Alienware Aurora alx overclocking problems

set base clock to 180, multiplier to 20, vcore to 1.24

sorry, you probably have hyperthreading enabled by default, vcore might be more like 1.26

Ok but the vcore is set to auto in the bios and I dont want to disable any of the intel technology for example turbo boost.

did you do the adjustments?  should be 3.6ghz with 1440mhz ram instead of what you had prior.  If this works out, you could then try 190x19 for 3.6ghz with 1520mhz ram  (this might run too hot with the higher base clock)

Turbo boost temporarily raises the multiplier for one core.  ie, when stressed, your cpu's multiplier will raise for one core.  Pretty much a dumb feature unless your cpu has a low clock.  Hyperthreading is another dumb feature that marginally raises performance for heavily threaded applications.  it also generates a huge amount of heat.  Hyperthreading essentially is a weaker cpu core to distrubute tasks to make the operating system believe you have twice the cpu core amount.  Hyperthreading is almost guaranteed to lower your performance in anything that matters.

Ok but dont we have a standered 120mm water cooling fan installed to get rid of the heat? Also (I forgot you this) my target is 4ghz at least.

did you do the adjustments?  should be 3.6ghz with 1440mhz ram instead of what you had prior.  If this works out, you could then try 190x19 for 3.6ghz with 1520mhz ram  (this might run too hot with the higher base clock)   Turbo boost temporarily raises the multiplier for one core.  ie, when stressed, your cpu's multiplier will raise for one core.  Pretty much a dumb feature unless your cpu has a low clock.  Hyperthreading is another dumb feature that marginally raises performance for heavily threaded applications.  it also generates a huge amount of heat.  Hyperthreading essentially is a weaker cpu core to distrubute tasks to make the operating system believe you have twice the cpu core amount.  Hyperthreading is almost guaranteed to lower your performance in anything that matters.

On extreme CPU's the turbo boost will raise all cores. Extreme CPU's also have the option to set the value of each core.

ah, thanks for the tip, wasn't aware of that.

@OP after looking around, i feel 182x22 is probably going to be your sweet spot for 4ghz and decently clocked ram

But my ram is rated at 1600mhz and that will force up to 1820 which will cause a blue screen or force down to 1456mhz. If I get that problem sorted I will try your recomendations about my overclock and hopefully get back.

your ram is rated for 1600?  i'd try something like i did with my desktop, 200 base clock, 19 multi, htt off.  this turns up 3.8ghz with 1600mhz ram, the multi can be flipped to 20 for 4ghz, but i promise that as long as you have the 200 base clock, 200x19 _feels_ better than 4ghz+ utilizing a lower base clock and higher multiplier

There is another problem guys my base clock wont move in the bios neither up or down

Because it's locked. Only extreme CPU's are unlocked. Your QPI will be locked at 4.8GT/s and you will also have no access to the turbo modes.

You need to use the BCLK to overclock it. I think the base clock for the 960 is x24?? So with turbo on you would get a multiplier of x25. Keep that in mind if you OC. You may want to keep turbo off to keep it at that x24 untill you know it's stable at the turbo x25.

You basically have a i7 920 that has been overclocked to 3.2ghz. The 920 has a base multiplier of x20 (x21 with turbo) while you have x24. The 960 was just binned higher because it was better silicon.

Another thing to keep in mind is when you OC chips like yours you end up having to turn of HT and turbo. This is fine for single threaded apps but times are changing.

A good example of this is Civilization 5. A DX11 game does not need to use all of the DX11 features to be called a DX11 game. Civ 5 happens to use all the features and along with the new Nvidia drivers it will use all your cores in their new API. Civ 5 is a fully threaded DX11 game.

A cpu like say the i7 920 or 2600 that has been overclocked to lets say 4.5ghz sounds awesome untill you understand that to do that they are running only a single thread.

More games are being made to use multi threading so this change will be more of an impact as time goes by. Anyone running new Nvidia drivers has this support enabled which will allow any game to take advantage of multi threading.

Some good reads on it: forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php

Ok guys I will try to overclock the chip without turbo mode. But I swear you can move the base clock downwards. Also one more thing can you fit an 32mm chip eg i7-970 on my excisting motherboard which has a 45mm i7-960?

What have folks done so far w/ the 990X? I got it to 4.4 (stable) by applying OC lvl 1 then change turbo multiplier to 33. Total noob to OC; Other forums (non-Dell) seem to say that if the multiplier is unlocked (even if turbo mode), just use that. Ya, it's not running at 4.4 all the time due to speedstep(?), but goes up when needed.

Yes u can as long as it has the same socket, LGA 1366. but it wont have significant boost from 960 to 970.