Quad-Core Intel Core i7-3820 Overclocked to 5.666 GHz

Overclocking goes on all the time, but one user or another sometimes performs a feat impressive enough that the Internet can't help but take note of.

This time, it is GUN'G'STAR of TeamRussia that has managed to push a central processing unit to its limits.

In fact, one might say that the overclocker went beyond the limits altogether, since the chip it chose to experiment on wasn't the most overclocking-ready one.

The chip in question, Intel's Core i7-3820, is one of the so-called “Limited unlocked” central processing units.

What this means is that, while the clock multiplier is not disabled, it is not unlocked all the way either.

In other words, the BClk multiplier is unlocked only to a few steps above the clock settings, so it should not be possible to achieve any records with it.

This obviously didn't stop GUN'G'STAR from at least trying, and he managed to actually push the frequency to 5,665.99 MHz, about 2 GHz above the stock setting.

The BClk speed was of 131.74 MHz, while the core voltage was set at 1.6 V and the multiplier value at 43x.

A system based on an ASUS Rampage IV Extreme motherboard was employed as the test bench, while 8 GB of GeIL DDR3-1600 memory backed up the i7-3820.

Needless to say, there was liberal use of home-concocted extreme cooling, and the four channels of memory were driven to exertion as well.

Some concessions had to be made, though: two of the four cores were disabled, as was the HyperThreading functionality. 

Nevertheless, the results are nothing to scoff at, even if they don't even come close to rivaling that beast of a 10-core, 20-thread Ivy Bridge-EP chip tested here. And that is an unfair comparison anyway.

For those interested in what else the test system used, the GPU-Z Validation, available here, shows an NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT (540 MHz GPU clock, 702 MHz RAM clock).

Posted in: Hardware, Preview