Overclocking EVGA X58 SLI and i7 920 on OS X 10.5.7

[ztjangle]

Only days after my successful OSX86 installation on an EVGA X58 SLI motherboard, i gathered all my courage to venture into the overclocking realm. I am a newbie at this and I knew I could easily cause a lot of damage if not careful.

I asked ihavearedcouch whose installation guide I specifically followed to arrive at a successful installation of Leopard 10.5.7 on this great board.

He pointed to the following post which I studied and applied to an extent, but I thought it lacked detail and options:

 

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/evga_x58_sli/8.htm

 

I also checked out this, rather extreme overclocking guide. Like the first one, it primarily dealt with overclocking through Windows and E-LEET aopplication that came with the board:

 

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=642527...page=1&key=

 

When I followed the initial guide my computer crashed during boot and I was getting nowhere, just poking around BIOS frequency page and changing values hoping to get a satisfactory result. It crashed over and over, so I finaly had to revert to a default, non overclocked setting. (later I discovered a post on page 25 of that same guide that made more sense...)

 

You know, that E-LEET in Windows isn't really useful for OS X people because its settings are not stored in BIOS. It can of course serve as a Windows tool, but if you overclock the system rather strongly in Windows and then write the E-LEET settngs down and put them manually into BIOS, chances are that Mac OS will crash with those same settings. I guess overclocking stresses the whole system differently for each OS.

 

Having painfully leared all that through my own experience, I set out to tweak parameters one by one slowly untill I arrive at something usefull.

So here are the settings I stored in BIOS as my presets (bottom of frequency page, don't make me take a photo now) I assume all of your other BIOS settings are correct, in particular those pertaining to SATA mode (see the following link, thanks to ihavearedcouch)

 

http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/5121/img0033z.jpg

 

All of these settings are stable and give great results in Geekbench, Xbench and Cinebench.

Of course higher frequencies and higher voltages will heat things up more, possibly up to 70 degrees

Celsius at extreme settings (only during stressed CPU work--it cools down nicely afterwards, if you have a decent cooling rig--I use V8 by Cooler Master and Antec 900 two case) Make sure you monitor your temperatures with Tempwerature Monitor or a similar application. Again my processor is i7 920.

 

Overclocking Profiiles:-------1----------2----------3-----------4------------5-------------6----------7

 

Dummy O.C.--------------off---------off---------on----------off----------off------------off----------off

 

CPU freq-----------------2666-------3606-------3206--------3806--------4006---------3406--------3711

 

Memory freq-------------1067-------1442-------1282---------1602-------1602---------1362--------1562

 

CPU clock rato-------------20---------20---------20----------19----------20-----------20----------19

 

CPU Host freq-------------133--------180--------160----------200---------200---------170---------195

 

CPU VCore----------------auto--------auto-------auto--------1.375------1.38125-------auto---------1.30

 

DIMM Voltage-------------auto--------auto-------auto--------1.625-------1.625---------auto--------1.575

 

QPI PLL VCore-------------auto--------auto-------auto---------auto--------auto---------auto---------auto

 

 

All settins not mentioned in the table are default. Dummy O.C. only for mild overclocking.

As you can see I left QPI at auto as well, there was no need to mess with that, the other settings did it. I didn't even try to go past 1602 on Memory, some people pushed it as high as 1650, but I was happy with what I got.

I should finally mention that if you put in extreme overclocking settings and your computer crashes so that not even BIOS comes up when you restart, you need to clear CMOS (small red switch just above optical SPIDIF connector at the rear side of your computer). All BIOS settings will be back to default. You need to readjust the SATA settings again. If even that does not help, you've probably damaged the motherboard so be carefu. You can ask questions but this is as much as I know.

Good luck with your overclocking.

Zoran (ztjangle), Vancouver, BC, Canada

 

Well, that table came out pretty crooked even though I tried hard to keep the columns straight, but you get the idea. Follow all the figures down from each profile number in a serpent-like fashion.