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AMD FX Overclocking

Now is a great time to be building retro gaming systems :D so much AM3+ tech floating about for cheap, decent amount of pretty good FX970 boards going for like £30, Phenom 2s for £20 or so, etc. FX6300, 990FX board and 5GB RAM I picked up for £66. 8GB memory kit cost £19 and everything else I already had laying about.
 
Hah, yeah and me. Good times tuning the old CPUs.

Only if they cooperate with what you want them to do :p For a retro build I'm satisfied with 4.3GHz on 1.29v so the CPU doesn't guzzle too much power or spew out excessive amounts of heat but that 2400MHz CPU-NB is kinda bugging me now, I want it :D I'm trying to source a 2400MHz 16GB kit of RAM atm to eliminate that as a limiting factor when messing with the FSB but those kits all seem to be in bloody auctions and the ones that aren't are going for silly prices for obsolete tech.
 
Only if they cooperate with what you want them to do :p For a retro build I'm satisfied with 4.3GHz on 1.29v so the CPU doesn't guzzle too much power or spew out excessive amounts of heat but that 2400MHz CPU-NB is kinda bugging me now, I want it :D I'm trying to source a 2400MHz 16GB kit of RAM atm to eliminate that as a limiting factor when messing with the FSB but those kits all seem to be in bloody auctions and the ones that aren't are going for silly prices for obsolete tech.

Yeah, sounds good. No point spending loads though if the idea is for a budget build.

I'd stick all your dividers on the minimum value in the bios. So CPU, CPU-NB, HT, Ram. Check it boots. Then walk it up to see what the board can do.
My old Sabretooth R1 board could do a lot of bclk. 300+ I think. And the overclocks would be better than just upping the CPU multiplier.

I would've thought older games are going to be lightly threaded though. And you'd be better off with a 2500k or something.
 
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Yeah, sounds good. No point spending loads though if the idea is for a budget build.

I'd stick all your dividers on the minimum value in the bios. So CPU, CPU-NB, HT, Ram. Check it boots. Then walk it up to see what the board can do.
My old Sabretooth R1 board could do a lot of bclk. 300+ I think. And the overclocks would be better than just upping the CPU multiplier.

I would've thought older games are going to be lightly threaded though. And you'd be better off with a 2500k or something.

I went with the FX for a couple reasons mainly, the old FXs are better at multithreading which will help with the emulation the retro rig will do and because I was able to pick up the 6300, Asrock 990FX Extreme4, and 5GB RAM as a bundle for £66. Bunged the memory in a draw as it was just a bunch of random mismatched sticks will probably chuck them on ebay for like £10 each or something. If I can I'll grab a 16GB 2400MHz kit for £40 just going to have to be patient I suppose until a kit like that pops up on ebay, don't worry silly money won't be spent on an old toy I save my money for shiny new toys for my main rig :D. From the quick test I did do the FSB will go to at least 250 but memory frequency becomes a limiting factor at that point as the current kit I have can't make 2000MHz which is pretty lame considering its 1866 stock.
 
Ironically as multi-treading genuinely becomes mainstream Bulldozer will have something of a renaissance. Albeit the IPC is still rather average.

Yup. I've said a very similar thing for quite some time, the FX CPUs are more relevent now than they were when they came out as things are ever shifting more toward multithreading making the FX CPUs to my mind a poor mans Ryzen especially if you can pick bundles up like I did they are absolute steals for that kind of money.

Yeah good stuff. I would have liked a refresh 8370 play with. My 8350 was a lot of fun though. Though my unlocked 960T was brilliant before that and got me into this whole hobby and community.

We kind of did, the 8320e and 8370e, both of them dropped requirements from 125w to 95w but I'm not sure how much of that was due to optimisations and how much was due to the lower base clocks.. probably more just highly binned versions but still interesting imo.
 
Alright, I managed to nab a 2x8GB 2400MHz CL11 Kingston Beast kit for £44 which should arrive wed/thurs FSB OCing will likely start soon after. Old toys are fun to play with too :D I did do a little benching at the current 4.3GHz 200FSB earlier and I have to say for an old system it surprised me how well it did. FFXV bench at max settings 1080p with all nvidia stuff off (except for hairworks) and the RX470 @ 1.32GHz 1.04v (actual thereabouts) and Samsung memory with my own custom timings basically at stock frequency (2050MHz) returned a score of 4194 which doesn't seem too shabby the retro rig will definitely have plenty of grunt for those emulation games. Curious to see just how much I can improve bandwidth with tighter memory timings @ 2133MHz as well to see how it improves latency. Something around 250FSB 2250MHz CPU-NB will do overall don't need monster speed in essentially a backup system so I'll favour latency improvements never really ssaw anyone doing that too much back in the day so to me anyway it'll be interesting seeing how that improves the FX CPU.
 
Well the memory kit arrived and... got sent the wrong one :rolleyes: still 2400mhz but only 8GB. Messed around using that kit and discovered that either the board or CPU absolutely sucks at FSB OCing, even 225MHz wouldn't POST with the memory @ 2332 I think it was, 2400 works fine when just multiplier OCing so seems like I'm stuck with that. On a slightly brighter note I did work out how to get my existing 1866MHz kit up to at least 2133 and it seems to be totally stable so not quite as crappy as I first thought the kit was. CPU-NB frequency is still a non starter as well, stock frequency or bust there. I'm going to haave to find some more time to experiment with the FSB and CPU-NB as something isn't adding up with the CPU apparently being a good clocker on low voltage to boot.
 
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