Overclocking Specifics

Each mainboard has its own peculiarities. The problems with CPU overclocking on Foxconn BloodRAGE originate from the fact that a lot of parameters are connected with one another in a not very evident manner. Successful overclocking usually requires basic knowledge, understanding of what different parameter changes may lead to and logics. Of course, any parameter change in the BIOS will inevitably result into the change of its actual value, but if you don’t touch it, then its value remains the same. Things are a little different with Foxconn BloodRAGE mainboard. You will have to trust your intuition during CPU overclocking on this platform, because in most cases changing one parameter may also change a few others. Sounds not quite clear, doesn’t it? I will try to explain what I mean on a few actual examples from our Intel Core i7-920 overclocking experience on Foxconn BloodRAGE.

At first I decided to find out how far the board can overclock this CPU without increasing its Vcore in order to keep all Intel power-saving technologies working. Everything went on smoothly until we got to the point when we had to check the system stability during overclocking. The workload created by Prime95 (or any other utility used for stability check) caused the CPU frequency to drop and “float around”. The CPU-Z screenshot shows that the processor frequency is just a little over 3.7GHz, although 181MHz times 21 (clock multiplier), we will get 3.8GHz resulting CPU frequency.

It is not a utility bug, because Everest program showed the same exact CPU frequency, although it “adjusted” the base frequency accordingly. For the above described example, the program indicated 177MHz base frequency, which gives 3724MHz CPU frequency if multiplied by 21.

I was already picturing how I would compare the performance of Foxconn BloodRAGE mainboard at “floating” CPU speed and 181MHz base frequency vs. some other mainboard at steady CPU speed and same base frequency, but there was no need to prepare myself. It turned out that Foxconn BloodRAGE mainboard would maintain stable frequency if you disable “BIOS Vdroop Compensation” parameter in the BIOS, which prevents processor core voltage from lowering under load. And the only reason why we could disable this parameter was because the board doesn’t reduce, but increases the CPU Vcore under heavy load! You can see it on the screenshot above: the CPU core voltage equals 1.28V while the nominal setting is 1.225V.

Looks like we may have established non-obvious, but confirmed connection between “floating” frequencies during overclocking and “CPU Vdroop Compensation” parameter. Now we can proceed to CPU overclocking fearing no frequency drop under heavy workload. However, later on, when we overclocked the CPU a little more and increased a few voltages, frequencies started floating again and could only be stopped by enabling “Current Feedback Override” parameter. In fact, this parameter allowed the board to increase the processor clock frequency multiplier to 21 with enabled Turbo Boost technology even when the high power consumption of the overclocked CPU would require a 20x multiplier at the most. I don’t know for sure if this is what this parameter has been initially intended for or if this is yet another non-obvious interconnection of parameters, since it appeared only in the latest BIOS version and there is no mention of it in the mainboard manual.

Let’s get back to the processor Vcore. I have good news and bad news. The good news is that unlike most contemporary mainboards Foxconn BloodRAGE doesn’t disable Intel processor power-saving technologies when the CPU Vcore is increased. In idle mode not only the clock multiplier but also the core voltage will lower. They won’t go down to the nominal level, but will be lowered proportionally to the initial increase. This is not just good, but superb news! I believed that these mainboard features have been long gone for good together with Abit solutions. CPU overclocking without increasing the voltage makes no sense on Foxconn BloodRAGE. Why would we give up core voltage increase if it not only improves our overclocking success and performance but also causes no efficiency loss of any kind? The bad news, however, is that these great features of Foxconn BloodRAGE mainboard didn’t’ really help us during CPU overclocking experiments.

I have already mentioned before that during processor overclocking the board doesn’t lower but increases the CPU core voltage under heavy workload and that all parameters (frequency and voltage in our case) are connected with one another. The problem is that the higher the base frequency and CPU overclocking, the more the board increases the voltage. It is only good in theory, because in reality the CPU cooling system was failing and every time the core temperature reached 98°C we had to stop the tests, lower the voltage and then the frequency, too. As a result, we couldn’t overclock the CPU to its maximum and had to stop at 181MHz base frequency. With Turbo Boost enabled and the processor clock frequency multiplier set at 21 we ended up with 3.8GHz CPU clock speed.

We overclocked without increasing the processor core voltage. The complex connection between the frequencies and voltages on Foxconn BloodRAGE we needed to lower the processor Vcore instead of raising it, but there was no way of doing it. However, we could raise the memory frequency to its absolute maximum, although the board wouldn’t allow it in nominal mode. Intel processor power-saving technologies kick in in idle mode and lower the processor clock multiplier as well as core voltage.

We tried to hit record-breaking frequencies with disabled Hyper Threading technology. When the CPU is only occupied with four computational threads instead of eight, its power consumption and heat dissipation get significantly lower. We achieved a very high though not record-breaking result. Our CPU hit 4GHz threshold.

And here is proof that Intel processor power-saving technologies continued working just fine: although we increased the processor Vcore, it keeps going down in idle mode:

I hope that I managed to paint a true picture of how in fact complicated it is to overclock processors on Foxconn BloodRAGE mainboard. It is not so simple to overclock Intel Core i7 to begin with, but in this case it becomes even harder because of numerous non-obvious dependencies and unpredictable response of the board. Therefore, I have my questions about the name of this particular mainboard - Foxconn BloodRAGE. World of Warcraft fans should be very well familiar with the power of certain warriors in this game that allows them to get all the rage they need but… at the expense of their own health. However, the board didn’t prove up to its name: things didn’t get bloody this time, my health remained OK and all nerve cells were safe and sound :) It is hard to overclock on Foxconn BloodRAGE mainboard, but it is in fact very interesting, too. The excessive complications made me sad that despite all effort I couldn’t push my CPU to the maximum limit.

Our regular readers may have noticed that the maximum results obtained during Intel Core i7-920 overclocking on Foxconn BloodRAGE mainboard are exactly the same as during the experiments on Asus P6T. Therefore, it will make perfect sense to compare the performance of systems built around these two solutions in the nominal mode and during overclocking.