TheOverclocker Issue 35 | Page 23

not a believer or more importantly remain unconvinced. Do examine the 552.2MHz base clock by DrWeez. Not since the old P35/ X48 days have we seen such high frequencies. In addition to this, the Z170 chipset and Skylake-S CPUs not only have an improved memory controller, but a 100/133MHz DRAM reference clock as opposed to the 200/266MHz we have previously seen. All these changes mean we are not only seeing incredibly high memory frequencies for validations, but it is well and truly possible to run 3,600MHz memory for daily use. Not with high voltages either, but with regular 1.35V DIMMs. During testing, G.Skill happened to release a 3,600MHz kit, making the vendor the first to have such high speed memory on offer at retail level. Inevitably others will follow and it will not be unsual in six to eight months for all vendors to have some 3800MHz or perhaps even higher frequency kit. The race has begun. These are likely the two most important aspects to the 6700K CPU concerning the tuning element. All too often we are fixated on the highest CPU frequency and not the performance per clock. The 6700K via better IPC has thus far claimed a number of Global top scores displacing the 4770K/4790K in the benchmark rankings. For instance in CineBench R11.5 where DER8AUER, scored an impressive 15.83 points. This was at a clock frequency of 6,377MHz. Compare that with the previous top score by 8 Pack of 14.34 points at 6,452MHz. You can clearly see that IPC has gone up respectably where a lower clock results in a higher score. CineBench R15, GeekBench3, wPrime 32M, 1024M, XTU and oddly enough 3DMark2001SE saw new WR scoring over 5,000 points higher than the previous score. Best of all this is just the beginning. It is these kinds of achievments which certainly excite the competitive crowd. These achievements mean that overclockers will be making their way to the new platform with haste. In light of all this, there is a caveat which is simply that to really get the high clock speeds, one is obligated to remove the IHS from the CPU and apply either better thermal compound or simply overclock without any IHS completely. A risky proposition given just how much thinner in profile this CPU is compared to the previous Haswell chips. The profile is about a third in size and if you take a razor to it, you absolutely must exercise caution. The reason for this apparently stems from the thermal interface material which INTEL has chosen to use for these CPUs. It is at best similar to what we had from Devil’s Canyon but most likely inferior especially when operating the CPU at sub-zero degree temperatures. For air cooling it means that the limit is actually around 4.6 to 4.8GHz. Some select CPUs are reaching the magical 5GHz mark but these are far and few between. Such overclocking behaviour is contrary to what may have been “leaked” on the internet where a certain 5.2GHz Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 23