AMD® Phenom™ II Overclocking Thread

[Uriel]

More lies from 3DMark06:

I'm still @ 3.3GHz. If you see anyone claiming stupidly high clocks with these CPUs be careful about what they're using for the screenshot.

 

[Big.Wayne]

bigjimmyauk
Wow man your getting some good results! . . . 4GHz processing and 2.6GHz CPU-NB is great especially with temps @ 28°C-51°C, nice screenies too so well done your screen of the day! . . . look forward to any Prime Blend results you can submit!

Muel
Hey man don't be afraid and don't doubt anything, use the force! . . . you say "at anything over 3.8ghz blend fails straight away" . . .why do you think that is? . . . is it the temps or is it the volts? . . . don't give up just yet as you have a AMD® Phenom™ II X4 965 and I think it could do more! . . . yeah I hear what your saying about TDP but I don't think you need worry just try your best to keep everything cool and you will be fine . . . is anything hot inside your system? . . .Once you worked out the big clocks you can then figure the more reasonable day to day settings, anyway good luck and look forward to any Prime Blend test reults you do!

EGuitarStar
Sorry about the confusion, It did look just like a Rana core from the screenie, thanks for the heads up . . . Regarding +MHz/-Cores vs -MHz/+Cores the answer will be it depends on the application you are using, old games will run faster with +MHz while newer games will probably run faster with +Cores . . . Multithreaded software such as video-encoding and 3D-Rendering will probably be a lot faster with +Cores also . . nice you have a choice! . . . once you work out the best clocks for both you can do some benching and share your results with all of us here!

Elfmeister
No worries! . . . hope you picked up a little insight from my ramblings heh! . . .can I ask what is your past overclocking experience and have you done BIOS clocking before? . . . If not then you may find this program interesting! AMD OverDrive™ . . . how long has your system been up and running?

SMAndy
Take your time . . . 4GHz will be still there in a week or two! . . . I'm not actually sure what chip your using? . . . did I miss that somewhere! . . . 3.5GHz Processing & 2.47GHz CPU-NB/HTT is very fast, look forward to seeing what you can do with Prime95 Blend!

~>Dg<~
The disparity between the voltage you [key] in the BIOS and the voltage you see in CPU-z & BIOS health page is perfectly normal, it's something known as vDrop and it's nearly always been like that, don't worry about it and pay attention to the figure in CPU-z & BIOS health page as thats the volts the chip is getting, doesn't matter if you [key] in 1.70vCore to get 1.55vCore in CPU-z! . . . I'd say 1.3v CPU-NB is a nice figure, I would go higher than this but you need good cooling. 2.6GHz CPU-NB os a nice figure to aim for, I noticed by 3D-Benchmarks jumped up quite a bit with a boost to Northbridge speeds . . .

eddyc
Really nice result there! . . . AMD® Phenom™ II X2 unlocked to X3 and overclocked to 3.8GHz, good screenie including 25mins Prime Blend as well, good work, if you get time see if you can get a big Blend run off. Once you worked out the CPU clock then for sure some extra CPU-NB MHz will sweeten the deal but best to do these things one at a time. I'm interested to kno . . . did you do any testing on the chip before you unlocked it or did you unlock it and start clocking? . . . I also noticed you clocking your IGP, I did the same and have some info you may or may not find helpful . . the last setting was stable but the northbridge started getting quite hot so need to get some extra airflow on it to keep it cool and happy!

• 700MHz 1.100v
• 750MHz 1.205v
• 800MHz 1.205v
• 850Mhz 1.310v

 

[bigjimmyauk]

my latest venture with the freezing temps outside i opened the doors to my dining room(computer room) in one last attempt to crack the 10k mark on fritz
fritz was stable enough for 1 run, IBT failed after 1 pass, Prime 95 gave up after 50 seconds

now backed down to my original 3.8GHZ and running another 6 hour prime to make sure those high voltages didn't damage anything.

P:S do you think i will still get 3.8GHZ if i used 8GB of ram instead of the 4GB i currently have????

 

[bigjimmyauk]

P:S thanks for the advice on the THERMOLAB BARAM It's a great cooler i have another fan coming tomorrow or wednesday gonna get a push pull going and see if i can drop the temps a little

 

[Big.Wayne]

Yeah no worries, It is a great cooler and I'm suprised more people didn't get one . . . Push-Pull Baram!! . . . I was gonna call you an OverCooler but actually that makes a lot of sense when combined with an overclocked & overvolted Deneb!

I think all the magic happens when the chip is kept below 30°C-40°C load . . . look forward to your results and maybe some pictures if you can managed it!

 

[SMAndy]

SMAndy
Take your time . . . 4GHz will be still there in a week or two! . . . I'm not actually sure what chip your using? . . . did I miss that somewhere! . . . 3.5GHz Processing & 2.47GHz CPU-NB/HTT is very fast, look forward to seeing what you can do with Prime95 Blend!

I've got an X3 720BE, Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P, and Corsair Dominator 4GB 1600.

Sorry, it got very busy at home last night, so i didn't have a chance to check it all... I've had it 2 hours prime blend stable, with temps not going over 53 for the CPU-NB and 42 for the CPU itself.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Nice one! . . . . better get some gaming done then!

 

[Muel]

Muel
Hey man don't be afraid and don't doubt anything, use the force! . . . you say "at anything over 3.8ghz blend fails straight away" . . .why do you think that is? . . . is it the temps or is it the volts? . . . don't give up just yet as you have a AMD® Phenom™ II X4 965 and I think it could do more! . . . yeah I hear what your saying about TDP but I don't think you need worry just try your best to keep everything cool and you will be fine . . . is anything hot inside your system? . . .Once you worked out the big clocks you can then figure the more reasonable day to day settings, anyway good luck and look forward to any Prime Blend test reults you do!

We shall see, it'd be nice to see a C2 stable at something above 3.8ghz, but from what everyone has told me they really hit the wall at that, which is exactly what I found. 1.525v is enough to get 3.8ghz stable, but 1.6v wasn't enough to make 3.9ghz stable, which is 0.05v higher than AMD say to go.

They do clock a lot better at low temps, which is why I think on liquid nitrogen cooling they can make 7ghz at about 1.8-2.0v.

I'd really like to make a watercooled system but with a heat extractor type thing in there aswell, so the coolent could be going round at really low temps, say 0C or even lower. Combine that with a C3 965, make it fit in a normalish case and I think you've got a system that will provide a pretty nice stable daily overclock.

I think it probably isn't the temps that are stopping me going higher for the prime run, but it might be. After all it was idleing at about 45C, which is roughly what it goes to on stock settings.

I was using a Titan Fenrir with decent air flow through the case, so without spending lots of money I can't get the temps lower, and I was already using my highest vcore I could trust of 1.6v, so I really can't see me making 4ghz stable on this system.

We shall see one day, but for now I'm giving it a rest, I've got a lot of work on at the moment and don't want to risk popping it.

EDIT: Interestingly, the guys who got 7ghz were using a 955, I've never seen anyone using a 965 on liquid nitrogen cooling for massive clocks, I think because the stock TDP is 140w.

 

[Uriel]

Well I'm having a sit at current settings for a few days. Prime is stable. No BSODs so far, no difficulty in booting.

I think I can live with the correctable hardware error due to the unlocked CPU.

I have a couple of ideas for breaking 300 FSB but I think it's time to actually use the PC for a while .

 

[eddyc]

Hi Big.Wayne thanks so much for all the advice. Its threads like this that make this forum so good. I am running a big blend off during the day today. So should be able to post a 10 hour ish blend tonight. Fingers crossed it doesn't crash on me. I have done several 48 hour encoding runs on the same settings but that does not stress the system so much. We will see

I did not do any testing on the chip before unlocking. (Apart from checking the relationship between the mobo temps and the core temps). I was too excited to see if I could unlock extra cores! Should I have done?

Thanks a lot for the IGP advice. I will try out those settings. I have been really pleased with its performance so far. It seems to respond pretty well to clocking.

This may be very stupid but how do you tell if it is getting too hot? Is there a sensor? I cant seem to see any measurements that respond to using graphics. In terms of cooling I have a coolermaster elite 335 with 2 120mm fans (intake at bottom front and exhaust at middle back) do you think that will be enough? Flow always seems to be pretty good but I think my hdds get in the way of the intake a bit and my cable management is really poor!

 

[Uriel]

Temp sensing doesn't work for individual cores when you have the CPU unlocked but you can still read overall temperature. Check your BIOS CPU temperature and find something that agrees with it.

Speedfan and Everest both work for me to give overall CPU temp. 62°C is the rated maximum but I would say you want to keep it under 55°C for long term running.

What temperature sensing software works will depend on your motherboard.

 

[eddyc]

Hi Uriel.

Were you responding to the last bit of my last post?

If you were: I was talking only about the temp of the IGP. Sorry for confusion.

Quotes are good sometimes .

 

[Uriel]

I see. For the igp I think rivatuner might do the trick.

 

[eddyc]

I have been using GPU NOS so far (it came with my mobo) and it seems to do a good job of overclocking. But unless I am being incredibly stupid (possible) it is not showing any temp read outs.

Will rivatuner do the temps? Shouldn't HWMonitor show GPU temps if a sensor is available? There is one temp reading which I have never worked out what it is but it does not seem to respond to gaming or anything else so don't think that is the correct one.

Thanks so much for the help.

 

[Uriel]

Well I'm not sure as I've disabled my igp. Rivatuner has allowed temperature monitoring of every graphics card I've had since the Geforce 6600GT though. Would be worth a try.

 

[eddyc]

Sounds good. I'll give it a try tonight. Thanks.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Hey eddyc, sorry for confusion, I am measuring temps of the chipset/northbridge with a very sophisticated device called Finger-Thermometer®

 

[el Kuarlos]

Not established fully stability but been running this for a bit;

125 watt phenom 965- [email protected]
CPU-nb- [email protected]
Ram- timings 9-9-9-27@1600htz.

Might seem a tad on the girly side but I find things really start to drop off when you go above 3.8 and for 0.2 of a gig faster taken against the added voltage, heat and stability issues, i think 3.8 is the sweet spot- this seems best for 24/7 overclock.
Tweaking the NB gave the most significant results.

 

[Uriel]

I found this article when I was looking for reviews of my motherboard:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-ii-overclock,2267.html

[Edit: The motherboard's is the DDR2 only version of the one I have]

Tomshardware took it on themselves to find that efficiency vs performance sweet spot on a Phenom II 940. They suggested about 3.6 GHz seemed to be the way to go. Who knows though: things may have changed with the newer chips?

 

[eddyc]

Thanks Big.Wayne.

The finger thermometer has been well tested over 1,000s of years so I am more than happy to put my trust in it.