Overclocking Features and Results
Obviously one of target markets for this motherboard is overclockers – so how does the Trinergy stack up? As it turns out, very well. But first, I promised some more details on that included “Overclocking Guide” that MSI put in the box with the motherboard after I claimed that it would actually be useful to consumers.
What you see here is a reference table for overclocked settings based on a manual overclock. You can see that it provides some very useful information: if you are planning on hitting a base clock of 200-220 MHz, then it has recommended voltage settings for the CPU, VTT, etc as well as memory settings and voltages. While many of you reading this review probably already know most of this, for new users (or just users new to the Lynnfield CPU) it can be incredibly helpful!
MSI even shows you how to the voltmeter for your overclocking adventures; there are other spots of very helpful information in between the different marketing messages in this booklet. Overall, I was pretty impressed with it.
MSI even provides an individual overclocking report with the Trinergy motherboard – telling you how high they were able to overclocking it via the OC Genie options, what components were used, driver versions and benchmarks results. It is great to see a motherboard manufacturer spending this amount of time on each individual product.
OC Genie Overclocking
Now, enough about what MSI found in overclocking, what did I find the board capable of? Probably the most noteworthy new feature on the P55 line of motherboard from MSI (most of their line, not all) is the new OC Genie feature that allows users a single button overclock that is completely hardware based. Remember this button at bottom of the image?
Manual Overclocking
Of course no amount of automatic overclocking (yet) can top the results with someone with moderate experience (like me) doing the job of overclocking the system manually. Glad the robots haven’t taken THIS job from us yet.
Now, enough about what MSI found in overclocking, what did I find the board capable of? Probably the most noteworthy new feature on the P55 line of motherboard from MSI (most of their line, not all) is the new OC Genie feature that allows users a single button overclock that is completely hardware based. Remember this button at bottom of the image?
That is a toggle switch that enables or disabled hardware overclocking
using the embedded OC Genie microprocessor on the motherboard. By
“hardware overclocking” I mean that this overclocking is completely
independent of any software that needs to be run in an operating
system. Without a need to install any kind of bloatware on your
desktop you are free to run a completely clean OS and that also means
this overclocking method will work in other operating systems than
Windows.
The idea is simple: press this button then turn on your system and the motherboard attempts to intelligently overclock the processor and memory based on what it knows about the CPU, power levels, heat and more. It takes all of about 5 seconds before the normal POST screen shows up and you are met with a screen like this one:
Note: all of our overclocking and testing on this motherboard was done with the same hardware as our other Lynnfield articles:
Screenshot from previously reviewed MSI P55-GD65 motherboard
This lets us know not only that the OC Genie function was successful but obviously what speed the CPU is running at. MSI does note here that making any modifications to the BIOS after enabling the feature (or trying to update the BIOS itself) is not recommend and/or not possible with the OC Genie on, for obvious reasons.
The idea is simple: press this button then turn on your system and the motherboard attempts to intelligently overclock the processor and memory based on what it knows about the CPU, power levels, heat and more. It takes all of about 5 seconds before the normal POST screen shows up and you are met with a screen like this one:
Note: all of our overclocking and testing on this motherboard was done with the same hardware as our other Lynnfield articles:
- Intel Core i7-860 CPU
- MSI P55-GD65 motherboard
- Thermaltake SpinQ cooler
- 2 x 2GB Corsair DDR3-1600 memory
- BFG GeForce GTX 285 1GB GPU
- Intel X25-M G2 160GB SSD
- Windows 7 x64 RTM
Screenshot from previously reviewed MSI P55-GD65 motherboard
This lets us know not only that the OC Genie function was successful but obviously what speed the CPU is running at. MSI does note here that making any modifications to the BIOS after enabling the feature (or trying to update the BIOS itself) is not recommend and/or not possible with the OC Genie on, for obvious reasons.
Even the splash screen for the motherboard will let you know when the OC Genie features are at work.
The result from the OC Genie running in our configuration: an overclock from 2.8 GHz base frequency to 3.53 GHz on all four cores. That distinction is important to make: remember that with the Lynnfield-based COre i7-860 processor it will auto-overclocking itself as high as 3.33 GHz using Intel Turbo Mode functionality but only when a single core is being loaded. If all four cores are being loaded Turbo Mode will only push the frequency to 2.93 GHz.
That essentially means that you’ll see a bigger performance jump when testing base performance versus OC Genie performance when looking at heavily threaded or multi-tasking workloads.
Also interesting – this result of 3.53 GHz was the EXACT SAME speed result we got with this exact hardware configuration on the MSI P55-GD65 motherboard…I guess the algorithm MSI is using for the hardware overclocking is consistent if nothing else.
That essentially means that you’ll see a bigger performance jump when testing base performance versus OC Genie performance when looking at heavily threaded or multi-tasking workloads.
Also interesting – this result of 3.53 GHz was the EXACT SAME speed result we got with this exact hardware configuration on the MSI P55-GD65 motherboard…I guess the algorithm MSI is using for the hardware overclocking is consistent if nothing else.
Manual Overclocking
Of course no amount of automatic overclocking (yet) can top the results with someone with moderate experience (like me) doing the job of overclocking the system manually. Glad the robots haven’t taken THIS job from us yet.
I kept the multiplier at 21x and tried to get as much out of the CPU as possible and the first jump to 150 MHz went without a hitch, as we expected.
After just a couple of reboots I was able to get to 195 MHz base clock with no problem and we drastically beat the overclock of the OC Genie function reaching 4.1 GHz!
Our best overclock was 205 MHz that results in a 4.31 GHz total CPU overclock – very impressive! We were able to run a host of benchmarks without a problem on the system at all though you need to make sure you have adequate cooling on your CPU to get voltages this high!
For a quick reference, these were the
voltages we used in our overclocking testing – though we did start
lower this is where we ended up after increasing the base clock a bit
at a time.
i was a pre-order, im about
i was a pre-order, im about to hit 5 years on this board and its going strong. it has had water sprayed over it 5 times in its life from the liquid cooling system failing, it has been running at a 4.98Ghz over clock for nearly 3 years, it has never been off for more than a few days out of the last 5 years.
“i wounder who would have this board that long” – referencing the 8 year warranty. I am well on my way and aside from upgrading HD space, ram, and video card it has had very little done to it since its build in 09. very solid board and cpu (860), so solid in fact that nothing i do on a daily basis maxes out this system.
soo..in the x16 PCIe 2.0
soo..in the x16 PCIe 2.0 slots i can put a GPU?