Overclocking (again)

I have an Aurora with the i7 975 CPU.  Last evening I used the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility to see what it would do.  According to Intel's CPU Identification Utility, I now am running my CPU at 3.8GHz.  You can download the Extreme Tuning Utility from the Dell drivers page.  You can download the CPU ID utility from Intel's site.

The tunining utility has an auto-tune feature which is what I used (you can also do it manually if you are up to the task and know what you're doing -- I do not).  There's a moderate choice and also a more extreme option.  My PC didn't survive the latter.  The utility takes quite a bit of time to run (well over an hour).  I encountered several BSODs and numerous reboots so be forwarned.

There seems to be a lot of confusion on the overclocking issue.  I still have an old XPS 600 with an Intel 955 inside.  With that PC you can just go into the BIOS and change the multiplier.  When you do that and go back into Windows you'll see something like "Intel 955 @ 3.46GHz 3.73GHz".  So Windows must be keying in on the multiplier (the second value shown).  CPU-Z will also show the same thing and will also show the new, higher multiplier.

With the Aurora, you can't change the CPU multiplier.  You change other parameters and the Tuning Utility does the same thing but will do it for you and find your machine's optimal settings.  But when you're done, Windows will still show the original CPU speed (3.33GHz in my case).  CPU-Z will show whatever speed the CPU happens to be running at the time (the last time I ran it, it showed a multplier of 12 and a speed of 1.7GHz!).  But, again, when I ran the Intel CPU ID utility, it showed a speed of 3.8GHz which happens to be the maximum turbo boost setting that the Tuning Utility set for my PC.

So it seems there are different ways to measure and report CPU speed.  I don't know what they all mean or which one is "correct" but it seems that Windows might show your CPU as not being overclocked when it fact it very well could be.