AMD® Athlon™ II Overclocking Thread

Frozennova · 15 Apr 2010 at 20:36

iTek said:
Ive reset BIOS.

HT link does not come up as multiplier, its 1.2/1.4/1.6 (Selected) /1.8/2.0ghz is this the same thing

Its the same thing, my board is the same I'm guessing gigabyte think its better to show what it would be on stock FSB rather than a multi

EDIT: while we're on the subject I'm trying to decide on a new cooler for the rig but away from it a couple days and can't decide if the Titan Fenrir will fit or not

Case dimensions

180 x 400 x 412 mm

Titan

156mm x 124mm x 107mm

I would say I would lose 20mm of that to mobo tray and space lost behind what do you think?

iTek · 15 Apr 2010 at 21:43

In terms of cooler mate, I don't know what to recommend, I am using a small form factor case (Aero M40) and cant speak highly enough about the Scythe Mini Ninja Rev B.

I'm idle at 23 - 25 degrees and load at 35-40, all this from a restricted enclosure is outstanding in my opinion.

Frozennova · 15 Apr 2010 at 21:48

what fan do you have it on?

iTek · 15 Apr 2010 at 21:58

Just the stock fan that comes.

Here is a Link to have a read.

Its a good cooler and reasonably priced.

Frozennova · 15 Apr 2010 at 22:02

I think i'll wait to have a measure up, can have a fenrir for the same price.

In the mean time will pop over to MM to see what I can get my mits on.

Any progress with the OC yet?

iTek · 15 Apr 2010 at 22:04

All halted, had to go sit with the missus so im on the laptop.

To be frank, they are lots of good air coolers out at the moment and most now are choosen by looks because performance is very similiar.

My reason for choice is I only had 125mm height to play with.

You'll find something decent in the MM, Tuniqs meant to be ok too?

Frozennova · 15 Apr 2010 at 22:07

I'm all halted till I get back to the other halfs house on sunday, rig lives there as thats where I spend most of my time.

Tuniqs are another reasonably good one I believe, its just fitting a cooler in on a very tight budget. As you can see the rig was built from cheapest components available

iTek · 15 Apr 2010 at 22:17

Part of the fun tho seeing what you can muster on a budget, I was using a Artic Cooler 7 before this and it never let me down, only paid £8 for it but the time had come to get something more modern and copper. Let me know how you get on matey.

Frozennova · 15 Apr 2010 at 22:21

Certainly will keep you and wayne updated.

I've not got much hope for it hitting 4ghz i know they have done though, but some winky waving wprime and fritz runs at 4ghz would be nice even if they not prime stable.

Big.Wayne · 16 Apr 2010 at 01:24

Just thought I'd make an update . . . going back to post #76 . . . adding the extra cooling on the power circuitry sorted out a lot of little niggles, that CPU throttling down to [x4] multi under extreme load has gone and I was "finally" able to get the CPU-NB/HT-Link speeds tweaked right up . . .

Click for stability . . . 30 hour "Blend"

The Loadline Calibration (LLC) option has also been quite useful, on the ASUS board setting it to 19% has almost eliminated vDrop & vDroop, this meant I was able to dial in a lower vCore . . .

On the two AMD® Athlon™ II chips I have tested "both" have been happy running the CPU-NB & HT-Link at 2.5GHz using stock voltages . . . pushing the CPU-NB past 2.5GHz with standard volts resulted in a BSOD so I dialled in 1.225vCPU-NB and that sorted it! . . . I may try lowering it to 1.200vCPU-NB in the near future . . . . I've also "witnessed" a connection between HT-Link speeds and standard vCore in as much as a chip running any given frequency needs less vCore if the HT-Link isn't pushed too much above 2.0/2.5GHz? . . . anyone working on a CPU clock may find it easier if they lower the HT-Link multi to [x8] or lower (depending on HT ref. Clock) . . . once you got the processor frequency worked out then you can do more testing with a higher HT-Link multi/speed and if you run into stability issues then I'm sure they will go away with a little nudge of vanilla vCore!

So moving on . . . . with the new improved PWM cooling I thought I would have a crack at 3.8GHz . . . dropped the memory multiplier down from [1:2] to [3:5] and also lowered both the CPU-NB/HT-Link speeds to help isolate the testing, nudged the HT ref. Clock up from 266MHz to 272MHz and slammed the vCore up to 1.600v

Click for stability . . . 8 hour "Blend"

Lol, nice 24/7 voltage there, I'm sure I saw the street lights outside my house "Flicker" when I stress tested the PC!

So having basically maxed the chip I thought what next? . . . how about a bit of low voltage testing? . . . I was gonna begin at stock 2800MHz but a nice round 3000MHz seemed a more suitable start point . . .

Click for stability . . . 35 hour "Blend"

Next step up was changing the CPU-Multi from [x12] to [x13] . . .

Click for stability . . . 37 hour "Blend"

And finally I wanted to have another go at the 3.5GHz clock which I did back in Post #50 to see if having LLC enabled allowed me to shave a little vCore . . . . which it did!

Click for stability . . . 32 hour "Blend"

UnderVolting Results:

3000MHz @ 1.200vCore
3250MHz @ 1.280vCore
3500MHz @ 1.376vCore

I think I will be running either 3.0GHz or 3.5GHz clocks for 24/7 usage, will get around to doing some power readings soon to see how much wattage this machine is drawing . . . . I think I'm nearly done with testing now, just need to jiggle the final clock to max out the DDR2-1066 speeds and then get some benchmarks published, until then thanks for reading and I'll try to help out with peoples clocks as much as possible! :cool:

If anybody quotes this "entire" post they will be shot!

iTek · 16 Apr 2010 at 08:58

amazing depth and knowledge if only I knew a fraction of what it all meant.

ive got a lot of options that can be tweaked in the bios regarding voltages.

good work Wayne.

Frozennova · 16 Apr 2010 at 10:01

I'm surprised at how little people seem to own athlon II chips as bang for buck seems to be the answer these days.

I'm hoping my fans of MM arrive today and cpu cooler gets here monday so I can give this thing hell some more.

I might go with your jury rigged fan idea Wayne if the fans dont help reduce temps on NB as it was hitting close to 100 and peaked at 115 when i disconnected the stock case fan after the noise started to annoy

iTek · 16 Apr 2010 at 10:23

Agree with the Atlon chip theory, think most people take a chance and go for the Phenom II 550/555 x2 hoping it will unlock the 3rd 4th core and provide good results.

Frozennova · 16 Apr 2010 at 10:36

Could well be I thought about it but as it wasnt my money to spend and I don't need a quad or even a dual tbh i dont game etc, just a bit of browsing and maybe the occasionaly old school gaming.

got the misses to have a measure in the case for me and took a chance on the Coolermaster Hyper 212 btw so I'll let you know how it performs

iTek · 17 Apr 2010 at 08:29

Ok -

Boosted the cpu core voltage up and upped the bus to 255 and it seems to run windows applications and games but prime stopped working after 10 minutes on the blend test.

Any ideas, do I need to increase any more of the voltages or reduce the memory timings.

Thanks
Gary

Frozennova · 17 Apr 2010 at 10:35

Whats you vCore at now?

What are your memory timings and what speed is it at, and what is it rated at?

Did prime straight error or give you a load of warnings then fail?

Looking at your CPU-Z sig closer I would say a small bump in vCore as 1.4 is the VID of athlon II chips I believe.

iTek · 17 Apr 2010 at 17:11

I have been as high as 1.52 vcore.

Memory timings are 5-5-5-15 and memory is rated to 1066mhz.

Prime just shut one core down then another and said error, no explaination.

Strange, I thought I now had all the neccessary component to obtain a decent overclock, even at 3250mhz I would be happy but its not rock solid.

Update 13:52
Something gone wrong lol...

It wont work just seems to crash, I have re-read this enitre thread to see if there is anything to help me, I dont know if its a voltage drop but something is causing it to crash, since I am within the parametres of the memory I dont know what to try.

Update 21:33 going to concede, not able to hold a solid overclock down at 13x250 (HT&NB set at 8x) going to look for a Phenom II over next few days, bit dissapionted in my efforts but nevermind.

Frozennova · 17 Apr 2010 at 22:19

That chip should easily do 3.4Ghz even with stock cooling

Try resestting the bios and running the following settings

FSB: 261
NB Multi: 7x
HT Multi: 7x
vCore: 1.5

All other voltages on auto

Set your memory voltage and set memory to run at 1044mhz

That should be stable at 3.4 going on the basis of my chip.

Big.Wayne · 17 Apr 2010 at 23:12

iTek said:
Whats the next step?

Do a stability test @ 3250/2000/2000/1000 and if that passes publish your results . . . . then return the CPU-NB multi to [x10] and test for stability @ 3250/2500/2000/1000 and publish your results and settings, then return the HT-Link multi to [x10] and test for stability @ 3250/2500/2500/1000 and publish your results and settings . . .

iTek · 18 Apr 2010 at 10:26

frozennova - This pc wont boot with a fsb of 261 - the memory options available are auto, manual or max clock. currently using 1:2 divider.

Big.Wayne - 3250/2000/2000/1000 will not last longer than 45 seconds in Prime, I get the following message for one of the threads. FATAL ERROR rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4 I have used 1.55v vcore and 2.2v on memory still nothing.

Summary - it seems at the minute the best I have had with good stability is everything set to AUTO and the bus speed set at 240 , this goes through prime blend tests fine, ok 520mhz is not a HUGE overclock but its free, however this was obtained on my last board and memory modules which are years old.

For anyone wanting to look at it, here is a small pdf of the BIOS I am using.

Appreciated, i'm left thinking the memory is not good enough? since it wont run prime with a FSB of 266 even if I reduce the CPU, NB and HT multiplier.