Overclocking RAM on Sabertooth X99

[xkm1948]

Have you tried playing with VCCSA? Higher doesn't equal better stability. Starting from 1.05V, either go up or down to find your sweet spot. My board will set it to 1.15V by auto, however for my 4.3G OC I found 0.95V to be the most stable. After that upping your cache speed to ~4GHz will also help improve overall memory bandwidth. Use AIDA64 Cache&Memory Benchmark to check your OC results. Bring up uncore speed has proven to be pretty good.

I would highly recommend you try 2666. 100 strap should get you to 2666 fairly easy. Other than that it could be the quality of memory chip that hinders your OC. Higher speed DDR4 definitely have better binned memory chips. I think Kingston may be better than mine ADATA sticks. You should at least have a stable 2666.


EDIT: The VCCSA on our sabertooth is called system agent. Default is 0.85V. So you need to use the + offset with added volt to get to the value you want.

 

[EarthDog]

Yes... hence the "SA" in VccSA.

 

[TheHunter]

Agree vcssa and dram current % are the most crucial by ram OC.

Ram current 120% auto or extreme, you can also try active freq. 350HZ

Vccsa as other said find sweet spoot, try 0.060 offset and move higher in e.g. 0.010v steps.

What about svid input voltage? Have you Changed that or do you use default or even lower then default?

 

[RejZoR]

Ok, I've managed to bump up CPU cache speed from 3 GHz to 3.8 GHz and decreased timings from 15-15-15-35 2T to 12-12-12-25 1T using 1.3V. It's been like 3 days and system never hanged during load, gaming or ASUS RealBench. Damn, I want to get it down to 10-10-10-20 1T. But it's good already. Maybe I can get it tiny bit lower without causing instability.

 

[xkm1948]

Ok, I've managed to bump up CPU cache speed from 3 GHz to 3.8 GHz and decreased timings from 15-15-15-35 2T to 12-12-12-25 1T using 1.3V. It's been like 3 days and system never hanged during load, gaming or ASUS RealBench. Damn, I want to get it down to 10-10-10-20 1T. But it's good already. Maybe I can get it tiny bit lower without causing instability.

I assume this is on 100BCLK right?

Anyway, when running realbench stress test make sure you set RAM headroom to 32GB so it can do the full range. I found a pretty good standard for testing memory stability. 4hrs of Realbench max out RAM stress test and 4hrs of full load AIDA64. If your system can pass that total 8hrs your RAM OC should be solid.

Also, try play with tertiary timings, these are very important as well.

 

[RejZoR]

Yeah, I've locked BCLK to 100. From my experience, H.264 test or the heavy multitasking work the best, even very short term. It seems to stress CPU cache a lot and apparently also a lot of shuffling of data from/to RAM. If it can pass 4 heavy multitasking passes, it's already a very good start.

 

[RejZoR]

Interesting. Looks like CPU cache is more willing for overclock with tighter RAM clocks. 4 GHz CPU cache would be very unstable with stock RAM timings of 15-15-15-35-1T, but with 12-12-12-20-1T, it's working perfectly fine. Done 4 passes of Heavy Multitasking and it went through just fine (producing up to 15fps more than with 3GHz cache for H.264 test!). Gonna test with Crysis 3 now.

EDIT:
Played 2 missions in Crysis 3. All fine so far. This is looking pretty good

 

[xkm1948]

Make sure cache voltage never go beyond 1.25V. Cache OC will degrade fast. Mine sit at 4.2GHz for about 4 months then it just refused to be stable any more. Now i have to dial it down to 3.3GHz for everyday use.

 

[RejZoR]

Thx for the headsup. I'll set it to adaptive and set the limit to 1.25V. I hope it'll be stable.

Why would it degrade so quickly?

 

[xkm1948]

Thx for the headsup. I'll set it to adaptive and set the limit to 1.25V. I hope it'll be stable.

Why would it degrade so quickly?

Adaptative never worked on cache voltage just FYI.

Don't know much about why it degrades, just telling what I experienced as well as other fellow Haswell-E owners' experience.

I am currently set at 3.3GHz cache with 0.92v cache voltage. Stability over a few hundred mhz now for me.

 

[RejZoR]

Interesting, mine was already maxing at 1.250V when set on Auto. I've set it to Adaptive now with 0.100V default overvoltage up to max 1.250V under load. You sure it's not working?

 

[xkm1948]

Interesting, mine was already maxing at 1.250V when set on Auto. I've set it to Adaptive now with 0.100V default overvoltage up to max 1.250V under load. You sure it's not working?

Do some recording during stress test in AIDA64 and you will see for yourself.

Or you can browse through the Sabertooth X99 owners' thread in overclock.net.

Either way it is broken. Never worked from day 1. Same goes of CPU OC, the adaptive mode for vcore only works if you select 100BCLK

 

[RejZoR]

Then why the hell they offer this feature if they KNOW it's broken!? That's some AAA grade nonsense. Adaptive VCORE did work for me as it did use correct voltages even with Auto. But I guess it was auto selecting 100 BCLK, which is why it worked.

 

[cadaveca]

Then why the hell they offer this feature if they KNOW it's broken!? That's some AAA grade nonsense. Adaptive VCORE did work for me as it did use correct voltages even with Auto. But I guess it was auto selecting 100 BCLK, which is why it worked.

Software voltage reporting isn't always accurate.

 

[RejZoR]

I'm not in the mood for sticking voltmeter at my board...

 

[cadaveca]

I'm not in the mood for sticking voltmeter at my board...

Wait... wut? And you dare call yourself an overclocker?

I run my X99 chips @ 4 GHz cache, not dynamic, voltage set manually to 1.05V or less. Technically it should vary between CPUs what's needed, and technically, cache and CPU are the same silicon, should handle the same voltage, but the degradation is real. So you can go after the added memory performance and run the risks, or leave it alone and stay safe. Your call. I'd run the risk and buy the Intel Tuning Plan for easy RMA when it starts to die off.

 

[RejZoR]

Hm, are you saying the voltage is degrading it or the overclock itself? If it's the voltage only, my CPU seems to be very happy with ridiculously low voltages in general. If I stick with 1.0V, should I be fine long term then?

 

[cadaveca]

Hm, are you saying the voltage is degrading it or the overclock itself? If it's the voltage only, my CPU seems to be very happy with ridiculously low voltages in general. If I stick with 1.0V, should I be fine long term then?

Its unknown whether it's the clock or the voltage. I'd hazard a guess and say the clock, since that's current demand, but whatevs.

Yeah, 1.0V seems to be OK, but if that works for you long term, only time will tell. We're not sure why your chip was made a 5820 instead of 5930K or 5960X, after all.

 

[RejZoR]

I know for sure I can't clock it past 4.5GHz no matter the voltage. In worst case scenario, I'll have to run it at stock 3GHz in the end? If that's the case, I can live with that. Or maybe I should leave it at stock now and OC it when it'll lose some steam over time (and age).

 

[xkm1948]

Hm, are you saying the voltage is degrading it or the overclock itself? If it's the voltage only, my CPU seems to be very happy with ridiculously low voltages in general. If I stick with 1.0V, should I be fine long term then?

And CPU OC degrades over time as well for Haswell-E. Check the Haswell-E overclock thread and you will find quite a lot of sad stories. Basically most Haswell-E can do pretty good in OC from out of the box until it is about a year old. Then it gradually requires higher and highrt vcore to stay stable at that OC. However I believe the situation is only applicable when the CPU is being pushed over 4.5GHz. For moderate OC with vcore at or below 1.2V the degradation should be much slower.

 

[cadaveca]

And CPU OC degrades over time as well for Haswell-E. Check the Haswell-E overclock thread and you will find quite a lot of sad stories. Basically most Haswell-E can do pretty good in OC from out of the box until it is about a year old. Then it gradually requires higher and highrt vcore to stay stable at that OC. However I believe the situation is only applicable when the CPU is being pushed over 4.5GHz. For moderate OC with vcore at or below 1.2V the degradation should be much slower.

I say anything over 145W is what starts them dying. They are rated for 130W only, and most do stock clocks at far less than that. Breaking that 130W limit down to individual sections of the chip is where things get weird, and make it hard to track.

My Skylake chip is rated to 91W, does stock @ ~70W (board-dependent). OC to 4.7 GHz takes it just a wee bit over, and anything higher requires huge voltage boosts.

Not many look at power consumption over the 8-pin connector with a clamp meter like I do though, maybe no one else does, so getting a large enough sample size to look into this sort of thing is a bit rough.

My "retail" 5930K review chip hits a limit at just shy of 4.7 GHz, and did degrade a little bit. My ES chip does 5 GHz with similar power draw compared to the retail, and hasn't degraded at all.

With all that said, my best advice is too keep your chip @ under 130W over the 8-pin, and to be very careful when clocking cache. The added performance form the boost of clocking cache isn't really there like it is with small Haswell anyway.

 

[xkm1948]

With all that said, my best advice is too keep your chip @ under 130W over the 8-pin, and to be very careful when clocking cache. The added performance form the boost of clocking cache isn't really there like it is with small Haswell anyway.

Cannot agree more. Learned my lesson the hard way.

 

[RejZoR]

With BIOS 3301 I can't overclock my RAM at all anymore. Not even 2600MHz is bootable anymore. W00t!? I can only decrease timings a bit, I wonder if it's even stable...

 

[xkm1948]

With BIOS 3301 I can't overclock my RAM at all anymore. Not even 2600MHz is bootable anymore. W00t!? I can only decrease timings a bit, I wonder if it's even stable...

That is weird. What RAM IC do you have. Samsung ICs are far better than Hynix from my experience.

 

[RejZoR]

I frankly dont' even know. But before with right voltage and loose timings, I could boot with 2800MHz. Now it's just 2400MHz and nothing else. Maybe with 1.8V it would work XD