Intel Core i5 750 Overclock with Gigabyte QuickBoost

I dove into the realms of overclocking today with Gigabyte's included overclocking tool that came with my motherboard. It is a very easy way to overclock although I could see one getting into trouble by using this utility. The tool has three settings: faster, turbo, and twin turbo. Due to the fact that I still only have the stock Intel cooler, I limited myself to the faster and turbo options.

Gigabyte QuickBoost Utility

• Baseline
• Base Clock: 133MHz
• 4 thread max multiplier: 21
• CPU clock: 2798 MHz
  
• CPU voltage: 1.20V
• 100% load temp: 64
• Intel Turbo mode: on
• Memory clock: 1333MHz
• Faster
• Base Clock: 140MHz
• 4 thread max multiplier: 21
• CPU clock: 2940 MHz
• CPU voltage: 1.20V
• 100% load temp: 66
• Intel Turbo mode: on
• Memory clock: 1400MHz
• Turbo
• Base Clock: 150MHz
• 4 thread max multiplier: 21
• CPU clock: 3150 MHz
• CPU voltage: 1.23V
• 100% load temp: 69
• Intel Turbo mode: off
• Memory clock: 1500MHz
• Twin Turbo (Did not test)
  
• Base Clock: 200MHz
• 4 thread max multiplier: 19
• CPU clock: 3800 MHz
• CPU voltage: NA
• 100% load temp: NA
• Intel Turbo mode: off
• Memory clock: NA

I was nervous about selecting the different settings since the utility would not provide voltage and memory clock information. The turbo mode took my memory from its stock 1333MHz to 1500MHz. Although my memory happens to be able to run at those speeds, I did not know where it would end up until the computer restarted with the settings saved to the bios.


Supreme Commander Benchmark
I ran through the Supreme Commander benchmark at the baseline, faster and turbo settings to see if any gains in performance can be seen. I ran the benchmark at 1920x1080 resolution. Results are below.

Unfortunately, it seems that no gain in performance can be seen according to the average frame rates. It is interesting how the baseline settings resulted in the highest minimum frames per second. I do not understand this at all. It seems though that this Core i5 750 can handle the stress of this game very well.

Core i5 750 Turbo Boost Explored

In order to explore the turbo boost function of the core i5 750, I used Prime95 64bit to experiment with using different numbers of workers and its effect on the CPU multiplier. The i5 is at its stock base clock rate of 133MHz and turbo boost varies the CPU multiplier from 9x to 24x depending on the loading of the CPU. I should have turned off cores that were not being used to fore the threads to stay on one core. It seems that Prime95 worker's threads jump from core to core when only 1, 2, and 3 workers were being used. Due to this, the multiplier jumped around as well so in the graph below, the maximum hit multiplier is shown as well as the maximum temperature after running Prime for ~30 minutes.

Turbo boost allows for the processor to vary its CPU multiplier from 9x to 24x depending on the number of threads which leads to a clock rate range from 1199.2MHz to 3197.7MHz! I wonder why inlet advertises the clock rate at 2.66GHz when at fully loaded it runs at 2.8GHz and can hit 3.2GHz by overclocking itself?

Graphics, hard drive, DVD drive, and Mobo

Now its time to install everything into the case and wire it together! First I installed the SONY Optiarc Black 24x DVD+R drive and the Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB hard drive into the case using the case supplied instructions. This case makes installing the DVD drive very easy with the use of the quick installation pins, although I did use screws as well because the pins did not hold the drive securely. Installing the hard drive was a pain due to the need to remove the hard drive assembly from the case to be able to access the screws to install the hard drive. Next I installed the motherboard into the case using the supplied standoffs. Make sure to be carefull not to damage the motherboard while installing and use static protection! Next I installed the MSI ATI Radeon HD 5770 which was pretty easy with the quick card locks on the case, although they seem cheap. Hopefully they will support the card well enough. Finally I wired everything together; 2 power cables to the motherboard, power cable to graphics card, SATA power cables to the hard drive and DVD drive, SATA cables between the mother board and the hard drive and DVD drive, and finally the case's supplied power button, USB cables, and audio cables. Oh I almost forgot about the two case supplied fans, the rear exhaust fan i connected to the case fan header on the motherboard and the front intake fan's cable was too short to reach the other fan header supplied on the board so I need to get an extender,or extend it myself.

I think I need to do some cable management...