OC + NLE = TROUBLE

musicvid,,,, thanks I will read up a bit on the non linear editing to try and understand why this is a problem, just for my own benefit.

Chienworks
Thanks for wasting 3 seconds of my life. clearly you missed the part where I say I am rendering on stock clocks, curious as to why Pro wont on OC only, and perhaps also the bit about Platinum 11 never having this issue.
Nevermind.

:)

I've been overclocking and using Vegas for 15 years, actually since the Celeron 300A overlock to 450. I have never noticed Vegas being any more susceptible to a unstable overclock than any other application.

Bottom line if your overclock is unstable then it's unstable. I'm running my 2500k at 4.2GHz, totally stable.

Are you Prime95 stable? What stress testing have you done before you considered your o/c stable?

At what point when you back down the overclock is Vegas stable?

4.4GHz might be pushing it for your particular chip. What are your volts? If they are low you might be able to push them a bit and have a stable Vegas.

Intel leaves so much performance on the table since there is basically no competition for them that overclocking is really a no brainer for me. I mean they sell "k" chips to make overclocking easier. Back it down to 4.2 and I bet your stable while still getting like a 20% performance boost.

- Mark

Hulk

Thank you for a detailed reply firstly confirming it can be achieved, and secondly realigning my own thought process.

Its seems I was on the border line on cpu voltage for the oc, up it to 1.3 which is still comfortable level and have managed a number of trouble free renders at 1080.

Many thanks

4.2 here as well. V12 is stable until I reach the 1hr mark. Ram set to 0 with cpu on. Two monitors with better stability at the 1hr mark by using only one monitor. I can predict a V12 crash almost every time before it happens, so they are easy to avoid.

i'm not trying to flame or undermine anyone's oc'ing but i'm really curious as to what sort of benefits some (rather than extreme) oc'ing gives - rendering / preview percentage wise?

i might add that like musvid i think oc + nle is a receipt for trouble (though i haven't tried it in a long time - pentium 486 was my last oc!), preferring now to simply buy a more powerful cpu since by the time one adds decent cooling, stress testing x 2 (pc and oc'er), etc., the price of a new cpu looks like a bargain ;-)

i repeat, i'm not looking for an argument and i'm not trolling - i just want to know how much faster a stable oc'ed rig is relative to:

a. original cpu

b. cost of a more powerful cpu

I originally tried running at 4.4GHz at the system's O.C. recommnedation. Would crash at around 12 mins.

Backed it down to 4.2Ghz (at son's recommendation) - fast and stable ever since.

marks

ushere,

I think I can answer your question. I used to be an enthusiast overclocker. When I was younger, had more time on my hands, and no kids (!). It was of course to get more performance but also to tweak, test limits, and have fun.

Now I don't have the time to fiddle around so I generally go with an easy overclock that is safe, sane, and 100% stable. For example, my current 2500k run 3.4GHz stock on all four cores, it will turbo boost a couple hundred MHz automatically, but not on all four cores. I assembled my latest system with the intention of overclocking so I bought a good quality Asus mobo, good RAM, and a good CPU cooler. I brought the CPU up to 4.4GHz, which is 1GHz over stock and had to push a little more volts than I was comfortable with to be 100% stable. I generally run Prime 95 over night with all cores loaded and not only check for serious instability (reboot or freezing) but minor instability (errors in output). I backed down to 4.2GHz and have been running there at 1.27Volts for the past 18 months without a single o/c related incident. Over stock, I'm seeing about a 20% boost in performance. That is significant for me because I run quite a few applications that will eat all of the compute I can throw at them. Vegas, Presonus Studio One, Photoshop to name a few.

I haven't fiddled or fooled around with my overclock since the 3rd day I assembled the system. The last o/c I had that was this easy was my Celeron 300/450 as it was just a quick switch of the buss speed.

After it got a little harder to o/c for a while. The P3's didn't have a lot of process headroom so I just ran them at stock, too much hassle for too little gain. Then P4's was also too much work for me to deal with overclocking.

Then when Core2Duo arrived in 2006 they were coming off the wafers with such good yields that the low clocked parts could actually run much faster could actually run much faster. I picked up a 2.4GHz part and increased the FSB multi and ran it at 3.2 for about 4 years no issues.

Then Intel unlocked the multipliers with the Sandybridge "k" parts and for me it was a no brainer. You could take a 2500/2600k and move it to 4GHz at stock volts no sweat. No messing with FSB, just change the CPU multiplier. I always use an aftermarket cooler anyway because I like my PC silent so I use a good cooler with a very low speed fan. And a fanless power supply.

Now I'm waiting for Haswell. If it's a good overclocker and I can get 15 or 20% without tinkering I'll do it.

Now as for your question. The i3770k is as fast a 4 core cpu as you can buy today so the only way to go faster 4 core is to overclock it. If you move to a 6 core you have to spend quite a bit more for the motherboard to support the cpu and the lowest sku 6 core cpu is about double the 4 core i3770k. And for me those facts coupled with the non matx form factor were deal breakers. I like small compact boxes.

Will an overclocked i3770k be as fast as a stock i3930k? No not without extreme overclocking. It's just too hard to make up for those 2 missing cores. But it can get close. And the 3930k is easily overclockable as well.

I went with the i2500 w/o hyperthreading because I hate to pay that premium for HT. I knew I could get a very good o/c out of the chip and be happy with the performance.

Basically, Intel has basically no competition in the mid to high end x86 market, AMD is all but dead in that area. And Intel's process technology is so good that they are getting amazing yields. Just about every chip off the wafer could be a high GHz part. But they have to sell some for less money at lower speeds so they leave a lot on the table.

I realize I've framed this entire post in the realm of my opinion and experience but I thought an honest review of my o/c history might help you understand where as least this overclocker is coming from.

- Mark

Actually a 2700k overclocked to 4.9GHz is faster than a stock 3930 in premiere pro and other apps.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-3820_7.html#sect0

Two things should be realized though.
1. The 2700 is actually slower IPC-wise than the Ivy Bridge process. Which means a 3730k would be even faster.
2. 4.9GHz is not an easy overclock. In fact I'd say it's a rare one to reach. That being said it looks like at a more reasonable 4.4 to 4.5 o/c the 2700k and 3930k (at stock) would be pretty close performance-wise.

I must correct myself there are a few (very few) LGA 2011 motherboards available.

mark - thank you very much for your response - clear and very illuminating. something more i suppose i should ponder about when considering my next upgrade...

I changed from an overclocked 3770K to a 3930k simply because the 3770K even @4.6GHz isn't stable enough to do long 2 hour 4cam projects. I had VP11 at that time and I had to back up to 4.3GHz with 2133 for the RAM to get a stable system I could work on for 12hours or more. Yes you can oc it to close to 5GHz but it isn't usable, in fact the 2600K is more stable due to lower temperatures and both where already water cooled. I now run my 3930K at 4.4GHz stable for more then 24hrs, working on the project and then rendering over night to multiple formats. I can overclock it to 4.6GHZ and test it on Prime95 and Cinebench but the truth is, it wasn't stable with Vegas and I went back to 4.4GHz and 1066 RAM. It seems that Vegas does more or isnt refined enough to run stable even when the same system is stable with Prim95 and other benchmarks. Also 4 cores versus 6 cores makes a big difference for Vegas on the timeline and rendering.

My old dinosaur system is running 20% over stock and has been doing so for years. And as I recall, render speed is significantly improved to just a bit under 20%, which I guess shows that my system was CPU-bound.

Strange that a system could run Prime95 and yet overheat on NLE renders. I do know that the version of Prime95 I use has the option of working the ram hard also. I wonder if that could account for your experience.

For me, I quickly learned that once the CPU core hit 64 degrees the system would hang. But with a slightly-larger but still pretty modest aftermarket air cooler, max CPU temp is now in the mid-50's.