TheOverclocker Issue 42 | Page 18

have good efficiency in Windows 10, you’re likely to have even better efficiency under Windows 7 - not always, but usually. Without further delay though these were the results of the session, on the first day. Cinebench 11.5 – 49.13 FPS Cinebench R15 - 4338 GeekBench 3 – 78513 GPUPI 1B – 1min15, 593 s HWBOT Prime – 9527.06 HWBOT x265 1080P – 76.39 FPS wPrime 32M – 2.637 sec wPrime 1024M – 33,439 sec As you can see, those are all either global first place positions or world records. Actually that WR status only applies to GPUPI, but the others are definitely x16 core Global first place position. So far this was going well, and moving on to 18 The OverClocker Issue 42 | 2017 Windows 7 would ideally make these scores a little harder to match. As always, things are never that simple when it comes to overclocking. There’s no such thing as a sure thing. FINAL BENCHING WITH WINDOWS 7 Moving to Windows 7 as stated earlier was supposed to instantly result in better scores; however, that was not exactly what happened. In fact, during the pre- testing the motherboard which had been overclocked constantly for tens of hours prior had given up. Either it was the motherboard, CPU or both. Eventually it meant that they needed to be swopped out while the board dried. As luck would have it, a previously verified Windows 7 installation was failing to reach the desktop. Solving this took a great amount of time, but once again it is possible to deal with this via the various BIOS options on the Zenith Extreme. They are not obvious options and this is made especially difficult because Windows 7 will not throw up any of these errors or BSOD when the system is operating under normal (i.e. none LN2) conditions. Sorting out Windows 7 literally took the vast majority of the day and at this point, it wasn’t clear if any useful scores would be possible, especially given the HWBOT rules concerning Windows 10. Fortunately on the last day I had for this, there was a breakthrough and even though there were still plenty of challenges, Windows 7 started to behave and the 1950X could once again resume its record runs, but under a fully sanctioned OS and these were the results of the day.