Overclocking Help / Blog
Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2012 8:27 am
This runs against the grain of the mindset of most SPCR fans, however I have no issues with using more electricity, generating more heat and having to keep the system cool and quiet.
My setup is as follows.
I have a 45nm "Propus" Phenom II X4 840 (this is not a "true" Phenom as it has no L3 cache). By default this CPU runs at 3.2GHz and has a clocked multiplier and rated as a 95 Watt CPU.
I have a kit of 2x 4GB 2,000 MHz rated DIMM's, Corsair XMS 3, the "official" timings at 2,000 MHz are 9-10-9-27 @ 1.65v This RAM is specced for Intel systems I understand, and I may not be able to get this RAM to run at that speed with those timings.
The motherboard is the Gigabyte 880GMA-USB3 which is a pretty solid motherboard, although not specifically designed for overclocking it should cope well with such activities to a reasonable degree. The manual says that the RAM can run at 1,866 MHz, however the setting in the motherboard actually allow me to run the RAM at 2,000 MHz. That is where other forum member come in.
I have overclocked many different systems over the years with varying degrees of success, with my best achievement of a staggering 50% stable OC, I am not expecting to get anywhere near those giddy heights.
Things have changed somewhat from my previous experiments, specifically that there are so many more options than there were a decade ago. There are many busses, many multipliers and several can be locked so as to not adversely affect other options.
What I want to know is what setting to change, what not to touch and how to truly identify stability - which is still the most important concern, I don't want to have the fastest PC on the planet that crashes every half hour - I want to have a faster PC that never crashes due to overclocked hardware.
Also note that cooling is really not an issue for either the CPU or Chipset.
Here is a brief list of things that I have tried/tested so far.
Before my shiny new RAM turned up I though I would test a large increase in the "CPU Bus speed", I set it a 250 MHz from the usual 200 MHz, I dropped the "CPU multiplier" so the CPU was not overclocked, and I dropped the "RAM multiplier" so that the RAM was not overclocked either. Success, 14-hours of Prime 95 on 4-cores in a warm room, followed by some Skyrim and general use of the PC.
As you may already know I essentially didn't do anything out of the ordinary, or even stress the system at all (I don't know if that was trivial or a small miracle). What I did do was to essentially prove that in theory I could run my RAM at 2,000 MHz because that bus speed and multiplier combo allowed it as an option in the BIOS.
Since getting the RAM I did just that, but it refused to work at those very tight timings, however it did work at looser timings of 11-11-11-27 @ 2,000 MHz. After about 30-minutes of Prime-95 whilst watching the BBC News live stream I had a software crash that didn't resolve itself. No damage from a forced shut down to the OS.
As I dint know what the actual cause of the crash was (it could have been the crappy "flash player" and not an overclock issue at all) I thought I would drop the bus speed to 233MHz and the RAM speed to 1,866 MHz which is what Gigabyte suggest is the fasted supported RAM speed anyway - this seemed to be more cautious but more likely to be stable, so I also threw a small CPU overclock in the mix as well, the CPU is currently running at 3,495 MHz a 9.2% OC, not exactly impressive but it seems to be stable - although I have not pushed it yet. The machine has been in this state for the last 2.5 hours, but I have not run Prime 95 or played any games as I have been busy building someone a server - Prime 95 will return later.
If you have any suggestions or expectations for me please feel free to air them, especially if you have a current AMD system that you have overclocked.
Andy
My setup is as follows.
I have a 45nm "Propus" Phenom II X4 840 (this is not a "true" Phenom as it has no L3 cache). By default this CPU runs at 3.2GHz and has a clocked multiplier and rated as a 95 Watt CPU.
I have a kit of 2x 4GB 2,000 MHz rated DIMM's, Corsair XMS 3, the "official" timings at 2,000 MHz are 9-10-9-27 @ 1.65v This RAM is specced for Intel systems I understand, and I may not be able to get this RAM to run at that speed with those timings.
The motherboard is the Gigabyte 880GMA-USB3 which is a pretty solid motherboard, although not specifically designed for overclocking it should cope well with such activities to a reasonable degree. The manual says that the RAM can run at 1,866 MHz, however the setting in the motherboard actually allow me to run the RAM at 2,000 MHz. That is where other forum member come in.
I have overclocked many different systems over the years with varying degrees of success, with my best achievement of a staggering 50% stable OC, I am not expecting to get anywhere near those giddy heights.
Things have changed somewhat from my previous experiments, specifically that there are so many more options than there were a decade ago. There are many busses, many multipliers and several can be locked so as to not adversely affect other options.
What I want to know is what setting to change, what not to touch and how to truly identify stability - which is still the most important concern, I don't want to have the fastest PC on the planet that crashes every half hour - I want to have a faster PC that never crashes due to overclocked hardware.
Also note that cooling is really not an issue for either the CPU or Chipset.
Here is a brief list of things that I have tried/tested so far.
Before my shiny new RAM turned up I though I would test a large increase in the "CPU Bus speed", I set it a 250 MHz from the usual 200 MHz, I dropped the "CPU multiplier" so the CPU was not overclocked, and I dropped the "RAM multiplier" so that the RAM was not overclocked either. Success, 14-hours of Prime 95 on 4-cores in a warm room, followed by some Skyrim and general use of the PC.
As you may already know I essentially didn't do anything out of the ordinary, or even stress the system at all (I don't know if that was trivial or a small miracle). What I did do was to essentially prove that in theory I could run my RAM at 2,000 MHz because that bus speed and multiplier combo allowed it as an option in the BIOS.
Since getting the RAM I did just that, but it refused to work at those very tight timings, however it did work at looser timings of 11-11-11-27 @ 2,000 MHz. After about 30-minutes of Prime-95 whilst watching the BBC News live stream I had a software crash that didn't resolve itself. No damage from a forced shut down to the OS.
As I dint know what the actual cause of the crash was (it could have been the crappy "flash player" and not an overclock issue at all) I thought I would drop the bus speed to 233MHz and the RAM speed to 1,866 MHz which is what Gigabyte suggest is the fasted supported RAM speed anyway - this seemed to be more cautious but more likely to be stable, so I also threw a small CPU overclock in the mix as well, the CPU is currently running at 3,495 MHz a 9.2% OC, not exactly impressive but it seems to be stable - although I have not pushed it yet. The machine has been in this state for the last 2.5 hours, but I have not run Prime 95 or played any games as I have been busy building someone a server - Prime 95 will return later.
If you have any suggestions or expectations for me please feel free to air them, especially if you have a current AMD system that you have overclocked.
Andy