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Pushing 8320 overclock

neilzomg

neilzomg

neilzomg

Associate
Joined
6 May 2009
Posts
189
Hey guys, Have a 8320 that i wanted to overclock so i ordered the akasa venom voodoo from overclockers and managed to get it to 4.5ghz stable. Temps are around 20-24 idle and doesn't go past 50 when on load.

I do think i'd need to upgrade the Mobo in order to overclock it further as mine doesn't have very many options for overclocking power wise, Asus m5a97 LE R2.0 is what i'm using.

It's not a thermal wall, just something that needs tweaked to make it go further. Anything past 4.5 gives a hardware failure message in AIDA64.

Just the multiplier has been changed, FSB hasnt been touched,
NB 2200 and HT is 2400
Think voltage is at 1.4 or 1.45
all power saving options disabled, turbo core disabled.
 
If you're happy with your chip for a couple more years, then a 9-series mobo would be a good plan.
Not an AMD expert these days, so I'll leave recommendations to others, but with those temps and volts you might get 4.7-4.8 out of it....

My old rig ran a budget Asus mobo (albeit an 1155 Sandybridge board), and that basically topped out at 4.5gig, although the chip would do 4.8 on a better board.
 
I'm happy with the chip it will easily do me for a year or so more, doesn't really have problems running the games. Its running along with a gtx 760 which is perfect for what i play, system even runs some latest games on ultra constantly above 60fps, just want to get some more juice out of it!

Hopefully someone can recommend some good boards, preferably with SLI. That will probably be my next upgrade next month
 
At that point this motherboard is overheating its VRM for sure. If you want 4.5GHz+ stable overclock on Bulldozer/Piledriver cores, you need a motherboard with 10 phases (5+1 doubled technically) and very beefy cooling on the voltage regulation circuitry - Sabertooth FX990 (Rev 2) and Crosshair V Formula/Z are good choices, generally I'd stick with Asus for AM3+. The high end MSI (GD65 and GD80) and Gigabyte boards (UD5 and UD7) are a viable option as well. I would stay away from Asrock when it comes to AMD. Let alone that socket AM3+ is like 3 years old so the motherboards are not that new when design comes in mind. Unfortunately at 4.7GHz the Piledriver core is like 250W so it really needs as good motherboard as you can afford.
 
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^Nail/Head. Your board has no vram cooling at all and Piledriver will put a hell of a load on them when clocked. You also only have 4 phases for the cpu which just isn't enough. You need a decent 990X board to get the most out of the cpu.

People say a AMD pc is cheaper than a Intel pc and then are dissapointed when they find out that their cheap motherboard just isn't up to the job. They then have to buy a better one and it would then have been cheaper to have gone with Intel in the first place. I am not saying that this is the case with you but we have seen this a lot on here recently. We have had people buying the cheapest 760 chipset motherboard they can find and then are dissapointed when it can't clock their cpu. It's just a false economy and they should have bought a decent board to start with.
 
I bought the system just over a year ago, it was with a bundle and at the time all i did was play counter-strike nothing serious so it was perfect. I don't mind spending the cash once a year to upgrade it again. Atleast if i get a decent mobo i can then upgrade the cpu later down the line
 
neilzomg said:
So http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-576-AS&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=2046 would be a good choice?
Click to expand...

That's one of the most solid choices. I would scout the market for a Formula-Z, if not the Sabertooth is more than good enough too.
pastymuncher said:
People say a AMD pc is cheaper than a Intel pc and then are dissapointed when they find out that their cheap motherboard just isn't up to the job. They then have to buy a better one and it would then have been cheaper to have gone with Intel in the first place. I am not saying that this is the case with you but we have seen this a lot on here recently. We have had people buying the cheapest 760 chipset motherboard they can find and then are dissapointed when it can't clock their cpu. It's just a false economy and they should have bought a decent board to start with.
Click to expand...
If you buy a 63xx, 8 phase boards are good enough and there are some decent 10 phase boards under £70. It's the 83xx ones that are so power hungry and really require a high end board to squeeze all you can from the chip. 4.4 should be manageable with a half-decent mobo by almost any chip if the CPU cooling is on par.
 
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pastymuncher said:
People say a AMD pc is cheaper than a Intel pc and then are dissapointed when they find out that their cheap motherboard just isn't up to the job. They then have to buy a better one and it would then have been cheaper to have gone with Intel in the first place. I am not saying that this is the case with you but we have seen this a lot on here recently. We have had people buying the cheapest 760 chipset motherboard they can find and then are dissapointed when it can't clock their cpu. It's just a false economy and they should have bought a decent board to start with.
Click to expand...

If I was buying an intel build due to the motherboard being a core component I would always buy high end but maybe that's just me. In the past features were what dictated which motherboard to demand the cash but these days with everyone 'overclocking' you would be stupid to buy budget in this department. I agree with your final statement, disagree with the intel slant though.

intel CPU + high tier mobo = dearer than fx8320 + high tier mobo. What makes the difference here is the cooling choice as the AMD does require a quality cooler, however if your into water cooling it matters not.
 
humbug said:
I have been using the Rev-1 version of that board for the past 4 years, its exactly the same board except Rev-2 has some Win 8 stuff that mine doesn't
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on the Win8 stuff?

I've also got a Rev1 Sabertooth and am (still) mulling over getting a PD over my Phenom. I've got Win8 btw. :)
 
PapaLazaru said:
Can you elaborate on the Win8 stuff?

I've also got a Rev1 Sabertooth and am (still) mulling over getting a PD over my Phenom. I've got Win8 btw. :)
Click to expand...

SABERTOOTH 990FX here

SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 here

Windows 8 Exclusive Features

Fast Boot: Instant OS Login
ASUS Boot Setting: Multi-startup Options
DirectKey: A Dedicated Button to Access the BIOS Directly


The only other Physical differences i can see in specifications

Remote GO!
USB BIOS Flashback
Network iControl
USB 3.0 Boost

1 x Power eSATA 3Gb/s
1 x IEEE 1394a
1 x USB BIOS Flashback Button(s)

Apart from those added features they are the same board.

The Original Saber- 990FX, the one you and i have is every bit as compatible for PD as the new one, i'm also running Windows 8.1 on mine. :)

I will be getting another Sabertooth eventually, i have already decided on that, i have found it to be that good. but only when this one dies, which i don't see happening for some years yet, or if i get a new CPU that does require a new socket, PileDriver is not that CPU, and i think i have one on the way directly from AMD. :D
 
Th0nt said:
If I was buying an intel build due to the motherboard being a core component I would always buy high end but maybe that's just me. In the past features were what dictated which motherboard to demand the cash but these days with everyone 'overclocking' you would be stupid to buy budget in this department. I agree with your final statement, disagree with the intel slant though.

intel CPU + high tier mobo = dearer than fx8320 + high tier mobo. What makes the difference here is the cooling choice as the AMD does require a quality cooler, however if your into water cooling it matters not.
Click to expand...


You don't need a high end motherboard for Haswell though. Haswell itself is the limiting factor. A £80 motherboard will overclock it just as well as one double the price.
 
Th0nt said:
If I was buying an intel build due to the motherboard being a core component I would always buy high end but maybe that's just me. In the past features were what dictated which motherboard to demand the cash but these days with everyone 'overclocking' you would be stupid to buy budget in this department. I agree with your final statement, disagree with the intel slant though.

intel CPU + high tier mobo = dearer than fx8320 + high tier mobo. What makes the difference here is the cooling choice as the AMD does require a quality cooler, however if your into water cooling it matters not.
Click to expand...

The point is with Intel you can buy the cheapest Z series motherboard and are still only likely to be limited in overclocking by the CPU, it'll even run Prime95 and other intensive tests completely stable.

With AMD you NEED a high tier motherboard else you're going to struggle to get the best out of the chip and suffer with issues like Vdroop, VRM overheating and thermal throttling.
 
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mmj_uk said:
The point is with Intel you can buy the cheapest Z series motherboard and are still only likely to be limited in overclocking by the CPU, it'll even run Prime95 and other intensive tests completely stable.

With AMD you NEED a high tier motherboard else you're going to struggle to get the best out of the chip and suffer with issues like Vdroop, VRM overheating and thermal throttling.
Click to expand...

What is key to remember though is that a high tier AMD board only cost about 2/3 the price and sometimes as low as half the price of its counterpart for the intel lineup. I paid 120 pounds for my old sabertooth FX990 Rev 2.0 board, if i were to have picked the counterpart for that board i would have look at a price of around 180 pounds at the time.

But i agree with you, most low tiered AMD AM3+ boards cannot handle the FX-83x0 cpus. Some like that gigabyte UD3 board were so horrible at it, it couldnt even drive a 8320 at stock without throttling.
 
The M5A97 EVO and M5A99X EVO both have the same 6+2 phase VRM which can handle upto 275W,and have been fine with both Phenom II X6 and FX8320 CPUs when overclocking to a sane level. If you are looking at something like 4.6GHZ+ with an FX8320 or FX8350,cooling is going to be a limit,as much as the motherboard.

All are very solid motherboards- I know mates running intensive 24/7 computing applications on the 970 versions,for weeks using a Phenom II X6. They have been perfectly solid for years doing that kind of work. The M5A97 EVO is around £70 at most retailers and is a great motherboard. The Gigabyte 970A-UD3P,unlike the old UD3 supposedly has LLC,which is the main reason the latter was not brilliant with overclocking as it caused issues with fluctuating voltage under load with overclocked CPUs - the Asus motherboards already had it. There were also a number of cheaper Biostars which could overclock quite well and were not expensive. They used old school analogue VRMs(so were less efficient overall).

Edit!!

To the OP,if your system is running games fine,why bother getting a new motherboard for a couple of hundred MHZ more??

The average overclock of an FX8320 is around 4.6GHZ anyway:

http://hwbot.org/hardware/processor/fx_8320/

Even if you keep your FX8320 at 4GHZ,that is only around a 15% improvement in clockspeed at most,and that won't always mean 15% extra performance anyway.

I suspect in many games you will be more GPU limited anyway,and personally I would just stick with what you have,and dial down the overclock a bit.
 
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I have a Gigabyte 990FXA UD3 and an FX8320 - it's at 4.5Ghz and IIRC (i'm at work at the moment, I can check later) it's at about 1.41 vcore fully stable.

Under an Arctic Freezer Rev2 it generally sits at about 25c idle and about 65c under full load. I got some AS5 as the paste pre-applied to the heatsink was pretty horrible and this lowered my temps a lot.

I could probably push it a bit more but I think it would need more voltage and would send my temps pretty high. I'm pretty happy with how it performs considering the price I paid.
 
I don't think its remotely worth it going through the expense & hassle just to get a slightly higher overclock.
Lets say you get to 5Ghz with a new board. That's just an 11% increase in performance, right on the edge of even being noticeable. Add to that the way the power consumption accelerates horribly as you move from a medium to a high clock & factor in the higher running temps & maybe even extra cooling you'll need.
I would stick with what you have, I think it must be pretty quick at most things ?
 
You could try investigating turbo overclocking. There's no applications where it would make any sense to have all 8 cores running at 5GHz but having a single module at the speed could potentially help a lot.
 
pastymuncher said:
You don't need a high end motherboard for Haswell though. Haswell itself is the limiting factor. A £80 motherboard will overclock it just as well as one double the price.
Click to expand...

mmj_uk said:
The point is with Intel you can buy the cheapest Z series motherboard and are still only likely to be limited in overclocking by the CPU, it'll even run Prime95 and other intensive tests completely stable.

With AMD you NEED a high tier motherboard else you're going to struggle to get the best out of the chip and suffer with issues like Vdroop, VRM overheating and thermal throttling.
Click to expand...

The point is all CPU's are a lottery in how well they clock (regardless of which side you pick - so just 'cos Joe can run his haswell at 4.6 stable does not mean you will; just take a look on some intel threads in this forum) and as mentioned above pushing beyond 4.5Ghz you are going to need good components to run day to day instead of short burst benchmarking.

My point was just highlighting that the usual AMD is more expensive myth can be greatly taken out of context. Yes you do need a good cooler, yes you do need a good motherboard.

Going back to October 2013 I picked up the CPU (8320), Mobo (Sabertooth) and a H100 cooler for just over £270 brand new. You would have to go second hand for intel to get near that. ;)

Quixote said:
I don't think its remotely worth it going through the expense & hassle just to get a slightly higher overclock.
Click to expand...

Agree.
 
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