AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz. Overclock?

[Martini1991]

Why do people bother with this?...I've had my NB running from 2Ghz to 2.6Ghz and found the difference in benchmark scores to be absolutely minuscule, the only big difference it made to my rig was the hotter temps.

Are you sure it wasn't the HT link you raised?
CPU NB is well documented to give a performance increase, I've noticed the difference myself.
Raising my CPU NB I was able to get my Phenom II to slightly pass that of a Q9 Core 2 at the same clock in some situations, whereas prior it would have had lower performance using a normal 2GHZ CPU NB.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

Most other people experience a decent boost in benchmark scores. It makes a good difference.
That is why they bother.

Edit: See above I guess.

 

[Cooper]

Are you sure it wasn't the HT link you raised?

Please...

I've currently got it running at the mid point 2400.

One example is Cinebench R10

[email protected], NB@2Ghz = 15148

[email protected], [email protected] = 15420


For the extra volts and heat, 300 extra points isn't exactly worth it IMO.

In 'real world' scenarios like games, I doubt it means more than an extra frame or two at best, if that.

Each to their own I guess, but to me it comes across more of a placebo effect gain than anything else and seems to be an overrated overclocking tweak.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

Anandtech had a good bit showing the gains in games, provided a good boost.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3877/...investigation-of-thuban-performance-scaling/7

 

[humbug]

CPU-NB @ 2000Mhz

3DMark 11 Physics score: 5809

Spoiler

CPU-NB @ 2800Mhz

3DMark 11 Physics score: 6478

Spoiler

Thats + 12%

In CPU dependant games i'm able to get anything from a 2% to 15% Gain in FPS.

 

[FrankDaTank]

I guess there is a lot more to overclocking than I expected then. Will probably get a better cooler and some more Ram next week and give this a go! Thanks for the advice.

 

[Cooper]

CPU-NB @ 2000Mhz
Thats + 12%

In CPU dependant games i'm able to get anything from a 2% to 15% Gain in FPS.

40% OC on the NB to get about an average 10% gain.

Poor return.

Like I said, each to their own, but if CPU overclocking gave such a poor rate of return, I doubt many people would bother.

 

[Martini1991]

An extra 10% for little heat is a decent improvement. Especially to a Phenom II.
I didn't notice it generate much more heat at all, that said I ran under a 120.2 thick Thermochill RAD all by itself.
But mine was at 3.2GHZ, and thus more than 10%.

 

[humbug]

40% OC on the NB to get about an average 10% gain.

Poor return.

Like I said, each to their own, but if CPU overclocking gave such a poor rate of return, I doubt many people would bother.

Its not a poor return, it adds another performance gain aspect.

Another 10% gain, for nothing? i will take it, 10% is not to be sniffed at.

 

[wannabedamned]

40% OC on the NB to get about an average 10% gain.

Poor return.

Like I said, each to their own, but if CPU overclocking gave such a poor rate of return, I doubt many people would bother.

its essentially a free performance increase, the heat increase is negligible.

Turning your nose up to it is a little strange considering we're overclocking here

 

[FrankDaTank]

I am definately going to try and push for a little extra. if I can get it up to 3.6 or so I think I will be happy with that.

 

[riskyfrisky]

Sorry to hijack your thread Frank but i've got a 975BE, so i assume the same rules apply to me if i want to overclock?

My chip, CPU-Z states, is a RB-C3 stepping, what results should i expect? Will it hit a magical 4Ghz?

I've never overclocked before but my board (MVA88TD-V EVO) has a little overclock switch on it. I clicked it on and it overclocked it to 3.88Ghz but i never did any stress testing, though it seemed fine for the day i ran it like that for.

I've got an aftermarket Zalman cooler - it's the one that shreds your fingers when you touch the fins lol. I will use the overclock button again but just wanted to check that 3.88Ghz is realistic?

 

[Martini1991]

On the 975BE 4GHZ should be easily attainable.

 

[riskyfrisky]

On the 975BE 4GHZ should be easily attainable.

Really? That's great news but it's a shame the board couldn't select the 4Ghz itself, i'm not keen changing values myself. 3.88Ghz would be a nice little boost though.

 

[Martini1991]

I've never used that board before.
But it should be able to attain an easy 4GHZ.

 

[JonSmith]

Don't use the OC button. Go into the BIOS, find the overclocking options, set them to "manual". Find the CPU multiplier option and set it to 20x to give 200x20 = 4GHz. Boot the system and run OCCT for 20 minutes. If it fails, go back into the BIOS and raise the CPU voltage by one notch (should correspond to about 0.025V). Reboot and run OCCT for 20 minutes again. If it crashes, reboot and raise the voltage again. Keep doing this until you reach 1.5V (any higher isn't great for 24/7) or the cpu core temperatures exceed 55C (no more overclocking is possible past this point, you'll hit a thermal wall). Once it passes the OCCT test, it'll probably be stable in less intensive applications. I'd recommend running it for an hour after this to make sure, the longer the better generally.

 

[pandem0nium]

Here's my stats if it helps. My 960t (+ 2 cores unlocked) sits quite happily at X19 3.8ghz 24 hr clock with a 1.332 V core which seems to be a sweet spot without rocketing up temps and fan noise. 4ghz is doable though. I've also set my nb to 1.2v and the nb frequency is 2800.