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AMD® Phenom™ II Overclocking Thread

with med fans
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Garee - you are best off reading through the thread. There are lots of screen shots of people's overclocks that will give you a guide to temps, voltages and clock speeds.

I would recommend aiming for:

a clock speed of 3.8GHz at first
vcore of around 1.45 max (you want as low as you can get so this is a very vague ballpark).
max temps of 55C (you can go higher but its nice to keep out of the high 50s to stay on the safe side).

Please note that none of these are the maximum numbers that you could go for. I am just making a fairly random suggestion for a good first OC.
 
Thanks Big.Wayne for starting this very interesting thread, there are some great overclocks here. I'm excited to submit my preliminary results.

I've left Intel completely this week and this is my first ever attempt at clocking an AMD chip, so bear with me please if I've missed anything out/require further clarification!

First, a bit of necessary spec info not included in the screenshot:

Crosshair III Formula (1503)
2x2GB G.Skill Ripjaw PC3-12800 (7-8-7-24 @1.6V) DDR3
Corsair H50 in an Antec P182SE (quiet but airflow isn't exactly optimal yet)

35380232.jpg


I bought this CPU from HeX on these very forums, who has had good results with it. I, however, had to use 1.4375V to get 3.8GHz stable (as above). Stable is so far defined as just the IBT test above, not prime yet, though I realise this will be very necessary for a 24/7 clock for me, and as such I will perform it when I'm happy with the clock for further tweaking.

3.8 with these settings is not stable at 1.4250V, but the system was stable on stock volts (1.4000 VID) at 3.7GHz (18.5x). Is there anything I can do to optmise this result?

LLC is set to Auto

A bit more info on voltages:

CPU-NB is running 1.15V
DRAM 1.60V
All others are on lowest settings/defaults when manual control (using TurboV/BIOS), except one which seems to scale automatically with CPU voltage (I can't recall what I was called right now).

Any guidance appreciated, I can't seem to replicate the results of HeX yet, I was rather hoping I could.

Thanks for reading!
 
Hi m8, glad you got the CPU up and running :)

As for voltages.

Have you tried running with less Vcore but more CPU-NB?
 
I did when first messing about getting it where I wanted, but now it's relatively stable I'm open to suggestions.

I noted you were using 1.3V CPU-NB, so I can try that with 1.4000V and see how I get on.

My board has LLC as Auto, Enabled or Disabled, which is the best option do you think? In addition to that, CPU-Z reports the voltages to be as I selected, with no variance on load, but Asus PC Probe tells me it's running between 1.44 and 1.49V on load with 1.4250V selected in BIOS! I'm not sure which ones to believe to be honest. Those readings were with LLC enabled by the way.

Thanks for taking the time to help me out a bit mate, you're probably best qualified! :-)

EDIT: Well that wasn't stable in the slightest. Idle temps shot down from 38 ish to 30 deg when I lowered the voltage though. For some reason using TurboV sets all voltages to the lowest default voltage rather than auto in the BIOS. I've reset all those except those which I'm controlling manually to auto now and will test again.
 
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I was running a fair bit of CPU-NB, but mainly because I had 8GB running at 1600MHz, both of which really stress the IMC, especially with the CPU OC'd as well.

But it might be worth trying to lower the Vcore, and say taking the CPU-NB upto ~1.2-1.225V and see if you can maintain stability.

Will at least let you know if its the IMC that needs more volts, or the CPU.


Not that your current OC is bad, 3.8 on those volts is fine, and temps are still well within limits.


As for LLC i'd say have it enabled, it almost always helps. On my board stock volts with 19% LLC gave around 1.392V, which is what I used for my 3.8GHz OC.


But then you're using more aggressive memory than me, and a different board, so it might take a slightly different voltage to get solid for you.
 
Thanks. I experienced the same result (instant BSOD) as before after setting other voltages to auto.

LLC is tweakable on this board, so I've set Auto, I believe that's the same as enabled, but it seems to keep things stable anyway.

I'll test 1.4000 CPU and 1.225 CPU-NB now. I have a feeling that it's the CPU after the volts, changing the RAM timings and frequency to looser and lower didn't seem to help.

EDIT: Instant BSOD. CPU back up to 1.4375V and CPU-NB to 1.2000V, which was stable earlier today. I wonder why it's not liking my board/mem as much. I can't think of any way to lower the CPU volts, I guess that's just what it needs on this board, though I am a total novice at AMD clocking.

Quick question, why always change the multiplier in these chips and not increase the clock (200MHz)? I noticed nobody seems to have done that on the 965, that differs from Intel and what I'm so far used to.
 
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Ah well, was worth a try.

Must just be the mix of different parts needs an extra notch of Vcore for whatever reason.

I did get 3.9 stable with that CPU as well, however forgot to take a screen shot of the prime run. I think it needed around 1.475-1.4875 something like that.

Just for info just incase you are wanting to try for higher.

I never got round to trying for 4, as I sold it to you and moved onto the X6. :o


EDIT: Reason for multi clocking, is just because it's easier :D saves having to mess about trying to keep the HT in spec, and upping HT voltage, or NB voltage etc. Using the multi means you can just leave everything else at stock and work on your CPU clock, then work on your CPU-NB clock, and jobs a good'un :)

Plus OC'ing the HT doesn't give any benefits, so its messing about for no gain.
 
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3.8 24/7 stable is my only aim tbh. Getting any more performance at a voltage close to the VID would be a bonus, but I don't fancy pushing it to near 1.5V for a hundred MHz or so.

Is 1.4375 V safe enough for 24/7 usage? I think it should be OK, nothing heats it up like IBT to be fair, and that's hitting 53 deg.

What about clocking the CPU/NB? I think it's at 2000 MHz atm, I read 2400 MHz had decent gains and is fairly achievable. Would I be looking at the CPU-NB voltage for additional stability there?
 
@ Martini1991

Thanks, I won't worry about that then.

@papoose244

I would generally say yes, but it really depends on what games you play. Have a look at reviews for both CPUs on the net and see for yourself.

4AA at that high res is probably going to be more limited by GFX power, and so my suggestion would be to go AMD, which *should* give an overall lower cost because of the cheaper boards and then you can up your GFX card budget, which you'd see a lot more benefit from. This does depend on your budget though, if you can afford anything, the i7s are better outright performers.
 
correct me if im wrong, but i was under the impression that these chips are safe for 24/7 use at pretty much any voltage, as long as it stays cool (ie 24/7 at 1.9v is gonna require a helluva lot of liquid nitrogen ... catch my drift?)
 
4ghz.png


Last little play with mine before its boxed and sent back off, good chip but even at 4ghz its a bit slower than i750 at 4ghz, having said that it cost me £80 so cant complain
 
If one were to target 4Ghz with a Phenom II X4 and a Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD3P, would you go with a 95W 945 (only option being 266x15) or a 125W 955 (HTT & multiplier optimised)? Oddly the 955 is available for ~£10 less than the 945 at the moment!
 
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