AMD Overclocking Guide

Hey this is my first post on this site and I'm hoping I might get some help with overclocking. I found this thread when researching how to go about this process and wanted to initially post here but the account activation took a few days. Anyway I'm pretty frustrated considering I haven't had any luck posting at sites that have overclock in their web address!

So my current build is a few years old and I'm trying to see what reasonable increases I can get which to me is the point right before I have to increase the voltage a few steps just to get one more speed step etc.

Mobo - Asrock 780GXE/128m
CPU - AMD 7750 BE - lapped, CoolerMaster Hyper 212+ lapped, ShinEtsu
NB and SB - lapped, Shin Etsu, NB has CPU stock fan on it, SB has NB heatsink from old ASUS board and case fan blowing across it
Case - Rosewill Challenger - fans - 120mm front bottom, 120mm back top, 135mm top rear, added 60mm in 3.5" drive bays to pull air in, 80mm in the lower middle to help direct the front case fan airflow towards the top rear of the case and hit the SB
Graphics - Onboard 3200
Ram - OCZ Gold DDR2 800
Hard Drives - ADATA SataII S599 128GB, Maxtor SataII 320GB
DVD - LiteOn IDE x2
PSU - CoolMax V-600

Well I've already done a lot of messing around but I could really use some help trying to interpret some of the results and some odd ball situations. I've been isolating what ever I'm working on and then trying to find it's upper and lower limits and any patterns. So far I've done some initial testing with the NB up to 1.45v and I'm now on to the CPU again. I've also tested the Ram and settled on not increasing the speed at this point because I couldn't get it to run correctly so I've resorted to just lower the timings as much as possible at it's rated speed. The ram is currently sitting at 4-4-4-(2-4)-10-15-1T at 2.02v. This was memtested, P95 tested for a few hours, Intel Burn Tested for 5 runs and so far no problems.

Now up to this point I've had very consistent results but now that I'm on to the CPU I'm getting weird situations. I've lowered the NB multiplier down between 5 and the stock setting of 9 depending on the base clock I'm using. Then I've lowered the base clock to the lowest of 150 and increased the CPU multiplier to bring me back to the stock 2700Mhz which got through some short tests fine. I worked my way up to 3000Mhz by way of the multiplier and it passed 5 IBT runs yet when I go back into the bios and increase the multiplier a half step to 3075Mhz and hit save, it will reboot but nothing shows on the screen but if I hit the reset button it boots fine and I can test it.

The weird thing is that even when this happens and I think maybe it's overclocked too much it will still happen if I go drop the multiplier so the speed is down to even 1500Mhz. Now when I reset the bios and then reapply my basic settings to the memory and drop the NB out of the way and change the CPU to 150 x 20 for 3000 it works fine. If instead of going straight to 3000 I go to 3075 or even 3150 it will boot fine also but if I go to 3000 first and then try to increase the multiplier in half steps it will require me to hit the reset button.

What does this indicate? I have tried to narrow it down by changing every bios option to see if it clears up because the bottom line of what is happening is that there is no consistency to when it will boot properly and when it won't even when I know the settings are ones that have worked enough to at least get into windows and pass a few tests.

On a different note here are my initial results on the NB:

FSB Multi Speed Volts
186 13 2418 1.325
190 13 2470 1.3375
192 13 2496 1.35
226 11 2486 1.3625
194 13 2522 1.3875
210 12 2520 1.4
232 11 2552 1.4125
214 12 2568 1.425
198 13 2574 1.4375
234 11 2574 1.45

I'm not sure if I should push beyond that, the gains are starting to cost more in voltage at this point and I think the Asrock manual online said that the mobo is 2600Mhz FSB which I'm guessing is it's max.

Idle temps are around 28 mobo and 30-31 CPU, load has not maxed beyond 41 with IBT and P95 at the same time with CPU at 3000Mhz, NB at 2400Mhz and current memory timings.

I have more I could put up but I've already written quite a bit but I'll at least say I've developed a pretty systematic approach thanks to having 2 2'x3' dry erase boards on my wall to keep track of all my testing.

My biggest concern right now is figuring out why the computer has a hard time rebooting when I change the settings in the bios even to ones which I know have already gotten me into Windows and passed some testing. Should I just continue to hit the reset button so it will get into Windows and just use my stress testing to let me know if I'm hitting a wall? Any help is GREATLY appreciated:thumbup:

Oh I'm using IBT as my initial testing because out of IBT, P95, Orthos, OCCT and Hyper Pi it got my temps the highest at 41 but mostly 40, the others kept it between 36-39.

 

thank you again :cheers:

GIGABYTE or ASUS from the next time and will definitely give ASUS more priority

 

Good plan. I went with Gigabyte this time, and I'm very happy so far. I've ahd two Asus boards in the past, and they were both great. I think you will be pleased with either choice, just look for a good deal. Sometimes Asus boards cost a pretty penny, and they don't necessarily give you more than a Giagbyte.

MSI boards are good too, but typically cost more than both Gigabyte and Asus.

 

I love my gigabyte 890fxa UD 5 board it rocks

 

I don't personally care for MSI - I've had horrible experiences with them using cheap chokes and caps as well as crappy solder on the socket itself. I physically pulled several different sockets clean off the boards using the same heatsink retention clip that had been used on at least 15 other brand boards - just because the solder points on the back of the board wasn't sufficient to hold the socket in place!!
That, compounded by their 'fire-hazard' MOSFETS fiasco last year, where some of the boards literally lit on fire (search these forums, there were 2 members just in here that had this happen!) will make me never, ever purchase an MSI anything again.

I'd be sticking to ASUS or Gigabyte...they're really pretty much equals in the industry, with my money going to ASUS exclusively because of personal experience - they've never let me down, always produced the highest overclocks of all boards I've tested, and usually have the highest bench scores across the board (with *very* few exceptions)


@ MeltmanBob: I'm not ignoring you - I've just got a lot on my plate right now.
From what I can see, you're doing everything very systematically, which I can appreciate wholly.
I have very limited experience with Asrock boards since I try to steer clear of anything that's not ASUS (not just ASUS branded/manufactured), but in most scenarios, when you input values into the BIOS that aren't stable, you'll get a blank-out like you've specified - OR, there is a chance that your board actually requires this reset after making changes in Advanced or (?) to set them correctly in the EEPROM... Does it force you to do this *EVERY* time you reboot, or only when you reboot from making changes in the BIOS??

Psychlone

 

The need for a reset I think is ultimately linked to the stability in the long run. I ended up deciding to continue working on the overclock which I now have data up to 1.4125v (8 steps above stock for me) on the cpu. Anyway what I experienced was that after a certain total cpu speed I would need to reset if the base clock was too low even though I could still boot into windows and pass some IBT runs or P95.

I'm currently putting all of this into an excel spreadsheet with the voltage along the top with 5 sub categories just under the voltage heading to read multi., speed, success, increase, and efficiency with fsb (used as base clock) labeling on the odd rows. The odd rows are cpu data and even's are north bridge. It's displayed in a way that I can follow the progress along the multipliers across the screen to see how they clock. I started with as many combinations as possible with in my base clock operating frequency and eliminated multiplier lines once I could not pass stress tests for 5 voltage increases in a row. I figure at that point the gains are pointless for achieving a good compromise.

I've tried to combine my results but I'm running into issues not only with reaching my rated clocks but with having to either over or underclock the ram. Unfortunately my ram does not want to go much higher than the 4-4-4-10-15-1T @ 2.02v @ DDR800. I literally can't get it to go to even 808 and increasing the voltage doesn't help much, I don't want to go much more on the ram voltage since they already run slightly warm when everything else in my case feels like air temp. If I drop the timings to 5's etc. I can get around DDR 856 but not much more so that has left me with 2 very narrow ranges to work with to try and keep the ram at it's potential.

On a different note I have not been able to break 3.2Ghz on the cpu or 2.6Ghz on the NB although I can get within tens of Mhz on both.

I've got a basic graph in excel also shooting multiplier lines on the graph which shows both the cpu and nb results along with lines for each voltage showing step connecting their corresponding results. I need to create a new one that shoots base clock frequency lines and displays the cpu and nb speeds based on the multipliers so I can see which cpu and nb speeds are linked at a particular base clock instead of multiplier but I didn't realize that until after making that chart.

Also I finally saw about 45c at load on the cpu but neither the cpu or north bridge feel even slightly warm, I guess all of those extra fans are overkill.

Would it be fine to continue testing up to 1.5v on the cpu when Hardware Monitor and CPUZ show max voltage of 1.57 when bios is set to 1.4125? Mostly the voltage in those programs bounced between 1.5-1.54 but spiked to 1.57. Also what advice or suggestions do you have regarding the ram voltage?

I guess another thing I'm ultimately curious to ask is what should I focus on in terms of the overall overclock. I can't find a way to get close to my max's without figuring out how to get the ram up or if I keep the ram where it is I'm stuck with a 2.4Ghz NB instead of pushing 2.5-2.575Ghz. Without spending days more time just to bench all the options could you point me in the right direction as to what to focus on more? I've been leaning more towards putting the NB as the top priority with keeping the ram speed at or above DDR800 and then hopefully getting 3.1Ghz out of the cpu but that's because I'm guessing that my ram is the bottleneck.

Let me know if you would like to take a look at the spread sheet when it's done, I'm hoping it will help take some of the guess work out of settling on a choice. Thanks for getting back to me.

Edit - I forgot to mention in regards to the reset needed at lower base clock speeds, that typically disappeared around 180Mhz+. The pattern that emerged was that the lower the base clock was the sooner it ran out of steam. The cpu liked base clocks closer to the upper limit while the NB was broad and in the middle of the base clock range. Interestingly I got a fairly stable run at 280 x 11 = 3080 on the cpu at stock volts which most mid to low base clock combos couln't reach until a few voltage bumps although the 280x11 ran out of steam at anything above stock voltage.

 

Time upgrade new board mate and new DDR3 ram

 

Do you know what HT link speed is? - I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere....as far as NB/Memclock goes, imho you're better concentrating on the NB for better performance..

Do you have Everest installed?

 

The HT is set to auto so at max it's 9x what ever the base clock is for me. I haven't messed with it too much because the one time I did try to set it to 9x instead of auto once I had a slight overclock stable on the cpu and north bridge things became unstable.

I have Everest or what ever trial they offer, can't remember if it's a freeware program but it's not currently installed since I'm still in the stage of finding my workable box of stability on all fronts. Once I get all these things hammered out so I can tweak it for the last 25% or so I will install it.

Rob - This adventure partially started as something to do while waiting to finish my rebuild. I was only able to buy a few parts so I bought parts that I could carry over but also use now like a case that wasn't the cheapest thing from 2005, an SSD, and a cpu cooler. Hopefully by black friday I will be getting the rest of my stuff which will only be a hold over until Bulldozer but I'm planning on a 555 or 560 black edition cpu, 890gx board (possibly fx but I don't really want to spend that much more on a board than the cpu), relatively future proof psu, monitors, raid, burners, and probably a 5770 video card.

 

Can you open the Overclock window and post a screenie?

 

Sorry for the long delay, I've been side tracked with a few other things and haven't worked on overclocking so much, more of my time has ended up in that stupid excel spreadsheet to analyze the results so far.

Anyway are you wanting a screen shot from in the bios? Does that work the same way as screen shots in windows? Are you wanting to see the HTT speed or all of the different things like CPUZ would show?

 

Man looks like I killed this thread!

 

Nah - this happens. People find the thread, get all excited, do the legwork and get some help here and there, then it dies until someone new finds it.

I'm just proud that it's been viewed over 108,000 times - that puts this guide near the top of the most viewed "How-To" stickies at Guru3D! (with the exception of the nVidia forums)

Psychlone


LOL - I just now realized something! nVidia (sounds like Invidia) which is the Latin word for "Envy", one of the Seven Deadly Sins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins). Hmm....nVidia subliminal marketing much??

 

Just bought myself the x2 555 BE, and managed to unlock it to X4. i'm lucky. Right now i'm scare to OC cause I can't measure the core temp. Is there any software can detect the quad?

 

The TMPIN1 should be your correct temperature monitor for an unlocked processor.

deltatux

 

Is Pill Monster banned or is that just his avatar??

On a side note would anyone know where a good place to start would be for creating overclocking software? I know there is software level overclocking etc but I was thinking about the idea of hooking a computer to another computer that would be overclocked. It would be pretty complex I would think but basically the control computer could do bios changes, turn the other computer on and off, reset the bios, pull software results such as CPUZ, benchmarking scores and other related stuff. It wouldn't be fast by any means but possibly you could set up the overclocking parameters, let it run for a day to get the initial results and then another day to stability test it. I just figure that there's got to be a better way that the tedious process of doing it yourself.

 

psychlone,Ive read your guide and you say: By raising the CPU voltage, (NEVER HIGHER THAN 1.55V) .does this aply to the new phenoms x6 cores to thanks.

 

Maximum voltage for the X6 is 1.475V (theoretical) - really, there's no need to push more voltage than necessary, ever.
1.55V is the top-most limit for most air and watercooled cards, with higher voltages reserved for hardcore cooling like liquid nitrogen/liquid helium.

I should probably change the guide to reflect some of the maximum values for each series of chips rather than a blanket "1.55V for all".

Remember, the point to overclocking correctly is to get as much overclock as possible while using as little voltage as necessary.


Psychlone

 

ok, thanks for your quick reply

 

I'm looking for 3rd party cooler in the price range of around $30++. I've stumble with CM Hyper 212+ and CM TX3. Is this two can help me stabilize my temp so I can push a bit further?