Overclocking and Performance with Processor Vcore Increase

After a pretty disappointing start we have to see if the board can overclock better with increased processor Vcore. And this is where a very nice surprise was waiting for us. It turned out that unlike many contemporary mainboards, MSI Eclipse Plus doesn’t disable Intel processor power-saving technology when the CPU Vcore is increased. In idle mode not only the multiplier, but also the core voltage will be lowered, though not as much as it would in case we didn’t touch the voltage setting, but proportionally to the increase. It is excellent!

Our Intel Core i7-920 processor can work at 188MHz base frequency with 21x multiplier, i.e. overclock to 3.95GHz, if we increase its core voltage. We managed to achieve the exact same result on MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard. However, the peculiarities of Turbo Boost technology implementation wouldn’t let its multiplier increase to 21 under heavy load, so it would only work at 3.76GHz. Things may again seem not so good at all, but maybe there is a way of making this situation work for us? We didn’t manage to overclock our processor any higher on other mainboards, because it couldn’t bear the load of 8 computational threads at frequencies over 3.95GHz. But MSI Eclipse Plus will have processor frequency lower in this case, because the multiplier will stay at 20x in case there are many threads involved. The clock frequency multiplier will only increase to 21x under relatively low load, which the CPU may be able to handle. And it did! We managed to push the base frequency to 190MHz. Unfortunately, the memory didn’t make us too happy again. According to the results of our previous tests, it was supposed to work with 7-7-7-20 timings up until 1530MHz frequency. However, we had to increase the timings to 8-8-8-22 already at 1520MHz on MSI Eclipse Plus.

But the performance comparison is not so hopeless anymore. Our processor installed in Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P was overclocked to 188MHz base frequency. Under any load its clock frequency multiplier increased to 21 and its frequency reached 3.95MHz. The memory in this case worked at 1504MHz with 7-7-7-20-1T timings. When we increased the base frequency on MSI Eclipse Plus to 190MHz, the memory was working at 1520MHz with 8-8-8-22-1T timings. As for the resulting CPU frequency, it stayed at 3.8GHz under heavy load and more than four computational threads, but when the workload dropped its frequency reached 4GHz.

And here is proof that all Intel processor power-saving technologies work at their full potential in idle mode, even though the processor Vcore has been increased. Not only the processor clock multiplier, but also its core voltage is lowered in this case:

So, what if for some reason we are not happy about the correct but a nevertheless slightly lower performing Turbo Boost technology implementation on MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard? Could we give it up? We could, but our experiment failed right from the start. When we disabled Turbo Boost and increased the base frequency to 195MHz, the system reported an error in the beginning of stability tests almost right away. However, it worked fine at 190MHz base frequency. So what have we ended up with? We disabled Turbo Boost technology and now the CPU always works with 20x clock multiplier at 3.8GHz frequency. But before that, at the same base frequency and under relatively low workload the CPU worked with 21x multiplier and reached 4GHz speed. So, Turbo Boost technology helps achieve higher results, so should keep it up and running. Now let’s proceed to performance comparison during maximum CPU overclocking:

I think it is not bad at all! Of course, MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard does lose to its competitor in a few applications because it doesn’t increase the multiplier to 21x under multi-threaded workload and because of its higher memory timings. However, the loss is not that big. However, in some cases it even outperforms the rival due to higher memory frequency and higher CPU speed under low workload. Although, again, the gain is not too big, either. As  result, both mainboards appear pretty much equally fast during maximum processor overclocking. Not bad!