Overclock Guidance

a03dugga · 22 Sep 2010 at 22:30

Hey guys i have the following:
Asus GeForce GTX 460 1024MB DirectCU GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail
OCZ Reaper Low-Latency 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 12800C6 (1600MHz) Dual-Channel (OCZ3RPR1600C6LV4GK)
Be Quiet! Straight Power E7 600W Power Supply
Asus M4A87TD/USB3 AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard
Zalman CNPS9900-NT CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/775/1156/1366)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS)

I want to manually overclock my system, including ram and whatnot.
I tried manually doing the cpu, tried up to 3.9ghz, stable aswell.
If someone could please give me a hand id be much appreciated.

dfour · 23 Sep 2010 at 01:12

You also want to overclock the northbridge on the core. Find nb clk should be 9x so it runs at 1800mhz try going to 12x for 2400mhz you might need a little extra voltage to get it stable for more free speed

Some boards with more voltage and cooling will do 15x + its just a case of trying and see what happens.

Someone · 23 Sep 2010 at 10:24

Can you post your current setting as a starting point:

Cpu frequency
Bus speed
cpu multiplier
Cpu northbridge frquency
ram speed & timings
HT link speed
cpu voltage
cpu northbridge voltage
ram voltage
Idle & load temperatures

I should have some time to help you out this evening

a03dugga · 23 Sep 2010 at 14:13

dfour said:
You also want to overclock the northbridge on the core. Find nb clk should be 9x so it runs at 1800mhz try going to 12x for 2400mhz you might need a little extra voltage to get it stable for more free speed Some boards with more voltage and cooling will do 15x + its just a case of trying and see what happens.

Thanks buddy

a03dugga · 23 Sep 2010 at 14:13

Someone said:
Can you post your current setting as a starting point:

Cpu frequency
Bus speed
cpu multiplier
Cpu northbridge frquency
ram speed & timings
HT link speed
cpu voltage
cpu northbridge voltage
ram voltage
Idle & load temperatures

I should have some time to help you out this evening

Okay dude, gonna post them soon, cheers.

a03dugga · 23 Sep 2010 at 14:44

Okay i used everest:
CPU Type QuadCore AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition 955
CPU Alias Deneb
Engineering Sample No
CPUID CPU Name AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor
CPUID Revision 00100F43h
CPU VID 1.3750 V
North Bridge VID 1.1000 V

CPU Speed:
CPU Clock 3913.1 MHz
CPU Multiplier 19.5x
CPU FSB 200.7 MHz (original: 200 MHz)
HyperTransport Clock 2006.7 MHz
North Bridge Clock 2006.7 MHz
Memory Bus 535.1 MHz
DRAM:FSB Ratio 16:6

a03dugga · 23 Sep 2010 at 14:49

Not sure the best ways to get my idle/load temps, everest and coretmp are not giving me anything on them.

Theophany · 23 Sep 2010 at 15:18

I've read that the 'sweet spot' for the NB is between 2400-2800Mhz on AMD systems (anybody care to verify/weigh in on this?), which is easily doable on the multiplier with a bump in voltage. Mine is 200x13 @ 1.150v. HT should be left as close to 2000MHz as possible in the interests of stability, upping it does conclusively improve performance.

As for your CPU's clock, I'd say you're going to struggle beating 4GHz. I've been trying for weeks on my CPU with a variety of coolers. On this Vantage I got to 4GHz on the multiplier, it was stable for a good 6 hours of Prime95 and worked for hours of general use afterwards. But when I tried to boot from cold the BIOS would tell me it was too much and clock back down. When I put the 4GHz settings back I can't get anywhere near that level of (albeit temporary) stability again. For now I've left it at 3.9GHz on multiplier, seems happy enough to do so and my IntelBurnTest temps don't get above 55'c.

a03dugga · 23 Sep 2010 at 15:34

Theophany said:
I've read that the 'sweet spot' for the NB is between 2400-2800Mhz on AMD systems (anybody care to verify/weigh in on this?), which is easily doable on the multiplier with a bump in voltage. Mine is 200x13 @ 1.150v. HT should be left as close to 2000MHz as possible in the interests of stability, upping it does conclusively improve performance.

As for your CPU's clock, I'd say you're going to struggle beating 4GHz. I've been trying for weeks on my CPU with a variety of coolers. On this Vantage I got to 4GHz on the multiplier, it was stable for a good 6 hours of Prime95 and worked for hours of general use afterwards. But when I tried to boot from cold the BIOS would tell me it was too much and clock back down. When I put the 4GHz settings back I can't get anywhere near that level of (albeit temporary) stability again. For now I've left it at 3.9GHz on multiplier, seems happy enough to do so and my IntelBurnTest temps don't get above 55'c.

hmm, will have to check that out, for me, an improvement of 700mhz is quite good, wouldnt push it more than that lol.

Someone · 23 Sep 2010 at 19:28

Did you check the sensor tab in everest for the voltages? If thats not showing anything then check the bios & have you set voltages & ram timings manually or left it all on auto in the bios?

a03dugga · 23 Sep 2010 at 22:57

I checked everest. It seems to have problems
Checking my CPU temps aswell as mobo.
I checked temp in bios. At 3.9 it was a bit high at 50-something. Not even on load. Went down to 3.6 and I'm back at 30-ish. I think the voyages and stuff were set to auto. I just changed the CPU ratio.