Alienware Aurora_R4 - i7-3930K - 71.6 FPS

[br3ttman]

Just got my new Alienware system today.  1st thing I installed was KeyShot to check render speed.

System Overview
Alienware Aurora_R4
i7-3930k, 3.2Ghz, overclocked to 4.1Ghz
Win 7, Professional, 64-Bit
16.0 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti

KeyShot FPS: 71.6

[Ed]

Welcome to the i7 3930k club br3ttman.

I ended up turning my overclock multiplier down from 44 to 42 (4.2 GHz).  This reduced the cpu temperature from 73 deg C to 67 deg C, and cpu voltage from 1.4V to 1.32V, while running KeyShot.  This reduced the frame rate on the KeyShot benchmark from 86fps to 82.5 fps.  I figure reducing the temperature and cpu voltage to well within safe limits is worth a mere 4% drop in fps.

I'm curious what your cpu temp is running the KeyShot benchmark, as both our systems are using closed-loop water coolers.

Ed

[br3ttman]

Ed,

You know as soon as I checked my FPS, I went back and checked your post to see what your frame rate was and saw you were running at 4.4Ghz.  This system was advertised at 4.1Ghz O.C.,  But I can't tell for search if the O.C. is actually enabled yet.  I took a quick peek at the BIOS before leaving work this evening and I found an option for enabling level 1 or level 2 overclocking.  I'll look at it more tomorrow as well as operating temperatures and I'll follow-on to this post.

I was forced into a Dell system under $3 to $3.5K at our office.  Fortunately, I was able to convince my boss and talk our IT department into this Alienware gaming system and still get it into our Dell service agreement.  I wanted to optimize the system in particular for our rapidly growing KeyShot workflow.   The best part: I'm getting equivalent FPS compared to the our 'higher end' Dell Precision T5500 engineering workstations with dual Xeon 6-core processors at half the price.  Plus I'm running ProE and Solidworks just fine.  Really, from my research into various systems this past year, the gamer PC's, in particular with the i7-3930k processors, are an incredible value for CPU and KeyShot performance.

[Ed]

br3ttman-

Before getting into your BIOS, download CPU-Z and HWMonitor (both free) to see your CPU performance, cpu core voltages, and temperatures.

That will tell you if you're overclocked.  Curious to see what your i7 3930k cpu temperature is with the KeyShot benchmark.

Also, there are several ways one can set up the overclock on this cpu.  Curious how Dell set it up because some gamers want the cpu to run full speed all the time.

Instead, I'm using SpeedStep so when running my normal programs like MS Office, the cpu speed drops, the core voltage drops, the temperature drops, and the fans slow down - all with no perceived slowing of the applications.  However, when running KeyShot, the cpu automatically kicks into overclock (4.2 Ghz), runs all 6 cores of course, and the temperature goes up to 67 deg C, and that's well within safe limits.

Ed

[br3ttman]

Ed,

Finally got a moment to download CPU-Z and HWMonitor to check my OC performance on my Alienware Aurora.  Below are screenshots with idling (1200Mhz) and KeyShot (3800Mhz) performance speeds.  When I initially ran CPU-Z the very first time, I had ProE and Photoshop running in the background, and it was clocking at 4100Mhz, but since then it has never gone beyond 3800Mhz again.