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AMD® Athlon™ II Overclocking Thread

Some Athlon II X4 640 reviews are popping up. These are quite notable CPUs, as they are C3 stepping cores. However, from the reviews I've read, no one has cracked 4Ghz with one yet, which is very disappointing.
 
Hey roadie, glad you enjoyed the thread :)

Yeah boards that can run 300+ HT ref. Clock do broaden the scope of the maximum overclock but I think a stable 4GHz is gonna be a big ask from a Propus die, did a little reading about the newer C3 revision but didn't spy anything technically significant in the change? . . . we will have to wait and see I guess! :cool:
 
Yeah, but I think you would have to be very lucky to get a 4Ghz chip. HWBOT certainly does not represent the results you might expect to get on average!

Anyway, I'm considering a cheap Athlon II X4 build (hopefully overclocked to 3.6Ghz+) to give me four cores that should perform clock for clock like my current CPU. Question is, do I go AM2+ so I can keep my current RAM and save ~£100, or AM3 so I can drop in an AMD CPU from the next generation if and when I decide to upgrade?

AM2+ Build:
Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD3P - £80
AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8Ghz - £78
Current Memory - Free
Total £158 minus selling current CPU & Mobo (£60?)

AM3 Build:
ASRock 890GX Extreme3 - £93
AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8Ghz - £78
4Gb G.Skill F3-12800CL7D-4GBECO - £104
Total £275 minus selling current RAM, CPU & Mobo (£100?)

Your thoughts are welcome!
 
I would sell up and male the jump to AM3, allows for 6 core chips to be used at a later date and possibly bulldozer depending on bios updates.

You will also find overclocking a bit easier with higher spec'd ram (1066 vs 1333/1600) that DDR3 will give you
 
I think it would only be worth upgrading to AM3 if it is Bulldozer compatible. The Gigabyte AM2+ board I have my eye on has BIOS support for the hex core CPUs already, but I wonder if it will support Bulldozer too? I don't need to upgrade urgently, but it would be nice to play around with something new whilst I have some free time over the summer.
 
I dropped my 1055t into the asrock 890gx extreme3 but have now dropped it back into the Asus M4A785D-M PRO, the asus(ddr2) handles 4ghz better than the asrock, I could not get 4ghz stable on the asrock with acceptable vcore
 
So few AMD® Athlon™ II OverClockers?

Small update . . . . I treated myself to a dedicated GPU, bought used from OcUK MM for £35 collect . . . very pleased! :o

8800gtsgpuz03.gif


Obviously having been using the onboard Radeon HD 4200 this is like a"Godly" upgrade! . . It's only for a bit of Team-Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2 @ 1920x1200 . . . . cut to the chase after about 20 minutes gaming my overclocked PC crashed! :eek: . . . . sweet so reset to stock and problem goes away? . . . so my mega-primed/IBT/LinX overclocked system while using the onboard IGP suddenly becomes unstable when using a dedicated GPU?

I didn't have this issue when running an overclocked TripleCore + HD 4890 so had to think why a QuadCore + 8800GTS would cause a problem . . . as the system worked 100% stable at stock that ruled out any driver related business, I wondered maybe if the power-draw was to much for the Corsair HX520W I am using? . . . connected up a power-monitor brick to the system and fired up every resource hungry diagnostic I had for both the system and GPU and managed to get 307 watts? . . . that shouldn't be a problem for a decent 520 watt PSU right? . . . next step was to connect the PSU up to a dedicated PSU tester to see if there was any slight issues? . . . nope nothing! :D I like that because I bought that Corsair PSU used from OcUK MM (£45.00 inc) and have been caining it for 18 months solid and its still holding it down nicely! . . . props to Corsair for choosing good units to put their name to! ;)

Anyway so at this stage I still wasn't sure WTF was causing my game crashes :confused: . . . Dived into the BIOS to inspect the 3.5GHz (inc IGP)settings I've been using solidly the past few months, tried a bit more vCore but still crashed in games? . . . I then adjusted two settings that had previously been on [Auto] and got a good result

  • HT Over Voltage
  • GPU Overclocking
I wasn't sure if HT Over Voltage was referring to Ht ref.Clock or HT-Link? for the 3.5GHz overclock the Ht ref.Clock is 250MHz but the HT-Link can be either 2.5GHz with the default [10x] multi or 2.0GHz when using a [8x] multi, fact is the games crashed when either frequency was used so changing this HT Over Voltage from [Auto/1.2v] to manual 1.3v has totally fixed the game crashing issue! . . . this also kinda indicates that this specific voltage helps with getting an improved Ht ref.Clock (and not HT-Link) . . .

The other BIOS setting that was adjusted was this GPU Overclocking thing? . . . It had been on [Auto] while I was using the IGP but I wondered if maybe it was clashing with the nVidia GPU? . . . total longshot I know but I thought if I at least took it from [Auto] and set it to a manual value that may help the game crashes? . . . I shouldn't have really changed two BIOS values at the same time because now the problem has been fixed I'm not sure which value was the win! :p

I will make an update in a few days after I confirm this, I suspect it was boosting the HT voltage but I'll let you know when I'm totally sure . . . it's fixed no doubt as I've been gaming four hours every night and the system has been 100% rock solid!

Bit of a waffle but maybe this will help someone out one day! :cool:
 
Good to hear wayne, I was thougrougly impressed with my 8800GT that I got off MM too.

I have a small update aswell.

I've justs bought the Athlon II x4 620 off iTek that unlocks to a deneb with L3 cache. Happily at 3.2ghz with 2500mhz HT-Link and NB.

I cant push it anyt higher due to temps being too high on my arctic freezer but I'll hopefully be watercooled by the end of the summer so I should be able to really crank it up :D
 
BW - I'm sure someone will find your read worthwhile. Always good to come back with an answer even if you answered it yourself.

fronzennova - Your not allowed on this thread because its a Daneb! :p be told... I was (haha)
 
Big.Wayne, can you let me know how best to benchmark/stress test my unlocked X3 440 (now a Phenom II X4 B40)?

The Athlon II X3 440 was unlocked by flicking the switch on the Asus M4A88TD-V EVO\USB3 motherboard. It seems even I couldn't mess that up! :D
 
fozzybear said:
Big.Wayne, can you let me know how best to benchmark/stress test my unlocked X3 440 (now a Phenom II X4 B40)?

The Athlon II X3 440 was unlocked by flicking the switch on the Asus M4A88TD-V EVO\USB3 motherboard. It seems even I couldn't mess that up! :D
Click to expand...

Then what's that smoke coming from the back? :p
 
Hey fozzybear,

What I would do in your boots is run CoreTemp* to get an idea of heat, quicky test the unlocked chip with a simple 20 loop run of LinX, if that passed give Prime95 "Blend" test a run between 1-4 hours . . . if that passes loop either 3DMark or similar 3D-application for an hour . . . this is basically a quick test to see if your unlocked core is stable(ish) . . .

If you *don't* encounter any errors or glitches then reset the unlock back to a Triple-Core, and run CINEBENCH 11.5, wPrime and 3D-Mark making a not of your scores . . . . then unlock the chip again and repeat the benchmarking process and compare the scores! . . .


*CoreTemp: Although there are mixed views of whether or not the temps readings from the app have any reflection on the actual processor temps I have used it as a rough gauge to note the difference between low and high, it's good enough to start with . . . . you wouldn't want to see temps above 50°C using this app . . .
 
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