in x58 platform, and is the setting for voltage of everything which is not part of the main core of the CPU. Setting it to .975 volts, up from the default of 0.925 helps again in memory overclocking
PCH Core - Setting for Southbridge, and generally doesnt need to be meddled with. Default is 1.05V.
CPU PLL - This is what helps in multiplier overclocking, that is when you are raising multiplier above 46/47 and though an important setting but doesnt need to be bumped up much above 1.88-1.92V
DRam Voltage - Depends upon your memory stick. Safe range is between 1.5V-1.7V depending upon your memory.
Have been playing to get max clocks instead of running benchmarks on standard speed hence results would be posting later. Though results are pretty decent I would say. Post here if you need any help in overclocking these CPUs on Gigabyte motherboards, Have a pretty good understanding of Gigabyte settings and would certainly try and help.
