Xeon L5639 Overclocking on X58

[Burpo]

New to this forum & overclocking in general, but found my way here when looking for info on this L5639 Xeon chip.
I needed something for rendering blu-ray discs and the chip was cheap enough. Running an Asus P6X58d Premium board I got for free that has a dead bank 0 section for RAM. Anyway it does what I wanted and renders my blu-rays in about 1 1/2hrs vs 8-9hrs on core 2 quad. What is max safe voltage for daily use?







Oh yeah, Not a gamer, strictly video editing, running 200 FSB XMP Profile in Auto with speedstep & turbo on, 12gb 1600 mghz Patriot Sector 7 RAM, GTX 570 & Micron SSD & WD 3TB.. (cheap build at $475 total)
Any help appreciated, thanks!

 

[TerryMathews]

New to this forum & overclocking in general, but found my way here when looking for info on this L5639 Xeon chip.
I needed something for rendering blu-ray discs and the chip was cheap enough. Running an Asus P6X58d Premium board I got for free that has a dead bank 0 section for RAM. Anyway it does what I wanted and renders my blu-rays in about 1 1/2hrs vs 8-9hrs on core 2 quad. What is max safe voltage for daily use?







Oh yeah, Not a gamer, strictly video editing, running 200 FSB XMP Profile in Auto with speedstep & turbo on, 12gb 1600 mghz Patriot Sector 7 RAM, GTX 570 & Micron SSD & WD 3TB..
Any help appreciated, thanks!

At stock, the chip will run up to 1.4V on Turbo so I would say that's safe if you control temps.

That said, most of these chips aren't voltage limited as you can't get the clock speed up high enough due to bclk and uncore.

For reference, I am able to run 200 bclk on my MSI X58A-GD45 at stock volts.

 

[Burpo]

Wow Terry you're fast.. I set the offset voltage at .30 and yes during turbo operation it hits 1.42. So this is ok & no long term damage? That's good news.

It runs well at 200 but 210 gives the bsod. I'm vey happy with render times and being a low power chip, it stays fairly cool.

Thanks for the info.. Very re-assuring

 

[Justinbaileyman]

At stock, the chip will run up to 1.4V on Turbo so I would say that's safe if you control temps.

That said, most of these chips aren't voltage limited as you can't get the clock speed up high enough due to bclk and uncore.

For reference, I am able to run 200 bclk on my MSI X58A-GD45 at stock volts.

Ya but what kind of cooling are you using??

 

[TerryMathews]

Ya but what kind of cooling are you using??

Corsair H60, and a CM Hyper 212+.

These chips have a low throttle set because of the low TDP. You can't burn them up.

Wow Terry you're fast.. I set the offset voltage at .30 and yes during turbo operation it hits 1.42. So this is ok & no long term damage? That's good news.

It runs well at 200 but 210 gives the bsod. I'm vey happy with render times and being a low power chip, it stays fairly cool.

Thanks for the info.. Very re-assuring

Try backing it down, I bet Vcore isn't your problem. I imagine your chipset isn't really stable.

Mine wouldn't stabilize at the higher BCLKs regardless of Vcore, because it wasn't the chip crashing, it was the uncore or the X58.

I would try to keep the chip at or under 1.40. Maybe change the offset to 25?

 

[Burpo]

Uncore? Clueless what that is, but if you have any settings in mind to change please can you school me a bit. All I did was used the XMP Profile and cranked up the buss & voltage a bit. Seems stable & has done a few renders without problem. Drop vcore & change what? Thanks again for the help..

 

[TerryMathews]

Uncore? Clueless what that is, but if you have any settings in mind to change please can you school me a bit. All I did was used the XMP Profile and cranked up the buss & voltage a bit. Seems stable & has done a few renders without problem. Drop vcore & change what? Thanks again for the help..

OK, I'd advise some reading if you're not familiar with how the Core architecture is organized but I'll try to skim over the basics for you.

"In the beginning" we had a northbridge and southbridge. Now, with the Core architecture some of the traditional northbridge items have moved to the silicon wafer of the CPU, but not in the core proper. Hence Intel's name, uncore. Things like the memory controller, PCIe interface, on Haswell the VRMs.

Uncore runs at a specific multiplier * BCLK. These Xeon chips have fewer uncore multipliers than a traditional Core i7 chip would, from what I understand. Compound that with the fact that these chips were designed around a BCLK frequency of 133MHz and you run out of adjustments you can make pretty quickly.

You're up against that, and the X58 chip on your motherboard: 200MHz BCLK was considered a "good" overclock for these chipsets.

Your chip may need 1.4V to be stable at your speed, but if I had to bet I doubt it. I have had 4 of these chips go through my posession, and not one picked up any additional overclocking headroom from going from 1.3V to 1.4V.

You said in your BIOS that you set your Vcore differential to +0.3V. I would recommend testing your system backing that down. I would expect you would still be every bit as stable at +0.2V, maybe less. You might even find that your board becomes more stable with less volts, as you're removing stress from the VRMs as well as heat from both the CPU and the VRM.

If you haven't downloaded Intel Burn Test yet, do it. I've found that it can sniff out CPU instability very quickly. Make sure to run it two ways though: Once on auto threads, once on 2 threads. 2 threads will let it test the max turbo mode on your CPU, which will be hitting 4.0GHz in your configuration. The default is for 10 times. I ran it for 50 just to make sure but every time I ran it, it errored out within 10 iterations.

Hope this helps and good luck!

 

[Shmee]

I would keep vcore under 1.3 if possible, you really don't need that much I believe without needing to up the uncore/QPI vtt first. Keep that under 1.325 or so, under 1.3 if possible. This is what helps you reach higher uncore and BCLK speeds, IIRC.

For an example, I believe you will need 18x222 just to reach 4 GHz, and while every chip is different, in my experience with westmere/gulftown, you don't need more than 1.3 V of Vcore or so for 4 GHz.

Remember, 200x 16 (the multiplier when all cores are stressed I believe) is only 3200 MHz, you shouldn't need any more than 1.3 Vcore for that.

 

[Burpo]

Thanks guys. I set QPI at 1.30 and core at 1.38 and raised the pll a bit. Running now at 207 bclk and gave me a better cinebench than i've seen but I don't think there's much left with this chip. Got it off ebay for $84 and it's running on a ram crippled board Will d/l burn test & check it out further..



It also ran at 210 for the first time and broke 10,000 passmark, but didnt want to push it..

 

[Burpo]

Seems stable, uploaded pic to photobucket & posting here now while running on high. Passed 1st test..


Edit: oops! Epic fail at 7 passes, backed it down to 204 = 3.66ghz seems to be it.. Good enough for what I do.. Thanks for all the help!

 

[rolodomo]

I needed something for rendering blu-ray discs and the chip was cheap enough. Running an Asus P6X58d Premium board I got for free that has a dead bank 0 section for RAM.

Was bank 0 identified as defective before you bought the board? I ask because bank 0 on my board (Foxconn Bloodrage) doesn't work when I installed a L5639. However, slot 0 works when I take the L5639 out and put my old 920 in. I'm curious whether the bank 0 problem is a slight incompatibility problem some boards have with this xeon chip.

Otherwise I'm doing well. Since I was down one bank, I pulled my 6 GB of low-latency RAM I originally bought with the X58 board and loaded down the remaining banks with higher latency 8GB dimms (16 GB total). So I feel I still came out ahead regarding memory.

Like you, I'm using this machine primarily for video transcoding. I installed a 7950 and downloaded the new Powerdirector 12 with revamped OpenCL support. It is great to see all six cores at work plus decent GPU utilization when crunching videos. (Powerdirector also supports AVX2 so it will be interesting to see how Haswell performs).

 

[TerryMathews]

Seems stable, uploaded pic to photobucket & posting here now while running on high. Passed 1st test..


Edit: oops! Epic fail at 7 passes, backed it down to 204 = 3.66ghz seems to be it.. Good enough for what I do.. Thanks for all the help!

Good for you. You might try dropping down to 200 and cutting volts back once you're done benching. Based on what you're pulling off now, you might get back to stock volts.

 

[Burpo]

The board doesn't see bank 0 with any chip (have had 920 & w3570 installed), but that's why I got it for free. The chip needs juice if you push it, however I went back to an offset instead of a set voltage, and it's down to .23 volt. Any lower & it bsod's. I am going to back it off now, I just wanted to find the limits I'm working with, and thanks to you guys I learned quite a bit 3.66 Ghz seems to be the sweet spot as Intel burn now reports 59 gflops instead of 57
Thank you all, especially Terry & Shmee :thumbsup:

On a side note, ebay is now flooded with the L5639 (one guy has 4000 lot for sale) but this weeks deal is item 261283548148 the L5520 quad core at $35 w/free shipping.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Ok so how the hell are you guys getting to choose a cpu ratio of 17-20??
I can only choose a max of 16 and I am running at 200 Bclk for a total of 3.2Ghz.
Any Help would be great..
I am running on an MSI X58 GD45 with the latest bios v25.2.
I could go higher bclk but that heatsing dirrectly below the cpu,I think its the northbridge is already getting hotter then hell running this speed.

 

[Yreka]

Ok so how the hell are you guys getting to choose a cpu ratio of 17-20??
I can only choose a max of 16 and I am running at 200 Bclk for a total of 3.2Ghz.
Any Help would be great..
I am running on an MSI X58 GD45 with the latest bios v25.2.
I could go higher bclk but that heatsing dirrectly below the cpu,I think its the northbridge is already getting hotter then hell running this speed.

Depends on the bios/board.. some are limited to 16x, some (like mine) 18x

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Ah I wish my EVGA 760 A1 didn't need modding to make this chip work. Poop.

 

[TerryMathews]

Ok so how the hell are you guys getting to choose a cpu ratio of 17-20??
I can only choose a max of 16 and I am running at 200 Bclk for a total of 3.2Ghz.
Any Help would be great..
I am running on an MSI X58 GD45 with the latest bios v25.2.
I could go higher bclk but that heatsing dirrectly below the cpu,I think its the northbridge is already getting hotter then hell running this speed.

The MSI can't force turbo bins. The chip will move into those multipliers under load as long as you haven't turned off Speedstep and Turbo technology in the BIOS.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

The MSI can't force turbo bins. The chip will move into those multipliers under load as long as you haven't turned off Speedstep and Turbo technology in the BIOS.

There is no Speedstep in bios only Turbo and that is left on..
I also can't adjust any cpu ratio only bclk.
I cant change power voltages either its blocked but it auto ups the volts for me when changing the bclk.
I have all the power saving features turn off. Ciest, Eist, ect..

 

[TerryMathews]

There is no Speedstep in bios only Turbo and that is left on..
I also can't adjust any cpu ratio only bclk.
I cant change power voltages either its blocked but it auto ups the volts for me when changing the bclk.
I have all the power saving features turn off. Ciest, Eist, ect..

I have pics in one of these threads on what the BIOS settings should look like on the X58A-GD45.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

I have pics in one of these threads on what the BIOS settings should look like on the X58A-GD45.

No the pictures you posted were all stock settings and nothing was shown as overclocked.
You only posted some comments in between each of the pictures but like I said if you look closely at the pictures every picture you posted is set to stock non overclocked settings.
Please could you maybe take some more pictures of your bios with everything set to overclock on.
The very highest I can get mine to is 225 x 16 and to do that I have to cool the north bridge otherwise it gets way to damn hot.
I already burned the crap out of my fingers trying to feel what temps were like on the chipsets north and south bridge or what ever they are calling it these days..
I would like to see this setting that gives you more cpu ratio options or that allows the cpu to auto turbo to anything above a 16 ratio.
That would be a better option for me so I can set bios to 17-20 x 200

 

[TerryMathews]

No the pictures you posted were all stock settings and nothing was shown as overclocked.
You only posted some comments in between each of the pictures but like I said if you look closely at the pictures every picture you posted is set to stock non overclocked settings.
Please could you maybe take some more pictures of your bios with everything set to overclock on.
The very highest I can get mine to is 225 x 16 and to do that I have to cool the north bridge otherwise it gets way to damn hot.
I already burned the crap out of my fingers trying to feel what temps were like on the chipsets north and south bridge or what ever they are calling it these days..
I would like to see this setting that gives you more cpu ratio options or that allows the cpu to auto turbo to anything above a 16 ratio.
That would be a better option for me so I can set bios to 17-20 x 200

There isn't anything like that on the MSI board. It can go down, it can't go up. The only way you're getting over 16x is via Turbo.

Your CPU features need to look like that for Turbo to work.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

There isn't anything like that on the MSI board. It can go down, it can't go up. The only way you're getting over 16x is via Turbo.

Your CPU features need to look like that for Turbo to work.

Ok what is Intel C-State and C1E cause I have those disabled..

 

[Makaveli]

Was bank 0 identified as defective before you bought the board? I ask because bank 0 on my board (Foxconn Bloodrage) doesn't work when I installed a L5639. However, slot 0 works when I take the L5639 out and put my old 920 in. I'm curious whether the bank 0 problem is a slight incompatibility problem some boards have with this xeon chip.

Otherwise I'm doing well. Since I was down one bank, I pulled my 6 GB of low-latency RAM I originally bought with the X58 board and loaded down the remaining banks with higher latency 8GB dimms (16 GB total). So I feel I still came out ahead regarding memory.

Like you, I'm using this machine primarily for video transcoding. I installed a 7950 and downloaded the new Powerdirector 12 with revamped OpenCL support. It is great to see all six cores at work plus decent GPU utilization when crunching videos. (Powerdirector also supports AVX2 so it will be interesting to see how Haswell performs).

Ever do any editing with Vegas pro?

 

[TerryMathews]

Ok what is Intel C-State and C1E cause I have those disabled..

Intel C-state and C1E are features that power down unused cores. It's a required feature for Turbo.

 

[YBS1]

EIST must be enabled for turbo multipliers, the enabling of C state features is not (at least on most boards).