Hey guys,
 
Here is another quick guide that may help you to maximize your CPU performance :) Before starting this guide make sure to download the latest BIOS for your motherboard!
 
For this guide I used the following:

• Intel Core i7 3960X
• EVGA X79 SLI
• EVGA Superclock CPU Cooler w/ LGA 2011 Mounts

1. Firstly, go into the BIOS by pressing the Delete or F2 key when the system is posting. Head over to the Save/Exit section and select Restore Defaults, next select Yes. This will ensure we are starting with a fresh BIOS setup:
 
2. Next, head over to the Overclocking tab. Here we will make a few adjustments:

• CPU Multiplier Setting set to 46 - This is our CPU frequency. Since the default BClock is 100MHz; 100x46 = 4600MHz or 4.6GHz. This is the option we will use to configure our CPU Frequency. On X79 we also have the ability to set BClock Ratio (BCLK Frequency Ratio) of 1.00, 1.25, 1.57, etc. We will not cover BClock Ratio's in this guide, but it is another option to increase CPU frequency. Note: We have seen a good number of CPU's that are able to hit this frequency, but your CPU may vary.
• VDroop set to Without VDroop - This will help keep our CPU voltage stable and reduce voltage sag under load.
• CPU VCore Control Set to Fixed - You can choose to set a Fixed Voltage, or use CPU Offset's.
• CPU VCore set to 1.400V - In this guide we are going to start at 1.4V, this may vary depending on your CPU. This needs to be typed in manually in mV. (ex 1.4V = 1400mV)
• DIMM Voltage set to Varies - Set your DIMM voltage to manufacturer recommended spec. You can set seperate DIMM voltages for each memory bank.

3. Now we will configure some of our CPU settings, the options in this portion are completely optional. If you wish for your CPU to use Intel Speedstep Technology, which saves on power by downclocking when the system is idle, skip this section. For this guide we are configuring our CPU to run at full performance at all times. Head over to the CPU Core Ratio Control Section.

• C1E, C3, C6 and C7 set to Disable - These are powersaving features.

• EIST set to Disable. This is Intel Speedstep Technology.

• DO NOT DISABLE TURBO MODE! This essentially allows your CPU to OC at all!

 

4. This step is completely optional, you can save a BIOS Profile in the Save/Exit section and call it whatever you like. This is useful incase you need to reset your BIOS settings or make changes you can always load your presets easily.
 

 
5. Now it is time to Boot into Windows! Select Save Changes and Exit, and your system will boot. Make sure to keep a close eye on your CPU temperatures. TIP: You can look at the debug LED on the motherboard to see your CPU temperature:
 
6. Now that we are in Windows, we will run a CPU Stress test. Ex: LinX, Prime95 or 3DMark CPU test. We can check our CPU frequency by using the EVGA ELEET Utility. www.evga.com/eleet
 
7. If it completes with no failures, we can reboot, go back into the BIOS, and increase the CPU multiplier 1x at a time.
 
8. You may need to experiment with increase the CPU Voltage if you have issues with system stability, remember to take it a step a time, and keep an eye on those CPU temps! Increasing CPU Voltage will likely increase your CPU temperature. You can also try enabling the ELEET Ratio Control in the BIOS, and use ELEET to increase the CPU multiplier one step at a time.

9. Once we find an acceptable CPU frequency, we can use the EVGA ELEET utility to save a validation, and upload it for the world to see!
 
 

Jacob, 
What's up with the KR warranty on a Flagship Motherboard?? I don't think the loyal EVGA customer will appreciate that one bit. Granted most of us change out before 3 years is up. But in the back of our minds we enjoyed knowing we're covered. Whomever came up with that. Let them know we're disappointed. 

firerx


Jacob, 
What's up with the KR warranty on a Flagship Motherboard?? I don't think the loyal EVGA customer will appreciate that one bit. Granted most of us change out before 3 years is up. But in the back of our minds we enjoyed knowing we're covered. Whomever came up with that. Let them know we're disappointed. 

Not gonna lie when I was converting my friends to EVGA products that was a huge selling point... but honestly I won't miss it. I swap out new equipment every 18 months as it is or sooner plus I'd rather speak to an english, American based NOC then getting shipped to India or even worse - Not having anything but forums for support. (asus etc.)  I'm not an employee but every company has to look at cutting costs + increasing profits in these hard economic times so who knows what options were on the table.

It can also be upgraded to 10 Year + Stepup on registration.

Voltage --> hey  Jacob, thanks for the guide.  On the X58 Bios VCORE had white (within spec) green (over spec but reasonable especially if you have good cooling) and red (very dangerous).
 
Is the CPU voltage still called VCore?  What are the white, green and red limits?

Your can reference X58 for that, usually around 1.4V is reasonable, above that can get dicey unless you have good cooling, especially 1.5V+ I would really only recommend for water or really good air cooling.

Thanks!  Is there going to be a large OC guide put out like there was for x58?

Hey Jacob, I have to back Fire on this one. I've been waiting for this chip for quite a while and certainly didn't expect EVGA to pull a warranty stunt like this. It's nice you can purchase a 10 year upgrade but the Classifieds have always been the flagship m/b. $450 isn't a steal for the m/b so I'm dissapointed that we have the "add cash" option for a warranty. Now I have to shop (something I would never have considered before) to justify such a costly purchase. I'm sure I'll be going all EVGA again, but this time it's with a question mark in my mind. Did you guys lose confidence in your product? Hell, I never did. And as far as skakum's coments go, I used it also to steer my friends to EVGA (the lifetime warranty) and if you haven't lost confidence in your product, in 2008 when I started buying strictly EVGA, the economy sucked then also. As far as the economy sucking, hell, it's been in the tank since 2001, so what's the difference. Put a bug in Joe's ear we aren,t happy about it and tell him I think loyal customers deserve better.

I don't think it's a confidence issue as it is a revenue and cash allocation equation.  Doing the warranty this way frees up cash reserves for investment as opposed to tying them up in risk exposure.  It's good business sense and ensures they can keep delivering the highest quality products.  I can't say for certain this is why since they're a private firm and no financials are available to review, but that's my guess.  Savvy, if you ask me.
 
Now, regarding the OC Guide itself and not the threadjacking that's taken place, when I follow the guide to the letter, the changes don't always stick on restart.  I assume this is part of the bugs to be worked out.  Also, if they do stick and I boot, I find no higher than 3.6 GHz, as it appears something is in fact set wrong in the BIOS limiting OC.  My guess is that it will be resolved shortly so I'm being patient but thought I'd pass it along.

Jacob,
 
I got the settings to stick... I restored defaults and walked back through it and that seemed to do the trick.
 
Now at 1.4v eleet shows 1.411v at idle and as soon as I fire up LinX it jumps to 1.445v, no big deal, temps jump to mid-50s but then it shuts down and restarts.
 
Obviously, I can dial back the multi or keep bumping up the Vcore, but I was curious if any of the other voltages should be bumped (I already set the DIMM voltage properly)?  VCC, PLL, etc.? I spent a lot of time on my P55 getting those just so for stability.

Yeah, we want a big guide!  Voltages -- what they mean, what there safe ranges are, etc.  Asus has a series of really good videos on you tube.  I hate learning from videos though.  EVGA should put out a detailed thermal/voltage/OC guide. .. and I mean detailed, indexed, glossaried all that.  If it was good enough quality and focused on the x79, I'd probably be willing to pay $50-$100.00 for it.
 
@mwparrish: High quality Asus x79 overclocking video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx2z07sFM2I (53 minutes long!) 
second:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seVPIR06ZY4&feature=relmfu (18 minutes)
 
Voltages, cooling, recommended settings etc are all covered.

I'll check out that vid when I don't have to multi-task between work, this, and grad school! Ha!
 
Interesting, discovery just now... I turned Vdroop back on and enabled Internal PLL override and set the Vcore to fixed 1.425 and it's now perfectly stable at 42x, 66ºC, 1.376v Vcore at load.
 
140 GFlops in LinX at 4.7 seconds a run with just 6 threads.  Very nice.
 
Before I had Vdroop off, PLL to 1.9v, and Vcore at 1.4v and it was drawing up to 1.482v and temps were in the mid-70s at 42x multi and it would crash/restart within seconds.  I thought I had a poor chip for a second but it appears that simply reenabling a few things really helps.  Thumbs up to this mobo for making OCing even easier than originally thought.
 
--EDIT--
 
So it appears doing the above with Vcore set to 1475mv and PLL set to 1.9 does the trick at 46x for me when leaving Vdroop on and turning on Internal PLL Override.
 
LinX 6 thread - 150+ GFlops
LinX 12 thread - 128+ GFlops
 

 

I'm curious if EVGA has re-created the issue I am having. When I go into the bios it is as if my keyboard is repeatedly pressing the right arrow key. It becomes impossible to change any setting. 

rubicsphere


I'm curious if EVGA has re-created the issue I am having. When I go into the bios it is as if my keyboard is repeatedly pressing the right arrow key. It becomes impossible to change any setting. 

 
try it in a different port?

Alright that worked, but now I have another issue. I have some DDR3-2000 in the board that boots at 1333. No problem, I figured, I would just change the settings. Well I can't. If I change them to run at 1866 with the recommended 1.65V it fails to boot with code 67 every time. The strange thing is that clearing the CMOS won't make it boot I have to pull out my RAM switch them to the other slots then boot. I swear this is the WORST motherboard I have ever bought and I've had some of the early ECS stuff. Also, I can't boot into windows unless I turn on those USB "handshake" settings (can't remember the exact name off the top of my head). If the BIOS is not out within a week I will be returning this junk and getting an ASUS

Did you try to set the speed using some kind of profile or did you enter the divider, timings and command rate manually?  If you did one, try the other.  What is voltage is your ram supposed to run at according to the sticker for 2000Mhz?

rubicsphere


Alright that worked, but now I have another issue. I have some DDR3-2000 in the board that boots at 1333. No problem, I figured, I would just change the settings. Well I can't. If I change them to run at 1866 with the recommended 1.65V it fails to boot with code 67 every time. The strange thing is that clearing the CMOS won't make it boot I have to pull out my RAM switch them to the other slots then boot. I swear this is the WORST motherboard I have ever bought and I've had some of the early ECS stuff. Also, I can't boot into windows unless I turn on those USB "handshake" settings (can't remember the exact name off the top of my head). If the BIOS is not out within a week I will be returning this junk and getting an ASUS

 
My XMP v1.2 G.Skills boot at 1600 but I get the same thing at 1866 as well.  Like you said, clear CMOS and complete power drain won't fix it.  You have to remove the DIMMs.
 
Honestly, I love the board and the BIOS update will likely fix it.  EVGA is always quick and provides updates often.
 
I went ahead and ordered the XMP v1.3 G.Skills anyway though since X79/Socket 2011 uses XMP v1.3 and older XMP v1.2 and earlier are not compatible unless you entering everything manually.

I like the board too. When it's working it is rock solid stable. BF3 is so amazing with 12 threads. OC'ing isn't even a big deal right now either it's just the principle of paying $300 for something that is "broken".

I had a similar memory issue W/Asus R4E:
 
Asus forum: [Problem][solved] Can anybody help me get my memory running at rated speed?
 
but I did not have a booting prob at any setting. GL figuring out how to translate it to your mobo settings.
BTW, the Asus forum is terrible. It sometimes don't even put posts in the proper order. 

Jacob,
 
Just put together the X79 FTW.  Bone stock, appears to run fine.
 
I put in all the values you lay out above, exactly, reboot, and everything stays stock.  No multi increase, nothing.
 
When i boot back into BIOS, the OC settings are still there, then boot back into Windows and it's like nothing happened.  ELEET shows all stock values.  Apparently Windows thinks I'm kidding about the values.
 
I've also tried to run the 025 beta BIOS installer from your other thread about 4 times, and the BIOS still says 020.
 
Any suggestions?

beaker7


Jacob,

Just put together the X79 FTW.  Bone stock, appears to run fine.

I put in all the values you lay out above, exactly, reboot, and everything stays stock.  No multi increase, nothing.

When i boot back into BIOS, the OC settings are still there, then boot back into Windows and it's like nothing happened.  ELEET shows all stock values.  Apparently Windows thinks I'm kidding about the values.

I've also tried to run the 025 beta BIOS installer from your other thread about 4 times, and the BIOS still says 020.

Any suggestions?

 
1. Don't try to flash the BIOS on your FTW with a BIOS for the SLI motherboard.  It's not working because it's not supposed to.
2. This happened on the SLI board as well, the fix was to always "restore defaults" first and then change multi and voltages and verify the rest, save and exit.  If don't "Restore Defaults" each time or you do this in any other order it will change its configuration including enabling/disabling cpu functions and they likely won't stick.
 
It's definitely a BIOS bug and will I'm certain it will be fixed in an upcoming update.

I misspoke, I have the SLI, not FTW.
 

mwparrish

2. This happened on the SLI board as well, the fix was to always "restore defaults" first and then change multi and voltages and verify the rest, save and exit.  If don't "Restore Defaults" each time or you do this in any other order it will change its configuration including enabling/disabling cpu functions and they likely won't stick. 

It's definitely a BIOS bug and will I'm certain it will be fixed in an upcoming update.

 
This is exactly what I am doing.  Restore Defaults, plug in values, Save and Exit.

I boot into windows and everything is stock.
 
But then, reboot and enter BIOS, the settings I put in are there.  The settings are persisting, but Windows is not obeying them.
 
 

Welcome to the club brother. I have had settings stay a few times but it's a real PITA to get them to stay. Once thing that helps is:
1. Load defaults press F4 choose yes
2. Re-enter BIOS and after you make any change F4 then save and exit
3. Re-enter BIOS make a change F4, exit
4. Repeat until all settings are where you want them 
 
Make sure you F4 after every little change it takes forever but that's how I get my settings to stay.

rubicsphere


Welcome to the club brother. I have had settings stay a few times but it's a real PITA to get them to stay. Once thing that helps is:
1. Load defaults press F4 choose yes
2. Re-enter BIOS and after you make any change F4 then save and exit
3. Re-enter BIOS make a change F4, exit
4. Repeat until all settings are where you want them 

Make sure you F4 after every little change it takes forever but that's how I get my settings to stay.

 
Is windows obeying the settings for you?  The settings are sticking in the BIOS for me, they are not reverting or anything.  Just that Windows isn't following orders.

Yes they are but only if I do the stuff above. I would like EVGA to let us know when we can expect a better BIOS

Ok. No matter what I tried, the machine would not boot off USB in order to do the flash via DOS.

Out of frustration I moved the bios jumper over to the secondary bios and now everything seems to be working as it should. The .25 update worked and Windows is obeying the settings set in BIOS.

Currently cruising along at 4.6 ghz.

beaker7


Ok. No matter what I tried, the machine would not boot off USB in order to do the flash via DOS.

Out of frustration I moved the bios jumper over to the secondary bios and now everything seems to be working as it should. The .25 update worked and Windows is obeying the settings set in BIOS.

Currently cruising along at 4.6 ghz.

I'm not sure 'what you tried' here, but when I installed Windows from USB, I had to make sure the USB stick was plugged into a USB 2.0 port and then had to tell the BIOS to boot to it.  The BIOS didn't recognize it was there in a USB 3.0 slot.  This is fairly normal though and I experienced this on my ASUS Z68 board as well.  Be sure to let us know if you did this and it still didn't work, as that would be a definite bug.

mwparrish

beaker7


Ok. No matter what I tried, the machine would not boot off USB in order to do the flash via DOS.

Out of frustration I moved the bios jumper over to the secondary bios and now everything seems to be working as it should. The .25 update worked and Windows is obeying the settings set in BIOS.

Currently cruising along at 4.6 ghz.

I'm not sure 'what you tried' here, but when I installed Windows from USB, I had to make sure the USB stick was plugged into a USB 2.0 port and then had to tell the BIOS to boot to it.  The BIOS didn't recognize it was there in a USB 3.0 slot.  This is fairly normal though and I experienced this on my ASUS Z68 board as well.  Be sure to let us know if you did this and it still didn't work, as that would be a definite bug.

 
Yep,  that's exactly what I did (USB2).  I selected it first in boot order, even disabling the CDROM and SSD disks.  With the board in the factory BIOS position, it would not boot off USB and it Windows would not obey the BIOS settings.
 
Once i switched the BIOS jumper to the alternate position, everything works.

beaker7

Yep,  that's exactly what I did (USB2).  I selected it first in boot order, even disabling the CDROM and SSD disks.  With the board in the factory BIOS position, it would not boot off USB and it Windows would not obey the BIOS settings.

Once i switched the BIOS jumper to the alternate position, everything works.

Then now you should flash your BIOS#1 to get that working right, otherwise you risk unusable mobo if you have a BIOS 2 failure such as a bad BIOS#2 flash. I think the procedure is the same as regular BIOS flash but you switch the jumper W/power on just before the flash.