Intel Second Generation Core i7 3820 Review @ OCC

In my first run, I intended to see what kind of bclock tolerance the chip had. Eventually, I was able to push the bclock from 100 MHz to 107 MHz; a pretty decent bclock increase that allowed the chip to scale to 4.6 GHz. Again, this was not enough of a clock, as my 2600K does that easily. Next up was the 125 MHz Gear Ratio and multiplier adjustment; this moved the needle quite a bit higher to 5.0 GHz. Further bclock tuning up to 125.625 MHz gained a prime stable 5025 MHz clock speed from the chip. Further tuning of the bclock could have raised the bar even higher, though without the benefit of long term stability. Nonetheless, it was capable of running the entire benchmark suite at 5.1 GHz. Voltage tuning and enhanced cooling was needed to get these clock speeds, but nothing more extreme than what most would endeavour to use.