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Stable Overclock on the DFI NF680i LT

After taking a few different approaches to overclocking this board/CPU combo, I finally arrived at a 8hr PRIME stable overclock... (click to enlarge images)





With tweaked memory for low-latency (4-3-3-8 1T)...



GTL

An interesting fact is that my stable GTL settings are radically different from the recommended values. I initially discovered this by accident... I originally tried a GTL 2/3 value similar to GTL 0/1 out of frustration and thinking (now erroneously) that perhaps the two GTL settings should be similar.

Later, when I was trying to get Vista to boot at 3.8GHz for fun, I tried every GTL value (changing by 10 and then 5 and then 2) to narrow in on GTL values that would just allow Vista to boot at 3.8GHz... this reinforced my earlier findings... at high FSB overclocks, GTL 2/3 for me had to be close to GTL 0/1. While I'm certain this is not the case for others, it definitely worked out for my particular CPU/board combo.

My situation is most certainly an endorsement for having GTL tuning... since without the ability to tweak GTL values significantly like this, I would not have been able to make this overclock stable. Although without another board without GTL tuning (i.e. the EVGA 680i) to evaluate this theory, I will never really know for sure.

Voltages

In some cases, there is a significant difference between what is set in BIOS and the actual voltage.

Here are my voltage settings, and the actual values reported by BIOS:

  • CPU VID: 1.6V / 1.53V
  • DRAM Voltage: 2.34V / 2.30V
  • NB Core Voltage: 1.74V / 1.6V
  • SB Core Voltage: 1.62V / 1.58V
  • HT Link Voltage: 1.60V / 1.58V

The NB is particularly bad as it is off about 0.12V at most settings.

Note that water cooling is essential for running these kinds of voltages on a quad-core.

BIOS Settings

Disabled full-screen logo to better see POST information...



No change...



No change...



Disabled IDE as I have a SATA optical drive...



Not using RAID...



Disabled all other devices...



Set to S3(STR)...



No change...



Set temperature threshold to maximum value as I was tripping the thermal shutdown at default settings...



See my comments on voltages above...



Run linked/synced for best memory performance...



No change... it's apparently important to leave these settings as is for overclocking...



Memory timings (I'll have a new blog post on memory overclocking soon)...



Not using the SI RAID controller so disabled it...



I,m glad to find this, because i just bought same mb and i have not oc this kind of motherboard at all, only intel ar amd but not sli configuration no. 8800GTX-sli will be soon on my rig after my salesman have it.

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