***The Official Phenom II Overclocking Thread***

[gareth170]

2.8 is a good speed Do you think it's worth the extra voltage in real apps?

it feels faster but for gaming no isn't worth it much.

 

[gareth170]

bringing the thread back lol, sorry for the bump

i've spent absolutely ages trying to clock my 940, but i still cant get it above 3.4, and that was just by upiing the multi and the volts a little

i've tried 3.5 with the following settings:

HT reference: 235
NB Multi:10x
HT multi: 9x
CPU vid: 1.45
NB link: 1.25v
NB core @1.36v
cpu multi: 15x
ht voltage: 1.3v

all spread spectrums disabled etc, cool and quiet is switched off, ive turned off all auto settings apart from some of the memory which i thought i better not touch

with ram set at 667 mode so it doesnt overclock, and timings of 4,4,4,12 with 2.1 V, its also running in ganged mode

it doesnt matter what i try i cant get it stable at this speed, and ive looked at the various guides on the websites and tried what was suggested, so any help would be greatly appreciated

it sounds like you've got a poor clocker chip and if that the case theres not much u can do about it..

u could get a better cooler then put the vcore up to 1.5v.

also try unganged mode

 

[gareth170]

yeah thats what im starting to think as well there are more options in the BIOS which im not sure about, for example would disabling cpu prefetching help things? ill try unganged mode and see where that gets me, if not ill shell out for a new cooler

u could try disabling cpu prefetching but i highly doubt that'll help..


as for unganged mode that helped me with overclocking.the cpu.

 

[gareth170]

thanks for the replies so far guys, i fiddled around with unganged mode and cpu tweak and it didnt really help stability at the same volts unfortunately I think this one is just gonna need more volts to reach the higher speeds. Under prime's large ftt test its becoming very clear my cooling isnt up to scratch, and dolk's guide says anything above 55 can cause phenoms to become unstable so i guess more cooling is necessary. Can anyone recommend me a decent/the best cooler around for this kinda job? i dont mind attaching fans etc if need be

tbh keep it under 60c. 55c is fine but anything over 60-61c can cause problems. amd site says 61c max..

i recommand a TT 120A with fan, great cooler

 

[gareth170]

just to update, problem seems to have been running in 'Ganged' mode, everything seems nicely stable when running unganged.
I suppose the stress of running 4 DIMMs was just 2 much to run Ganged

unganged basicly is dual 64bit, Ganged mode is a single 128bit..

i had problems with Ganged too even with 2 DIMM's .

tbh Ganged mode is only alittle better in single threading apps.. where unganged mode is alitrtle better in multithreading apps.

 

[gareth170]

Got my 2nd build setup this weekend. Running at 3.2ghz on stock voltages at the moment. Can go higher but I think I'll try that in a few weeks.

Phenom II X3 720 BE
Xigmatek HDT S1283
Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P
Cosair 4GB DDR3 1333MHz
WD Raptor + Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB

Only problem is that under auto settings for the memory it only runs at 1066MHz instead of 1333MHz. I have the latest bios. Dont think this memory is full supported yet?

TW3X4G1333C9DHX are the ones I've got.

can't u manuely set it?

it's the same with a ddr2 1066 setup it doesn't go to the full 1066 on auto..

 

[gareth170]

ok a little update here; i've been fiddling with amd overdrive a bit more and strangely enough ive managed to get the chip at 3.4 ghz 100% stable at stock volts, previously i needed to raise it to 1.375. It passes prime and reports no errors, however if i set the same settings as reported in overdrive into the BIOS then windows will not even boot. Fiddling with overdrive even more i found that the chip is quite happy to sit there at 3.7 in windows at 1.4 volts as well but i cant even boot if the same settings are in the BIOS.

Is this something to be concerned about in terms of my MB? or is this a common sort of occurence? im gonna clear the CMOS a bit later on and start from scratch, as the BIOS is the most up to date version there is atm

overclocking via overdrive should only be used as a setting test. it may seem stable but if the same settings u put in the bios fail then it's not 100% stable.

 

[gareth170]

This overclocking m'larky has me miffed.

Does this look ok?

looks ok... u could up the NB to 2400mhz or maybe 2600mhz..

 

[gareth170]

I just tried upping it very slightly but it blue screened on me.

try upping the cpu-NB voltage abit.