Hi, I was wondering if it's fine to OC my i5 3570k to 4.4GHz with voltages on auto. If it's not then what voltages should I be using to be on the safe side? I've read a couple people saying never use auto voltage as it's too high, but never explain what may happen if running it high. Fried motherboard perhaps? Last night I play BF3 MP for several hours and didn't experience any system crashes indicating a bad OC. Today though I did try 4.5 & 4.6GHz and it caused the game to freeze.
Auto voltage can use more voltage than necessary but isnt bad unless it exceeds a limit, and that depends how you define bad. Chances are you wont get near that limit on IB with standard cooling, temps will kill the overclock first. The chance of auto voltage harming a chip is very low.
its more giving the cpu exactly what volts it needs and lowering temps. auto voltage wont kill your cpu provided temps are in check
Auto voltage isn't bad for low to medium overclocks. Pushing the overclock higher with auto volts is usually not stable or recommended, as it appears you found out when you tired to hit 4.5-4.6. If you froze in game at 4.5-4.6 I doubt that your 4.4 is totally stable. I would run some stress tests, Prime95 or LinX, to make sure. Be sure to monitor temps and volts while stressing to make sure all is well.
Leaving the Voltages on auto is ok for a mild overclock. Since you tried OCing to 4.5 and beyond and the game froze on you then that means that you need to adjust the voltages, but we cannot tell you what to set the voltages to because every processor is different. However every intel processor has a max voltage that you shouldnt go past which is 1.5V. If the voltages run past the max you could cook the processor.
Auto works until a certain point and is sometimes what people call stock voltage. Basically you run your CPU within Intel specs. If your CPU requires more voltage than it is allowed under specs you start getting errors like no boot or BSOD. If you still want to reach higher speeds you have to set manually certain settings.
You could run Prime95 or IntelBurnTest along with CPU-Z to see what voltage the Auto setting is applying to the CPU. Personally I don’t use any Auto settings; part of the overclocking fun is the fine tuning of your machine to exactly what is needed for a stable system.
I don't see why people care about an extra 200mhz here or there in gaming, it provides no difference these days. Most optimization i down to poor software, not hardware. I mean having a 3ghrz quad core CPU provides no fps decrease to a 4.5ghrz quad core cpu in say BF3. It's like ram, people always spend so much money on it for oc'in reasons but again u can buy ddr2 and has no performance difference to the best ddr3 u can get :\ SLI as well, I see no benefits using it, just causes more issues with drivers. Software needs to catch up with hardware tbh. Also I hate ppl who buy 4gb cards for AA......... just get a high resolution monitor and then you don't need AA. 1080p is ****ing ****.
Overclocking isn’t always about gaming performance or BF3 for that matter... And who cares if you hate people who buy 4gb cards, they have their reasons for needing the extra vram. Close-minded thinking
It matters for some games (like X3) and for others in Stereo (3D). Skyrim in 3D for example pushes my overclocked CPU pretty hard at times. Once a core gets to around 90% occupied, it can impact framerate. Again, Skyrim can make good use of more than 2GB of memory and the mods havent stopped rolling in! Are you suggesting they turn AA off if they want to use all the mods they like? Or do you think it might be a good idea to get a card with more memory?
I seriously hope the op hasnt taken this advice onboard n cranked the voltage up to 1.5 thinking its safe. With ivybridge the voltage threshhold is much lower. Most people wouldnt push more than 1.3-1.35v into their ivys as they heat up VERY quickly on the 22nm process. Your Q6600 might handle 1.5v, but just because his chip is an intel brand doesnt mean it reacts and handles 1.5....not even close. Op, for a 24/7 oc I wouldnt push over 1.3v to begin with which may give you a stable OC fbetween 4.4ghz to 4.5ghz, and like others have pointed out..stress test and watch those temps, the ivys are very sensitive. All chips oc differently so see where 1.3v gets you stable, if temps are still ok then try upping the volts to 1.35v. Hope this helps.
I understand that but 1.48v isnt safe either. My point was these chips react very differently compared to any other series of intel cpus with regard to voltage and clockspeed increase. Black, i never said the 22nm process was the culprit for these temp increases, but all of the ivybridge cpus on the 22nm process thus far react in this manner. I do think the die size is partly to blame as it is a much smaller surface area to try and cool efficiently. The other factor which has been proven (albeit only minimally) is the use of tim instead of solder between the die and ihs. Again, results have varied here with the removal of the ihs and applying better tim, but in some cases has shown some considerably lower temps for some users. This is what is known, theres still a lot not known yet and there may be other underlying reasons for ivy behaving like this. Time will tell.
I understand that too. I never said that the OP should set his voltage that high. I only said that he needed to adjust his voltage accordingly when he tried to OC to 4.5 and 4.6 which caused the game to freeze.
No, I haven't messed with any voltages just yet as so far I haven't experience a system crashes while gaming at 4.4GHz with stock voltage. I'll do some testing tomorrow though. At stock 3.4GHz I experienced constant slowdowns while playing on B2K servers and since OC'ing it's been smooth throughout. I have a 27" Dell for my work computer in the other room. I've played games without AA and the jaggies are still bad, especially on BF3. The game still looks heavily aliased with 4XMSAA + 8X TSAA + FXAA injected. For my gaming PC I use a 1920x1080 screen more for performance as well as the 120Hz.
The voltage auto setting is usually higher voltage than the cpu actually needs and subsequently will run hotter as a result. Another issue with running Auto (or a fixed voltage) is once you overclock, the speed you set will always be that speed even at idle which also produces unnecessary heat and power usage. Using a voltage offset instead will get the max speed that is set and drop way down at idle. I always go for moderate overclocks to get the most out of the money I spend on a cpu. I'm not one of those "live on the edge" overclockers who strives to run their system as close to the breaking point as possible. I never could wrap my head around that concept. On my 3770K, my goal was to overclock to 4.4 gigs on as low a voltage that is stable. Right now after a little tweaking, I got it running 4.4 gig at around 1.18 volts at load and a max of 70c running the Intel Burn Test software (which is going to be a lot hotter than any game would do). I can hang with that all day long.
