Oddly enough that’s just a little more than the
clock for clock improvements that IB provides
over SNB. So essentially you don’t need that
5GHz 24/7 clock, 4.6GHz or so will do just
fine.
4.6GHz happens to be where the CPUs
are happiest, which means you’re
essentially not giving up anything in
24/7 performance. Having said that, an
upgrade to Ivy-Bridge for said user
would not be worthwhile from a
performance perspective as what
you gain in efficiency you lost out
on in performance.
To present IB in this manner
isn’t unfair, but in our context
it’s to lose the point of the
CPU entirely. What we have here is
significantly more important, than just IPC. We
have a CPU that has not only more multipliers
than we had at our disposal with SNB, but more
memory multipliers, a higher bclk tolerance and
essentially no cold bug. We haven’t had these on
a single platform in a while, heck it’s the first time
that these have been married to a single product.
Not only that for the first time we have CPUs with
incredible IMC’s all around with some samples
easily capable of 3GHz+ using air cooling. If that
fails to impress you, then nothing is likely to move
you about Ivy-Bridge.
Memory overclocking aside, the CPU
frequencies are mighty impressive as well. Gone
is the 6GHz glass ceiling of very rare SandyBridge CPUs. In fact in all our testing samples
we’ve yet to come across a single CPU that isn’t
capable of 6GHz, and that includes a particularly
bad 3570K CPU which was capable of 6.1GHz. The
tricky part about these CPUs however or the
mysterious thing about them is that maximum
validation clocks are seemingly far from
the maximum 3D stable clocks. You’re
looking at anything up to 500MHz lower
than maximum validation clocks. So in
some ways, those 6.9GHz samples
that we’ve seen on the net do not
necessarily spell doom and gloom
for everyone else who doesn’t
have a CPU that will validate
that high.
It does though make for
an interesting landscape.
Gone are the days of having that
magical Sandy-Bridge CPU which would
catapult you up the rankings if you cared for that
kind of thing. It’s truly a return of what made
overclocking fun to begin with. There’s no need to
bin tens if not hundreds of CPUs looking for that
magical one that would ensure success at the
upper echelons of the overclocking ecosystem.
Whatever the capabilities of the sample you have,
chances are, it’ll do well enough to get you further
12 The OverClocker Issue 19 | 2012
than you’ve ever been before. All that’s left now
is how much you can extract from your chosen
graphics card and memory to yield noteworthy
performance and/or scores.
As always, new platforms or CPU
generations tend to muddy
the waters in terms of
what’s the ideal platform to
own and what has become
redundant. With Ivy-Bridge, it
hasn’t in any way affected the
X79 chipset. For 3DMark Vantage,
3DMark 11 and multiple card runs
(we’re talking 4-way here) you’re
likely going to want to keep your
chosen CPU, quad channel kit and
motherboard. In an odd way, there’s
still life left in that platform despite
Ivy-Bridge being better for all intents
and purposes in every meaningful way.
So then we’ve moved on to a new era
and if there was anybody still doubting
it, there’s no need to own X58 or X48 hardware
at all. There’s just simply no benchmark where
these two chipsets can offer any advantage in any
capacity over Z77 and X79.
With these high speed CPUs, memory
frequencies and almost endless tweaking
options we find ourselves in a climate where
motherboards make an even bigger difference
than before. Sure enough, with enough time
and patience one is capable of matching
performance across different vendors.
However the real question is how simple it is to
achieve a given performance level on one board
against the next. Unlike with Z68 or P67 for that
matter, it isn’t entirely CPU based overclocking.
Should you choose the wrong motherboard,
you’ll likely find yourself fighting cold bugs,
ridiculously high temperature cold
boot bugs and lowered
memory frequencies. Even
this early in the game,
the motherboard vendors
have separated themselves
with the various results their
respective fans and proponents
have published. Each one
claiming some kind of record,
be it valid or not you’re sure to see
clock speeds north side of 6.5GHz
and memory speeds beyond the 3GHz
mark. It’s as if there’s been resurgence
in the qualitative competitive spirit across
vendors, at least in part within those that
give the nod to the overclocking community.
Our own testing results here are pretty much
what you have seen everywhere else. Air testing
doesn’t reveal much if anything at all. You
should already know what the whole point of
this platform and if you’re looking for Ivy-Bridge