Help Maximize Performance (since upgrading is...not so realistic ATM)

[rodion.zissou]

Since it'll likely be awhile before the market stabilizes and I can afford to upgrade my system, I thought I'd reach out for some tips on squeezing out every ounce of performance I can on this system built in 2017. The current over clocks are stable considering they were set 4 years ago and with countless benchmarks, stress tests and games running fine with no display crashes or BSODs. If memory serves I do think I upped the voltage on my CPU ever so slightly during initial OC. Please see attached screenshot.

Can you advise on current system specs/performance and find any room for improvement?

Are there any benchmarks or system stats you'd like to see to better advise?

Would it be worth it to work on my RAM timing? (never done this, no idea how to yet)

 

I've been super happy with this rig for the last four years but this is LTT and I want MOOOOREE....if reasonable/possible.

 

Maintaining component health is important to me as I really don't know when I'll be able to afford any replacements/upgrade parts.

Main use case is gaming although I render 4k video on Resolve also.

NOT LOOKING FOR HARDWARE UPGRADE SUGGESTIONS...RN ANYWAY

 

 

 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

That 6600K is definitely holding your 1080Ti back.

 

Why are you using a base clock OC? Very odd. You have a Z270 board, right? You should be running it at least at 4.6Ghz with base clock at 100 and multiplier at 46 or more.

[rodion.zissou]

4 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

That 6600K is definitely holding your 1080Ti back.

 

Why are you using a base clock OC? Very odd. You have a Z270 board, right? You should be running it at least at 4.6Ghz with base clock at 100 and multiplier at 46 or more.

TBH I'm not sure how to answer your question as I OCd this chip so long ago. Can you recommend some steps for improvement? BTW, I'm running Time Spy to add results to OP. And yes, z270e

[jaslion]

You still have that 4790k system? If so use that the 4790k is currently the better cpu for gaming compared to the 6600k due to having 8 threads. Then just slap your 1080ti in it and enjoy stutter free 2021 gaming. Also enjoy faster video rendering.

[rodion.zissou]

1 minute ago, jaslion said:

You still have that 4790k system? If so use that the 4790k is currently the better cpu for gaming compared to the 6600k due to having 8 threads. Then just slap your 1080ti in it and enjoy stutter free 2021 gaming. Also enjoy faster video rendering.

unfortunately i do not, and ya IIRC i got that 4790k to 5Ghz

[jaslion]

Just now, rodion.zissou said:

unfortunately i do not, and ya IIRC i got that 4790k to 5.ghz

Yeah that system would have been flat out better.

 

Sadly there is basically nothing to do here now as well that 6600k is the biggest problem here and even overclocking it to insane levels wont solve the fact it simply doesn't have enough threads.

[rodion.zissou]

3 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Yeah that system would have been flat out better.

 

Sadly there is basically nothing to do here now as well that 6600k is the biggest problem here and even overclocking it to insane levels wont solve the fact it simply doesn't have enough threads.

Thanks for the info, any suggestions for the current system as is?

[rodion.zissou]

25 minutes ago, rodion.zissou said:

TBH I'm not sure how to answer your question as I OCd this chip so long ago. Can you recommend some steps for improvement? BTW, I'm running Time Spy to add results to OP. And yes, z270e

Does this answer your question, i suppose i should go refresh myself with an OC guide to see what I've done wrong? Any advice?

 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

1 hour ago, rodion.zissou said:

Does this answer your question, i suppose i should go refresh myself with an OC guide to see what I've done wrong? Any advice?

 

Change the BCLK back to 100 or Auto. Use the Core Ratio to OC the 6600K. You should be able to get 4.6-4.8Ghz with a modest bump in Vcore. And you should be able to get the cache frequency within 0.2Ghz of that or better. It's a pretty easy process.

[rodion.zissou]

42 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Change the BCLK back to 100 or Auto. Use the Core Ratio to OC the 6600K. You should be able to get 4.6-4.8Ghz with a modest bump in Vcore. And you should be able to get the cache frequency within 0.2Ghz of that or better. It's a pretty easy process.

The following boot, even ran Prime 95 (20 minutes), but crashed on Cinebench R15

4.8Ghz at 1.54v - 3.9Ghz cache

4.7Ghz at 1.354v - 3.9Ghz cache

 

The following failed boot

4.6Ghz at 1.355v - 4.6Ghz cache

 

The following boots, completes Cinebench R15, crashes on Prime 95

4.6Ghz at 1.355v - 4.5Ghz cache

 

The following booted, completed Cinebench, completed RealBench, but Prime 95 pushed package temps to 95C (hadn't seen it go that high yet, I aborted)

4.6Ghz at 1.355v - 4.4Ghz cache

Edited June 30, 2021 by rodion.zissou
edited for benchmark update

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

Don't do Prime95 Small FFT.

 

CinebenchR20 is good enough IMO, but everyone is different. Games won't push it nearly that hard, though.

[rodion.zissou]

1 hour ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Don't do Prime95 Small FFT.

 

CinebenchR20 is good enough IMO, but everyone is different. Games won't push it nearly that hard, though.

Alright, so here's what your advice has netted me so far! Thanks so much for the tips. I'd be thrilled if you saw any more opportunities. Maybe I should post in another thread regarding the GPU to see if there's any room for improvement there.

Heaven

Score

from 2692 to 2773 = 3% gain

FPS

from 106.9 to 110.1 = 3% gain

 

3D Mark

from 7698 to 8161 = 6% gain

 

Cinebench R15

from 639 to 666 = 4% gain

 

Cinebench R20

1806

 

 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

Hey so I was thinking, you might be able to squeeze a bit more out of your CPU by OCing your RAM. You were already running it at 3090Mhz because of the BCLK OC vs the 3000Mhz stock speed.

 

If I were you, I'd see if 3200Mhz would work without changing any other settings, or maybe just by increasing the voltage a bit.

[rodion.zissou]

3 hours ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Hey so I was thinking, you might be able to squeeze a bit more out of your CPU by OCing your RAM. You were already running it at 3090Mhz because of the BCLK OC vs the 3000Mhz stock speed.

 

If I were you, I'd see if 3200Mhz would work without changing any other settings, or maybe just by increasing the voltage a bit.

I planned on tackling this next. I found this guide, but TBH it's a lot to digest. I was getting tripped up in the ASUS BIOS because I couldn't find tRP and tCWL. Also want to make sure I disable AUTO on the correct voltage settings. I got the impression that OCing the RAM can cause a lot of voltage to get thrown into the slots if AUTO remains enabled. But out of curiosity I boosted to 3.2Gz without adjusting timing or anything and booted fine. Didn't run any tests though. If you could provide any help executing the guide I linked, that'd be sweet, but what do you think? Unnecessary?

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

39 minutes ago, rodion.zissou said:

I found this guide

Unless you want to get really deep into this and spend a lot of time and frustration on it, I don't recommend doing a comprehensive guide like that. In the best case there is little benefit, in your case much less. Memory overclocking is more of a masochists' hobby. I enjoy it, but not many do. There is a lot to it.

39 minutes ago, rodion.zissou said:

make sure I disable AUTO on the correct voltage settings

That would be VCCIO and VCCSA. I don't believe this was an issue on Z270, but I could be wrong. As long as auto doesn't do more than 1.25V then you are fine, which it shouldn't do at 3000Mhz nor at 3200Mhz.

39 minutes ago, rodion.zissou said:

a lot of voltage to get thrown into the slots

These are actually voltages that go to the IMC in your CPU. They don't go to the "slots" by which I think you meant the DIMM slots.

39 minutes ago, rodion.zissou said:

But out of curiosity I boosted to 3.2Gz without adjusting timing or anything and booted fine.

Do two things to test. Run memtest86 from a bootable usb overnight and allow it to run through all tests. Then, do a custom prime95 test with large FFT (512-4096), and at least 75% of your RAM (12GB tested with the in-place box unticked.

[rodion.zissou]

5 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Unless you want to get really deep into this and spend a lot of time and frustration on it, I don't recommend doing a comprehensive guide like that. In the best case there is little benefit, in your case much less. Memory overclocking is more of a masochists' hobby. I enjoy it, but not many do. There is a lot to it.

That would be VCCIO and VCCSA. I don't believe this was an issue on Z270, but I could be wrong. As long as auto doesn't do more than 1.25V then you are fine, which it shouldn't do at 3000Mhz nor at 3200Mhz.

These are actually voltages that go to the IMC in your CPU. They don't go to the "slots" by which I think you meant the DIMM slots.

Do two things to test. Run memtest86 from a bootable usb overnight and allow it to run through all tests. Then, do a custom prime95 test with large FFT (512-4096), and at least 75% of your RAM (12GB tested with the in-place box unticked.

I'll work on this tonight, thanks for deterring me from potentially unnecessary frustration.

[rodion.zissou]

On 7/1/2021 at 8:44 AM, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Unless you want to get really deep into this and spend a lot of time and frustration on it, I don't recommend doing a comprehensive guide like that. In the best case there is little benefit, in your case much less. Memory overclocking is more of a masochists' hobby. I enjoy it, but not many do. There is a lot to it.

That would be VCCIO and VCCSA. I don't believe this was an issue on Z270, but I could be wrong. As long as auto doesn't do more than 1.25V then you are fine, which it shouldn't do at 3000Mhz nor at 3200Mhz.

These are actually voltages that go to the IMC in your CPU. They don't go to the "slots" by which I think you meant the DIMM slots.

Do two things to test. Run memtest86 from a bootable usb overnight and allow it to run through all tests. Then, do a custom prime95 test with large FFT (512-4096), and at least 75% of your RAM (12GB tested with the in-place box unticked.

I got a ton of errors @ 3.2Ghz in the first pass alone. ( > 300)

Passed with 0 errors @ 3Ghz

 

Going to inch it up by one step and re-test tonight.

 

As an aside, my OC on the GPU was all wrong too so I was able to get a really nice gain by pulling down core clock and upping VRAM by +500Mhz. I'll post final results in a couple days. Thx again for the help.

[rodion.zissou]

On 7/1/2021 at 4:40 AM, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Hey so I was thinking, you might be able to squeeze a bit more out of your CPU by OCing your RAM. You were already running it at 3090Mhz because of the BCLK OC vs the 3000Mhz stock speed.

 

If I were you, I'd see if 3200Mhz would work without changing any other settings, or maybe just by increasing the voltage a bit.

In addition to my update above, which voltage/s would I want to adjust and how far would you recommend I go to get the 3200Mhz stable?

Which voltage settings?

How much should I step up for each test?

What is the limit I should stop at?

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

What does your motherboard set for VCCIO and VCCSA when you are at 3200Mhz? It may be too low.

 

Assuming the RAM's default DRAM voltage is 1.35V, try stepping it up by .05V at a time until you reach 1.5V. See if your errors decrease, increase, or stay the same.

[rodion.zissou]

1 minute ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

What does your motherboard set for VCCIO and VCCSA when you are at 3200Mhz? It may be too low.

 

Assuming the RAM's default DRAM voltage is 1.35V, try stepping it up by .05V at a time until you reach 1.5V. See if your errors decrease, increase, or stay the same.

 IIRC 1.27, but I'm actually in the middle of a memtest @ 3033Mhz (2 passes no errors so far)

[CryingWimp]

A CPU upgrade would be a massive improvement with your 1080ti.

 

IMO When you do upgrade, get at least 8 cores.

 

Otherwise you can't really fix only having 4 threads, anything that doesn't run well on 4 threads wont run well even at 5ghz.

[rodion.zissou]

3 minutes ago, CryingWimp said:

A CPU upgrade would be a massive improvement with your 1080ti.

 

IMO in 2021 no one going new should consider less than 8 cores. Try and find a 10700/11700 model/version on sale.

 

Otherwise you can't really fix only having 4 threads, anything that doesn't run well on 4 threads wont run well even at 5ghz.

I get that, but I explicitly stated I'm not looking for hardware suggestion ATM. And I've actually been able to get some decent performance gains working with @HairlessMonkeyBoy

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

4 minutes ago, rodion.zissou said:

 IIRC 1.27, but I'm actually in the middle of a memtest @ 3033Mhz (2 passes no errors so far)

1.27V is plenty. I've gone as high as 1.30V for daily, but I don't recommend higher than 1.25V for others. So see if your DRAM voltage helps.

1 hour ago, rodion.zissou said:

I got a ton of errors @ 3.2Ghz in the first pass alone. ( > 300)

If you spend enough time testing, you'll get a feel for which tests tend to give you the most errors. Then you can focus on running just those for quick tests in-between changing settings.

 

Beyond the primary timings and the frequency (and getting knee deep in the tertiary timings), the next most significant timings to change are tREFI and tRFC. These settings control the interval between refreshes (higher is better) and the duration of refreshes (lower is better) respectively. Basically the less often and the less amount of time your RAM spends refreshing, the more time it can spend doing other stuff. I can help you tune these if you are up to it. I warn you, though, that these can cause rare instability that can be annoying to troubleshoot.

[rodion.zissou]

14 hours ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

1.27V is plenty. I've gone as high as 1.30V for daily, but I don't recommend higher than 1.25V for others. So see if your DRAM voltage helps.

If you spend enough time testing, you'll get a feel for which tests tend to give you the most errors. Then you can focus on running just those for quick tests in-between changing settings.

 

Beyond the primary timings and the frequency (and getting knee deep in the tertiary timings), the next most significant timings to change are tREFI and tRFC. These settings control the interval between refreshes (higher is better) and the duration of refreshes (lower is better) respectively. Basically the less often and the less amount of time your RAM spends refreshing, the more time it can spend doing other stuff. I can help you tune these if you are up to it. I warn you, though, that these can cause rare instability that can be annoying to troubleshoot.

That'd be awesome, I appreciate your time.

 

How about I get the DRAM freq as high as possible without errors and then upload a shot of the BIOS showing current VCCIO and VCCSA settings and then going from there?

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

11 minutes ago, rodion.zissou said:

That's be awesome, I appreciate your time.

My time is worthless.

11 minutes ago, rodion.zissou said:

How about I get the DRAM freq as high as possible without errors and then upload a shot of the BIOS showing current VCCIO and VCCSA settings and then going from there?

Sounds good!