TR Forums

I'm at my wits end. So overclocking Sandy Bridge should be a breeze, but it's not working for me.

So I left the base clock at 100.
Turbo Mode: Off
CPU voltage: Auto
CPU ratio: 38

Just a mild overclock to see if it works, but sadly, no matter what I set the CPU ratio to, when I log into windows it's running at 3.33ghz.

So I played around with the settings for a day.
I turned Turbo Mode on.
Upped the voltage to 1.3 for the CPU.
Set CPU ratio to 40.

What happens is the multiplier gets set at 40, but then the base clock magically downclocks and the CPU goes back to 3.33. At least that's what CPU-Z is telling me.
Asus AI SUITE is telling me the CPU is doing 4.0ghz. How can I be sure?
Am I doing something wrong?

Rig in Sig. Help is appreciated.

CPU-z is usually right, though if you left turbo mode on its free to clock it however it wants, turn turbo mode off and work up from a lower clock like 24x.

You can run a benchmark to see what is really going on; any one will do. Try it once at stock and once with the overclock that the diagnostic utilities disagree on -- that will tell you whether you've changed anything or not.