I recently got my hands on an Asus Maximus V Extreme and a 3770k. Lately I was benching on the RIVE, so I kinda forgot how to tweak the Z77 platform... I have decided that I will start tweaking/re-learning and checking the results with ROG RealBench! :cool:
It proved to be a very exciting experience, so I'm willing to share it...
🙂The objective was to get as high score as possible in RB, but keep the tweaking as simple as possible - I was curious primarily about this platform's and CPU's performance... more serious tweaking will come later...
Let's start with the hardware:
Mobo: Asus Maximus V Extreme - stock cooling
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770k - it is a used, de-lidded & re-lidded specimen (TIM has been changed in it), watercooled (chiller)
RAM: GSkill TridentX, 2x4GB, 2600MHz, 10-12-12-31 2T, 1.65V - stock cooling
SSD: Samsung 830, 128GB - for OS and applications
HDD: some small laptop platter - for data
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate - with all the updates installed
VGA: GeForce Titan - stock cooling (has no importance in this experiment)
ROG RealBench is the newest version to date:
v1.1As it can be seen, the only watercooled part is the CPU... it's connected to my
chiller and the coolant temp was set to
65F/18.33C, while the room temp was 23C...
The
OS is running in Diagnostic Mode, Realbench.exe's priority is set to Realtime and explorer.exe is turned off...
after each set of runs, restarted the system...
1. After setting up the system and installing all the updates, I run my first RealBench test... just to set a baseline...
At this point everything was on
BIOS defaults - got a system score of 5702. The first tweak was to choose the
XMP settings form Ai Tuner:
2400MHz/10-12-12-31 2T - score went up to 6453. just to have the sensation that I'm controlling the tweaking, I set the memories at their
XMP spec manually... and set the
CPU to 3.9GHz (39x100)... I started to run
two tests one after another - got a
max score of 6464. Then I switched the memories from
2T to 1T - just a little bit of increase in scores:
6485. Then I have started to push the CPU, basically by only increasing the multi... but before, I
disabled the CPU Spread Spectrum, Execute Disabled Bit and all C-States...
CPU at 4GHz (40x100) - score 6626. Just continued increasing the multi...
CPU at 4.2GHz - score 6907.
CPU at 4.4GHz - score 7198.
CPU at 4.6GHz - score 7469. And
CPU at 4.8GHz - score 770Please, note that I haven't changed anything else in BIOS beside of those mentioned above...
However, the next step, moving to 5GHz started to present some trouble:
The system booted up fine, even the AIDA64 stress-testing was going on well... - only the RealBench was not happy...
10. So, I took some extra measures...
enabled the Internal PLL Overvoltage, set LLC to Ultra HIgh and disabled VRM Sread Spectrum... also, started to
push the Vcore manually..
. at 1.520V finally got a result with
CPU at 5.0GHz - score 79611. Got very excited and applied an another tweak:
reduced the screen resolution to 1024x768... had to push the Vcore a little bit more (to 1.530) - and finally passed the 800 mark with a 4-core CPU!
5.0GHz - score 80912. Then followed a long period of trial and - mostly errors - while I was pushing the Vcore further for 5.1GHz... when I passed 1.6V, I actually set the
coolant temp to 60F/15.5C, just to stay on the safe side... also,
enabled the Xtreme Tweaking (not sure if this one helped) and
set the LLC to Extreme... I was running AIDA64 in background to monitor the temps... when I got to 1.66V, finally passed with
CPU at 5.1GHz - score 805Temps reached 80C during the second test!
13. And finally I reset the screen to the lower resolution...
CPU at 5.1GHz - score 821Here is the summary of my journey:
And a chart with the evolution of the scores:
I'm showing the each score from both of the runs, so it can be seen that it is a big difference running RealBench for the second time! Also, check how much improvement brings if you set the screen resolution lower!
One more thing... you also can see how the Vcore got increased... - please,
monitor your temps while tweaking!!! The role of this thread is to show some basic tweaks (maybe, letar on some more detailed ones too) and not suggesting that your CPU can do the same clocks at the same voltage! Your CPU can be actually better, needing less voltage... or can be worse... - don't forget that I used a chiller for cooling...
So, that's it for now... hope you will enjoy it...