Hi guys, my X5650 has arrived today and it worked well in my R2E \o/. But when i tried to apply a 200bclk (i7s, even a 920, goes easily to 200bclk) i doesn't post. I don't want to push the voltages too much, but i went 1.35vcore (200bclk 12multi) 1.88pll 1.35uncore.
 
Is it really not a good OCer or am i doing something very wrong? Cause i went easily 4.0 with my i7 920, and using some similar configs i can't put this xeon even @2.4ghz (200 x 12)
 
now i'm limited to 3.65 (166 x 22) but i with i could reach 4.0 with this cpu too =/
 
just in case of curiosity, i got a true rev c. and a 150cfm delta

I'd say this is the most appropriate place for discussion of overclockability of Xeon processors.  It's of great interest to potential SR-2 customers and of much less interest to single-socket board customers who have much cheaper processors available to overclock.

I have my X5670 folding 24/7 at 185bclk/21x.  I was able to pass prime and other tests at 190x22 but not folding.   I'll have to check the voltages and get back to you.  I suspect there are good and bad chips in every batch so it's hard to generalize.

LR is probably too modest to tout his tuning thread, but I will because it worked great for my Xeon.  See the link "max bclock strategy guide" in his signature - it's a very detailed yet straightforward way to do exactly what he described in general terms in his last post.

thank you for the link, friends. I'll do some tests when i return to my office tomorrow

@ kscott190
 
not SR-2, but R2E, i'm running the X5650 in a ASUS Rampage 2 Extreme

x5650 on R2E?? is the R3E ready for x5650 as well??

Kinda curious if a BIOS update would be necessary.  I've heard a lot of the MoBo's (single socket) required a BIOS update to run the 980X and I would suspect the X5650 would be no different.

lgustavomp

capreppy

Kinda curious if a BIOS update would be necessary.  I've heard a lot of the MoBo's (single socket) required a BIOS update to run the 980X and I would suspect the X5650 would be no different.

My R2E came with the 1708 (or 1704? ´:P) as stock bios and i was able to boot my X5650 without problems, it just gave me the msg "update your bios to unlock all cpu blablabla performance" but everything worked very well. Anyway, i updated to 1802 to ensure that i'll not see that msg anymore.
 
But i'm still disapointed with my cpu, i dunno if i got a bad batch, but it can barely hit 180bclk without 1.35+ (!!!) vcore and vtt. Even with a true + 150 cfm fan i'm getting 75ºC priming. What a shame :S

75 isn't unreasonable.  Not being able to hit 180bclk without high voltage is kinda alarming.  I haven't seen a lot of peeps running the X5650 as yet so not easy to determine if you got a bad batch or if this is true in general.
 
Historically, the XEONs do tend to OC better.  Obviously this is a new chip type and there is no history here.
 
I am looking to get 2 x X5650 to go with an SR-2 and hopefully will be able to find some good OC numbers for them.

the problem with the X5XXX series of cpu's is the fact that the uncore multiplier is stuck at 20x no matter what you set it too. Motherboard makers are slowly fixing the issue by way of BIOS update, in fact the Gigabyte X58A UD7 just got a new BIOS with new microcode that fixed the issue for a user on XS.

The problem with the high uncore multiplier is that it requires a lot of VTT voltage to stabilize, something I don't want to do for a 24/7 overclock.

VTT in asus is called QPI/DRAM

Has it occurred to you that your benchmark may be bottlenecking on something other than CPU speed? Also if you aren't running on an SR-2, you are posting to the wrong forum.