Optimizing VCORE voltage help

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Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby jwenham » Thu Jan 15, 2009 5:50 pm

Now that I have my 940 clocked to 4ghz I am in the process of optimizing the voltage. Should I enable or disable Load Line calibration in the bios. The reason I ask is after notching down a few clicks everything passed using OCCT but I noticed a very small fluctuation in voltage a Ripple of .02 (1.19%). My question is, is that a big deal and what shoul I set load line calibration at, and do I just keep notching the VCORE down till it becomes unstable? While I am there is the process the same for the QPI voltage. I assume that I should optimize the VCORE first and then QPI. After reading what I have just typed I think I will recap my questions below.

1. How should I set the LOAD LINE CALIBRATION in the BIOS?

2. Do I keep notching down the VCORE till it is unstable?

3. Is QPI optimization the same pocess?

4. VCORE or QPI optimization first?

Thanks in advance, Jim
Last edited by jwenham on Thu Jan 15, 2009 5:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby NickN » Thu Jan 15, 2009 7:21 pm

Start with QPI @ 1.31 to 1.35v


1. How should I set the LOAD LINE CALIBRATION in the BIOS?

ENABLED and forget it

2. Do I keep notching down the VCORE till it is unstable?

Yes however be aware you may be stable in OCCT tests and in hard 3D you may see a glitch.. try tapping Vcore up a touch if this happens

3. Is QPI optimization the same pocess?

Yes however be aware you may be stable in OCCT tests and in hard 3D you may see a glitch.. If you found the lowest Vcore already try tapping QPI up a touch if this happens..

be aware, more than likely 1.30 to 1.37 will be the norm for a 4GHz clock

4. VCORE or QPI optimization first?

Vcore. Set QPI to 1.31 to 1.35 and work Vcore



Quite frankly I doubt you will get QPI lower than 1.30 on such a clock and it remain stable in all operations.

Vcore will drive heat harder than QPI but both play a role
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Re: Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby dvpro » Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:07 pm

author=NickN link=1232059827/0#1 date=1232065264]

2. Do I keep notching down the VCORE till it is unstable?

Yes however be aware you may be stable in OCCT tests and in hard 3D you may see a glitch.. try tapping Vcore up a touch if this happens


Man...that sucked....
So at 4.18 Ghz I ran OCCT and let it finish. I hit 80 a few times very briefly, but the test finished. Fired up fsx took off from LA just after installing Nicks Sun Fix....I wanted to see how it looked with bloom on. I load up in the Extra and head West, with cloud tops at about 12,000. So at about 11500 I am finally getting on top but I am right in the middle of a large cloud. For some reason I am in spot view with smoke on from the Extra. I had real Twemp active was was about 65 across the cores. Next thing I know both my displays go white and I lose it all. 5 seconds on the power button to shut it down...wait a little bit and I want to see what happends on a normal boot. Boot up past the Bios and the damn SAS controller (raid) piops up...I had that disabled  cuz I don't use raid. Well, low and behold all the bios settings went back to default. I get back to the bios, and reset all my settings...I boot but after f-10 > Enter....screen goes blank and just sits there. Hard reset and than restart.....Option for safe mose, but I go right to Windows.....Now...clocked I am at 2.2 Ghz...WTF?
Reboot....lower the clock...22 @ 170 reboot...same damn thing. Back to the bios reset everything back to default...restart and all is normal from out of the box...Run OCCT for 20 minutes and I was at like 40c on that test. Go back to bios and clock it back to 4.1 ish and it seems to be holding....so before I start OCCT and get another BSOD Shall I be raising Vcore and leaving the clock alone? As it stands now...I am at: 22 by 188 = 4136
Vcore is at 1.392 and am idle at 40c........do I inch up vcore a little than occt test, followed by some WX in FSX?
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Re: Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby NickN » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:10 pm

what memory is this

It says Dom with fan kit... I have never seen a Corsair 2nd generation i7 memory product that uses a fan kit

post the memory in use for this system please.. a link to the exact product in the system
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Re: Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby dvpro » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:22 pm

Fan kit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835704001

Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145224

I swapped positions of the HS fan...it's now (facing the mobo in t he case) on the Rhand side blowing from right to left, with the case fans on the left.

Before air was being pulled accross the HS fins...now, air is being blown across the fins and right out the case fans.
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Re: Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby NickN » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:30 pm

fan is not needed at all


those sticks do not need the fan only the corsair DDR2 1066 and DDR3 1800 product require fan assist

the sticks are correct for i7 which is what I was concerned about


If your voltages are correct based on what I have posted for a 940 there is something else wrong.. not sure what it is but something is not right
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Re: Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby dvpro » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:41 pm

Is it possible (loaded question) the graphics card is a bit screwy?

Before I messed with anything....cd Install....brand new OS install...minimal SW installed, I noticed the left display or the primary had a slight vibration to it. I noted it...rebooted and all was well....It has happened maybe 4 times since I have has this rig...bout 3 weeks now. The last time (4-5 days ago) this happened I needed to know if it was the monitor or the card, so during the.....vibration fit..I swapped DVI plugs at the card. The display on the right was now vibrating and the one on the left was clear as a bell.
That tells me it's prolly the card. I RMA'd it but have yet to send it back as I want to buy another one so I am not down for very long. I have till Wed or Thurs to get this card to UPS. Anyhow...do you think some kind of graphics card issue could cause this issue? Is there a working version of OCCT for the GPU that I could run on it to point me one way or another?

BTW, swapping that fan direction has yeilded me about 4-6c cooler temps under load. Thanks
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Re: Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby dvpro » Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:22 pm

eerrr...Ok, so after what happened yesterday, I finally got everything up and running.....KSEA to PANC. PANC had some WX...600ovc lots of cloud build up. I turn 12nm final and line up on the LOC and am in the clouds.......than everything goes white....total lock up and a hard reboot is the only way to get out of it.

It's cold today...cores were at about 50-55c and the gpu was at 60c.
My gpu loads up to 85 ish so I was nowhere near it....is this the QPI- voltage that needs to be bumped up? Or a GPU issue?
182 X 22...= 4004
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Re: Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby NickN » Sun Jan 25, 2009 10:31 pm

if DRAM is 1.65/1.66 QPI/Dram is at 1.35 and vcore is 1.41 or less, I do not see it as a voltage issue

This sounds like something else is wrong in the system

We just went through something similar to this in simforums but the person was getting a 'driver stopped responding' error and the system was not locking completely up all the time but did on occassion

it was his 8800GTX Ultra that was bad.. he replaced it with a 285GTX and everything run fine now

So I do not know what the problem is. It could be you have a defective card
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Re: Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby jwenham » Sun Jan 25, 2009 11:18 pm

eerrr...Ok, so after what happened yesterday, I finally got everything up and running.....KSEA to PANC. PANC had some WX...600ovc lots of cloud build up. I turn 12nm final and line up on the LOC and am in the clouds.......than everything goes white....total lock up and a hard reboot is the only way to get out of it.

It's cold today...cores were at about 50-55c and the gpu was at 60c.
My gpu loads up to 85 ish so I was nowhere near it....is this the QPI- voltage that needs to be bumped up? Or a GPU issue?
182 X 22...= 4004
dram 728 @ 8-8-8-24 // 1T


Try the new 181.22 driver. I loaded it yesterday and it really helped to lower the temp (GPU). I saw about a 10c drop in temp and later found out that the new driver addresses power management on the 260/280 cards. I am assumming that to be the reason for the temp drop. Also are you using a bufferpool setting? I can't use it on my 260 at all. If I use it I get artifacting and wierd performance in heavy areas. Remove the tweek and all is good. :)
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Re: Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby dvpro » Sun Jan 25, 2009 11:22 pm

There was something in one of your tweaks.....Trying to remember....
For some reason I'm think Nhancer....the 8S setting or something like that....I remember reading that there was a tradeoff that when you hit WX....I thought it was in the AA settings of Nhancer....but for some reason I thought it had something to do with QPI voltages. I will reread all your settings...maybe I missed something. I know I read something that sait "this will bogg down your system in the clouds: or something along those lines.

I am a pretty through guy...I went by everything line by line...twice to make sure I had it right...I saw great improvements after so I assumed I was good to go...that's why I am thinking this card is messed up. Anyhow, I will RMA it...what cards are you liking for FSX with the rig I have?
Thx
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Re: Optimizing VCORE voltage help

Postby dvpro » Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:17 am

I'll give 181.22 a try...I was using 181.00 so we shall see.

For the FSX.cfg tweek...I never did those edits nor did I mess with the bufferpools. I'll give these drivers a ride and see if I can duplicate it. Thx
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EVGA GTX 285 SC Edition
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