Project to overclock 8 core Xeon E5 2670 - BIOS mods?

[gofasterstripes]

Hi BIOS-Mods users!

I'm a stranger to these parts, but am curious to see if anyone here would be able to help with our research into ways to overclock the very very cheap E5-2670.  Right now eBay is flooded with these, at a bargain price.

This is an 8 Core, 20MB chip that will work on X79, but is clocked <3.3GHz and therefore a little slow in single-threaded work. I am looking to find any way [at this point, no matter how labour-intensive] to overclock or unlock this chip.

Is it possible to somehow modify something in the BIOS to aid/achieve this result?

EG - [this is a guess or first step] Detect the 2670 as another chip, perhaps a faster model like the E5-2690 then perhaps we will be able to overclock it by using the turbo frequencies of the 2690? 

There may be other ways, that's why I am asking here, to see if this community can help my thread on overclock.net.  

Please have a read through on oc.net if you're interested in this project, and post here if you have any suggestions or think this may be possible, the way I suggested or ANY other.

Remember - right now I don't have ANY limitations on what may make it work - ALL suggestions or demonstrations are welcome, no matter what Motherboard or BIOS you think or can prove will work. I am also interested to find/contact people who may have detailed knowledge about the way the chips declare their capabilities to the OS or BIOS, I will collect and organise all this information for the project.

If we can find a way to achieve this, a lot of people will benefit! Rome wasn't built in a day, but an 8-core 4GHz core Xeon could render it in one

[gofasterstripes]

Hi - I just found this, which looks of interest:

While the 3632QM is indeed a locked processor, and **by default**, you won't have much ability to overclock, aside from increasing your TDP limits IF your manufacturer allows it via BIOS setting.

HOWEVER, us overclockers don't care for defaults and locks and limits, right? With this CPU, depending on what chipset/mobo you have, almost always you can gain short/long term TDP turbo boost control. And if you have one of these chipsets (some may be desktop ones): Z77, Z75, QM77, QS77, UM77, HM77, then you can 100% always always gain BCLK control. In other words, you can increase the default 100 MHz reference clock (BCLK) to ~104+ depending on your particular motherboard. Since the max single core multiplier for this CPU is 32, and you increase BCLK by at least +3 ending with 103 MHz; you will have gained 99 MHz which is basically the same thing as adding +1 to your turbo multipliers as well as increasing PCIe/SATA speeds and boost ur eGPU performance (if you have one). This can also be a bad thing, but I won't get into that since you can just google it.

Here is how to do it; for gaining turbo TDP control, you need to set a setting in your BIOS called "Turbo PWR Limit MSR Lock" and set that to disabled. Afterwards, you'll be able to change your short/long turbo TDP limits in Intel XTU, throttlestop, etc. If you happen to have a locked BIOS or you do not have this setting, you can use an IFR structure extractor (plenty can be found via simple googling) to extract the correct decompressed module of your BIOS, this will then produce a .txt file with your BIOS settings. You just find the Turbo PWR Limit MSR Lock setting, find its variable hex value, boot into EFI Shell (grub) to change the NVRAM variable to 0x00 and reboot. And you will have turbo tdp control.

BCLK unlocking is significantly more difficult to do for the first time and will take me to long to tell you how. So, the short version is it involves unlocking your flash descriptor and then dumping, modifying and finally flashing your newly modified Intel ME FW. Then of course followed by a reboot, and you should have BCLK control in Intel XTU.

Sorry for the thread necro but it seems none of these replies go in depth or clearly answer the OP's question.

here 

That username also leads to this post, which gives fuller details

OK, we're now talking X79/99 but still, this looks very interesting.  I think the bit about Turbo Unlock function is built into motherboards, but the BCLK full control? 

Is anyone here up to the task of trying the approach listed above? Or similar, if you know better about how to do it...

[Rampage IV]

Any X79 board will give you full control on BCLK ratio, but you need to understand that sandy/ivy are very limited in bclk overclocking because a lot of different buses are also overclocked.

Turbo ratio settings are also inbuilt in the motherboard



It's not about unlocking magic features, any X79 motherboard will have broad control about pretty much everything you can tweak.

If you're looking for a way to unlock the cpu multiplier with a bios mod, not going to happen.

[gofasterstripes]

Hey.

I'm looking for ANY way to increase CPU speed on these chips. Changing the multi would be good, or decoupling the BClk from the bus speeds would also work, so then you can run a higher bus and a lower multiplier (or disable turbo).

I don't think I know the answer, I'm asking here for diverse inspiration.

Clock configuration is NOT controlled by the BIOS. It is controlled by the Intel ME FW (management engine firmware), a BIOS extension. Only a few bits must be changed from a overclocking disabled ME FW to make it an overclocking enabled ME FW. Gigabyte accidentally leaked an intel utility that can read the ME FW, edit it, and write the new version back to the flash ROM, along with all the necessary documentation to make the correct changes. This flash ROM contains not only the ME FW, but the BIOS, flash descriptor, and 2 other regions called the GbE and PDR.

From my second link above.

Does anyone one have any insight or experience with the above?

[gofasterstripes]

Might this allow BClk overclocking on Server boards?

[jcholsap]

Hi BIOS-Mods users!

I'm a stranger to these parts, but am curious to see if anyone here would be able to help with our research into ways to overclock the very very cheap E5-2670.  Right now eBay is flooded with these, at a bargain price.

This is an 8 Core, 20MB chip that will work on X79, but is clocked <3.3GHz and therefore a little slow in single-threaded work. I am looking to find any way [at this point, no matter how labour-intensive] to overclock or unlock this chip.

Is it possible to somehow modify something in the BIOS to aid/achieve this result?

EG - [this is a guess or first step] Detect the 2670 as another chip, perhaps a faster model like the E5-2690 then perhaps we will be able to overclock it by using the turbo frequencies of the 2690? 

There may be other ways, that's why I am asking here, to see if this community can help my thread on overclock.net.  

Please have a read through on oc.net if you're interested in this project, and post here if you have any suggestions or think this may be possible, the way I suggested or ANY other.

Remember - right now I don't have ANY limitations on what may make it work - ALL suggestions or demonstrations are welcome, no matter what Motherboard or BIOS you think or can prove will work. I am also interested to find/contact people who may have detailed knowledge about the way the chips declare their capabilities to the OS or BIOS, I will collect and organise all this information for the project.

If we can find a way to achieve this, a lot of people will benefit! Rome wasn't built in a day, but an 8-core 4GHz core Xeon could render it in one

[jcholsap]

You need to mod the BCLK. I'd be concerned that OC'ing it 20% could push the silicon over it's thermal limits, unless you had liquid cooling. Reliability vs performance. 10% OC is at the fringe of margin of error and prob safe... but is that worth the effort? There is that possibility that the CPUs were manufactured with identical specs but given lesser ids just to fill orders. but that's a crap shoot.

[gofasterstripes]

Thanks for the info dude.

When you say "Mod the BCLK", could you clarify what you mean? AFAIK you can adjust the BCLK on many boards already, but there's no way to prevent the PCIE bus going out of spec if you do it. Fixing that would be a good way to get a higher final clockspeed.