bring forth this CPU to the
masses.
There’s a whole host of
changes INTEL has undertaken
that are more than skin deep.
We of course won’t go into the
technical detail of it all, but
suffice to say there are some
useful changes that make this
an attractive CPU even for
those who do not use it in a
productivity environment, that
is for gamers and just general
hardware enthusiasts. This is
in particular when it comes to
TURBO-BOOST MAX 3.0 which
is basically a new Turbo mode
or state in addition to the one
we are familiar with. It allows
applications to be pinned or
automatically run on cores that
overclock the best or perhaps
better put have the highest
Turbo frequency capability of
them all. Since each core on
the CPU has been graded by
INTEL, it is now possible to
know which core is the best
and which is the worst.
Via a combination of the
32 The OverClocker Issue 39 | 2016
motherboard BIOS settings
and INTEL’s own software, it is
now possible to assign single
threaded tasks and applications
automatically to this single
best performing core, which
is able to overclock pas the
stipulated 3.5GHZ Turbo 2.0
frequency. Depending on the
application and of course the
particular CPU sample. The
single core could have a clock
speed north of 4GHz, so the CPU
doesn’t lose out on those low
thread applications and current
generation gaming titles.
Sounds all good and well,
but frankly it isn’t a worthwhile
feature for enthusiasts and
certainly not for overclockers.
Your performance tuning and
overclocking will largely remain
the same and you will either
set fixed clocks, or regulate the
Turbo range per core manually
as you’ve always done before.
Speaking of per core
overclocking, it is possible as
well to set individual voltages
for each core. It isn’t well
explained in any literature
we found, but at least one
motherboard (no prizes for
guessing it was the RAMPAGE V
10 Edition), allows you to do this,
for that extra but of fine tuning
your particular CPU.
What INTEL has also added
to the 6950X is an AVX offset.
Unlike with the previous CPU
family, the AVX frequency
isn’t fixed or set to whatever
the CPU frequency is. You can
control this independently,
but only in one direction and
that is downwards. That is, if
you for instance have a sync’d
CPU multiplier of 40x, and an
AVX offset of 3x. Then your
AVX frequency is effectively
3700MHz (assuming a 100MHz
Base Clock). This is again
useful for the competitive
overclocker who is looking
to strike the right balance
between AVX workload
performance and system
stability.
Since AVX workloads create
an inordinate amount of load
on the CPU, these are likely to