Intel CPU Overclocking applications

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I am about to venture into the realm of CPU overclocking for the very first time on my new Intel i7-6850K X99 Broadwell-E CPU.

Any suggestion for Linux application that would help me in this process?

I came across Intel Extreme Tuning Utility, but unfortunately it is Windows only.
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-
Intel have their Performance Tuning Utility platform independent, but not the XTU, that I cannot fathom.
Looks like the XTU allows one to overclock the CPU in the application without going back and forth into the BIOS. Would be great if that could be achieved on Linux too in some form of application, command line or GUI.

I am not keen on downloading just about any application that provides overclocking without any recommendations. That is the reason for this post, to find out what alternatives I have for CPU overclocking on Linux. I have done my due diligence on Google, but could not find anything useful.

2

Hi
I have a package called i7z;
https://code.google.com/archive/p/i7z/
https://software.opensuse.org/package/i7z

You can use it to write to the registers to change the multipliers etc…

Nothing in the BIOS to tweak, esp RAM voltages?

You need to run something like prime to ensure that all is good with RAM and CPU.

3

This package looks interesting, but it has not been updated for 3 years. Probably not with support for the X99 Haswell-E or Broadwell-E Intel CPUs.

Have not gotten there yet. There is probably nothing I can do from Linux. Most likely I would have to venture into the UEFI/BIOS.
Seems overclocking in BIOS is very easy on my ASRock MB. If you used the finished OC profiles.

PRIME, as in NVIDIA Optimus?

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Overclock is tricky different OS may have different reactions. It is an issue of timing. Just be sure that you know how to drop back in case things go wobbly

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no, Prime95 - Wikipedia is a software for stress testing. You should run it for a long period of time (20h+) to see if your overclock was too high. I had it crash after 15h once.

For overclocking, I learned it via the BIOS and if you can believe those at http://www.oveclock.net it is safer/more efficient to do it manually.
One example: I used Asus AI Suite (Windows) “one-click-auto-oc-tuner” and it got me to around 4.2GHz without increasing the Voltage. It was really unstable, when I did it manually I had to increase the voltage quite some notches to get a stable 4.2GHz OC.
While I don’t know about those presets, imo it is better if you know what exactly you are changing and how you can correct those settings if something does not go the way it should.

There are great tutorials and walkthroughs out on the internet, but for CPU overclocking it comes down to changing the multiplier and Core Voltage (at least on Intel processors, I have not used an amd one).

6

Hi
True, but worth a try at least for feedback on any tweaks

As indicated in user merk’s post prime95 (forgot the 95 bit…) tweak a little test a lot… I had watercooling on my old ASUS setup AMD Dual Core, I could get it from 2.2 to about 2.9GHz and increase RAM voltages as well for a stable system.

cpupower should take care of turbo boosting etc.

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Will have to wait until Linux Kernel 4.10 to get Intel Turbo Boost Max 3.0 to work on my CPU.

8

Hi
I’m running 4.9.0-rc1 (on Tumbleweed), add the Kernel:HEAD standard repo, patch the driver, rebuild and test?

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I might try that if my patience for waiting on 4.10 runs out. It is my gaming rig and I’m a bit reluctant to try a non stable kernel, and I would also need to install nvidia The-Hard-Way.

10

Hi
I’ve been running kernel:head for a number of months without any issues since my bugs have been fixed on one system, still have one open on the MacBook, but not sure if it will get fixed…