AMD Athlon II X4 640 OC capability. + a question

Mitukczuk · Aug 30, 2011

Hi guys. I am new to this whole overclocking stuff so i hope i will not sound as a complete idiot.

First of all my specs :

Processor : AMD Athlon II X4 640 3,0Ghz with Arctic Freezer 13 cooler on.
MotherBoard : Gigabyte GA-MA74GMT-S2
RAM : 4Gb DDR III 1333Mhz (Kingston)
Grraphics card : ASUS Nvidia GTS 450 1gb
I have a mid-tower case with 500 W power supply and one additional 120mm fan for better air circulation.

The question id like to ask you is, to which number of Ghz is this processor capable of getting and if it is even worth doing considering my specs and that it is not in any way somewhat a great processor.
To have some additional info i ran an hour long test in Prime95 and under 100% loaded cores i did not exceed 39C degrees. (Dunno if it is good or not).

I browsed through this forum numerous times but found out that asking myself will be better.

Also , kind of an off-topic : Sometimes when play (Black Ops or something like that) i get ridiculously low FPS. Normally im getting from 50-180 FPS in Black Ops but sometimes its just unplayable. What makes it better is just exitting the game and restarting it again and my fps is ok,or a simple reload. It is happening to me almost in every game. World of Warcraft, League of Legends. Any thoughts ?

Bear in mind that i am not a multitasking person so when i play i close down everything but ICQ. I take care of my pc and i am regularly removing dust from fans and coolers.

Thank you and i apologize for my English. As you can probably tell i am not a native speaker.

a c i d.f l y · Aug 30, 2011

Are these spikes during multiplayer or single player? Multiplayer spikes can be blamed on your network speed. I started having similar issues and this was resolved *1000 with a new cable modem. Single player spikes can be due to a plethora of potentials, such as RAM->Disk caching, improper video settings, background application settings. Which version of Windows are you running?

Mitukczuk · Aug 31, 2011

Hi, thank you for your input. I got Windows 7 64bit. These spikes are only in multiplayer games. But i don't think network speed is the problem, because I don't lag. I don't have a massive connection speed but i am certainly not on 512Kb/s

I have 10Mb/s. But the truth is my modem is like 6 years old. It is really annoying because i should run these games without any problem at all. Well, Black Ops maybe not but still. Also, if it was a network problem, how come it goes ok after one reload or restart of the game ? Wouldn't the problem occur persistently each time i start a game ? Also sometimes it happens in the middle of a game the fps suddenly drops from 80 to unplayable. Sometimes it goes back after while but sometimes not.

What i think, but dont know it is possible is that my cores are running on idle under 0% load on 800mhz each (power saving) and somehow they wont speed themselves up under heavy load for example when i run a game. Is it possible ?

I hope this is not an example of TL;DR

keny · Aug 31, 2011

Go into youre bios and disable Cool'n'Quite/C1E , Boot windows and change windows power saving to high performance by doing this.
"Open Power Options by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type power options, and then click Power Options. Under Select a power plan, click Show additional plans, and then click High performance" , this should resolve youre problem of youre cpu cores slowing down to a slow clock speed(800mhz) to save power,they should now run @3ghz all of the time, hope this helps.

Mitukczuk · Aug 31, 2011

Thank you. I did what you said and now i have to wait if the problem occurs again i guess. Do you think it is possible ? That my processor somehow sometimes dont recognize that it should run faster ?

keny · Aug 31, 2011

Mitukczuk said:
Thank you. I did what you said and now i have to wait if the problem occurs again i guess. Do you think it is possible ? That my processor somehow sometimes dont recognize that it should run faster ?

I would not have thought so , there are a few power saving options you can turn off to make sure you are running at full belt all the time, and now you have turned them off you should be running at youre stock core (3ghz) all the time and not throttling down when not in use.

All your cpu was doing was saving power through those settings , nothing to worry about.

Mitukczuk · Aug 31, 2011

I thank you ,sir ! It is at stable 3Ghz now! I hope it will result in eliminating those stupid spikes. Anyway, do you happen to know the answer to my first question? OC capability ? I see you are an Athlon user yourself. I have heard people only talking badly about these processors.

Black C5 Z06 · Aug 31, 2011

I got my 635 to 3.6 but it wasn't 24/7 stable. I has it on a very stable 3.4

keny · Aug 31, 2011

Mitukczuk said:
I thank you ,sir ! It is at stable 3Ghz now! I hope it will result in eliminating those stupid spikes. Anyway, do you happen to know the answer to my first question? OC capability ? I see you are an Athlon user yourself. I have heard people only talking badly about these processors.

i cant fault the cpu at all , i started at 2.7ghz stock,and it will run @4.2ghz (i use it 24/7 @3.9 as it still makes that clock on under 1.4v) so its got to a good bang for the buck at that , and i really dont think you would notice that much difference in every day computing between cpu's twice the price, my advice is clock the arse out of it and get a cheap 4ghz quad :attn:

Mitukczuk · Aug 31, 2011

Sounds alright. Even though i bought the new cooling for the cpu for OCing I am a bit affraid since i am totally new to OCing. I guess now its the browsing time for manuals

Thanks for your replies !

keny · Aug 31, 2011

Read dolks guide on here, it lays out the basics and it's an excelant place to start. Good luck

Black C5 Z06 · Aug 31, 2011

http://www.overclockers.com/step-guide-overclock-amd-phenom/

Mitukczuk · Aug 31, 2011

Maybe a stupid question but i have to ask...is Gigabytes EasyTune6 any good ? I mean..there are a few options for OCing without going to BIOS. FSB speed, RAM frequency (Adjusting it forces reboot of course)...
I bet it's better to do it in BIOS.huh ?

keny · Aug 31, 2011

Bios overclocking is the best way to go,it may seem more of a challenge but it's worth it in the end,I don't like software overclocking but if that's the route you want to take then amd overdrive is probably you're best option

Mitukczuk · Aug 31, 2011

I don't want to take the less challenging road, i was just asking. Ill go for a BIOS then. Thank you for the advice !
That Dolks guide is great, no doubt but since i am dumb mathematician i am a bit scared of numbers and abbreviations.

I know..not the best aproach to it.
I dont want to push my pc to the limit..Im thinking 3,4Ghz would be nice for my first OC experience.
If the RAM frequency de/increases with adjusting FSB speed is it safe for 1333 DDR3 RAM to work for example on 1600 ? Or is decreasing it to 1060 or so the way of protecting it while getting it back to its default with FSB adjusting ? Stupid question leads to another one,huh ?

keny · Aug 31, 2011

It's best to lower it to 1060 as it will rise again as you raise you're fsb and it won't be long before it's back at 1333 after a couple of fsb bumps

Mitukczuk · Aug 31, 2011

So i am here with my first results.
I went to BIOS and did what i have been told to do

I lowered the frequency of my RAM to 1066, rebooted and started working on my FSB speed. At first i added 10 and after that only +5 each time, after countless reboots and mini tests i have gotten these results so far :

CPU - 3,4Ghz
RAM Freq - 1200Mhz so far
FSB - 225Mhz
Multiplier - 15x
HT link - 1100Mhz
Voltage - 1.480V

After half an hour long Prime95 test temperatures didnt go over 42C degrees. And that's where i stopped. Any thoughts ? Advice? Is 42 degrees ok? How far can i push it considering the max temperature is 71C ? Thanks !

keny · Aug 31, 2011

Max temp is 55 , you're HT seems a little low ,try to keep it near the stock 2000 or a couple of hundred below ,you're cooler must be doing a good job to keep nearly 1.5v @42 degs, what are you using to monitor temps?

eSZee · Aug 31, 2011

keny said:
Max temp is 55 , you're HT seems a little low ,try to keep it near the stock 2000 or a couple of hundred below ,you're cooler must be doing a good job to keep nearly 1.5v @42 degs, what are you using to monitor temps?

His board doesn't look to be HT3.0 therefore it runs at 1000mhz and not 2000mhz.
He has a arctic freezer 13 so either low ambient temp or he's using something that shows cpu socket temps and not core temp.

keny · Sep 1, 2011

You're right , just read the specs on his mobo and it drops to ht1 if used with am3 cpu (mad)

AMD Athlon II X4 640 OC capability. + a question

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