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Maximizing my aging rig

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Cind3rs

New Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2013
Hi all, first post here.

I have an older rig that I'm looking to squeeze like those awesome mini-clementine oranges.

I'm doing some FPS gaming, so need those frame rates. Right now, Planetside 2 is telling me my CPU is holding back the GPU.

Compy_zps06e6a965.jpg


M3N-HT deluxe mobo
Phenom II X4 965 BE
6 GB Corsair XMS2 Pro 6400 RAM (DDR2) (Running at 800 Mhz)
Radeon 6970
Win 7
Sealed water pipe fan (I'll have to edit the name in later, it's spinning and I can't read it, lol)
Latest drivers and BIOS.
Antec CoolerMaster tower

I got the CPU OC'd to 4 ghz without touching voltage, just upping multiplier to 18.5. The BIOS seems to be adjusting the FSB slightly on it's own. When I got to 20X multiplier, CPU-Z reported I'm at 5.7Ghz! I had been doing the math with 200 FSB, while it was upping it in the 270's. I'm not sure I have BIOS control over the FSB, anyway.

My temps are fine. 30 mins on Prime95 and it made it to 58 degrees for a moment before holding steady at 56-57.

So! With the FSB in the low 200's, I'm trying to figure out what the bottleneck is. The 4Ghz GPU? Can I tweak the RAM to get more out of it? The FSB is lower than the RAM's speed, though I know that's not an answer.

Is the FSB what's holding up the train here?

Appreciate any help or advice ;)
 
If those are your core temps you really wouldn't want to go much higher. I have that same setup for my HTPC and it never upped the FSB on it's own . Maybe u should set it manually.
 
The 965 came out in 2009. AMD went through some considerable revisions since then in their CPU line up. HOwever, the Deneb cpu, in my opinion can still make the cut in most games... it is everything else that is holding it back (i.e. DDR2).

Planetside 2 seems like CPUs that can HyperThread, too.

But as far as overclocking goes... you want high FSBs, not low FSBs and you should be able to manually control the FSB setting in the BIOS.
 
I'm not sure which to trust. CPU-Z is showing the FSB at 218.6 and a few other programs are claiming 200 even on the FSB.

I've done research about the RAM and it seems no one can agree, as with most things. With DDR2, the RAM is running faster than the FSB. I think at this point it's running 2:1 of the FSB. The latencies are about where they should be. Is there a benefit of pushing the RAM up higher in Mhz? Right now it's a little over 800. I could probably easily push it to ~1200 (3:1 RAM:FSB). I think that would increase the latency, but also mean the RAM is communicating more often. I've seen opinions to put it at 1:1 and slow the RAM down while decreasing latencies.

I know it's old tech, but I'm trying to squeeze it dry until my next build.
 
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Thanks for the links. I've read Dolk's guide. In fact, have most of it printed out next to me here, lol.

I also looked at the Planteside2 Tweaks (thanks for that!), though most of those are for upper end machines. I'm running on "Low" across the board.
 
what CPU cooling solution do you have? ((Sealed water pipe raises a concern))

^ answer this first, then we can decide what is next. You should be able to trust CPUz for FSB #s, but as you can see from the screenshot you're still using the cool'n'quite (power saving) features. Turn those off to see exact numbers in cpuz.
 
Thermaltake Max Orb.

Also, found out the CPU-Z was wrong. I was using 1.61 which had a bug in it. 1.62 is correctly reporting, I think.

I got the FSB up to 220 and the CPU via multiplier up to 4 Ghz, with the NB at 2400. The RAM got bumped to 880 via FSB adjustment.

It's stable and heat controlled right now. I think the holdback at this point is the FSB and RAM's narrow bandwidth. I'd like to try pushing my 800Mhz RAM up to 1066 and see if it can take it.

I wouldn't mind getting the FSB up to 250, but it becomes unstable after 220. I would up the voltage, but my BIOS doesn't refer to it as FSB, but CPU Frequency. I'm not sure what the FSB voltage would be in that case since it is not labeled as anything I can interpret as FSB. I see CPU Voltage, but I can't google to find an answer if that is indeed the FSB voltage.

Computerstats_zps72ddde66.jpg
 
highly doubt cpu voltage is fsb voltage. fsb voltage can be labeled cpu nb volts or similar, as it refers to the north bridge. you really should right down the options your bios offers for voltage and then post those. i had to max out cpu nb and HT Link voltage oddly enough to get my board to be stable in the higher OC. 4ghz for a 955 might not be bad for 24/7, but 1.552v is way too much for 24/7 i thinks.

i'm a little confused, your front side bus should be stable up to 250-300. my cheap 870 biostar board post up to 330-350. in most cases i found the memory to be the limiter. i think you should approach this differently.

turn HT link down, NB Freq down, and even underclock the ram (so say HT Link around 1.8k; nb freq around 2k; ram speed down one more setting.) this will allow you to push the FSB more; as the FSB increases it also increases the HTLink/NBFreq/Dram freq. msot FSB issues are due to pushing (HTLink/NBFreq/Dram freq) too high as you increase the FSB. by turning these down, you can even lower the multipler for CPU, you can find how high of FSB you can make with that board.

then pick a decent FSB, set the multipler for CPU, raise HTLink/NBFreq/Dram freq settings back up until you reach ideal... bam! no?

PS: Either way, the DDR2 is limiting you... say you get the OC to 4.2ghz stable and blah blah blah (HTLink/NBFreq/Dram freq); well then i am almost CERTAIN the DDR2 speeds will not be able to keep up with the needs of the CPU and your bottleneck will be memory performance... as in, you might be chasing a pipe dream... 4.2ghz OC is great, but ddr2 is slow and the 955be is meant to interface with DDR3 for max speeds.
 
I wouldn't mind getting the FSB up to 250, but it becomes unstable after 220. I would up the voltage, but my BIOS doesn't refer to it as FSB, but CPU Frequency. I'm not sure what the FSB voltage would be in that case since it is not labeled as anything I can interpret as FSB. I see CPU Voltage, but I can't google to find an answer if that is indeed the FSB voltage.

Amd uses HT instead of FSB. You are actually increasing the HT base frequency not the FSB.
Been a while since i've had that bios open but I'm pretty sure there's a HT and HT link voltage adjustment. :comp:
 
Here's my BIOS screen.

20130216_165510_zps0fbee028.jpg

The CPU frequency appears to be the FSB, as it shows an increase in all aspects (via CPU-Z) when I adjust that one.

Trying to figure out how to maximize efficiency here. If I edge up the RAM's MHZ and the FSB (or HT, though that doesn't seem to be the same thing here... HT adjustment only affect HT speed in CPU-Z, while CPU Freq will move everything up).

Basically, trying to get the highest bus speed and tweak the RAM to come as close as possible. I'm holding very steady and surprisingly cool at 4 GHZ processor speed.
 
The bottleneck is mainly your motherboard and memory. The board uses an Nvidia nForce 200 north bridge, which doesn't overclock worth a damn, and this is really the key to unlocking the true potential of the Phenom II. For example, you probably wont be able to get much more than 2200mhz out of the NB. As for the AMD 880G NB, you can turn 2800-3000mhz on the NB which is target for maximum OC and FPS. So, with that in mind, you cant get much more out of your current hardware. That being said, you could try setting your FSB back to 200, and then upping the CPU-NB voltage to 1.3, and setting the multi up to try for 2600, just be prepared for a no post situation, and you may need to pull the battery.

Its time to at the very least, upgrade to a newer AM3 board, with DDR3 support and a better NB chipset, and an SSD drive as well.

Edit: the bios is confusing on most Asus boards from that era. The "CPU frequency" is your FSB
 
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Thanks Storm. I'm trying to hang in there till later this year when I'll do a completely new build, maybe just re-using some of the HDDs from this system.
 
Thanks Storm. I'm trying to hang in there till later this year when I'll do a completely new build, maybe just re-using some of the HDDs from this system.
If you want to maximize performance crush your old HDDs and move to SATA III SSD drives. Everything will boot/load in half the time, no joke. At least you could keep the old HDDs around for extra storage. For an example of the speed differences, my Hitachi 7300 rpm 16mb buffered HDD has a sustained read speed of 70mb/s, on the flipside, my muskin Sata III SSD drive has a sustained read speed of well over 450 mb/s. Well worth it in my book!
 
Definitely, but these HDDs will be for storage purposes. I'm thinking SDD for boot, applications and games. HDDs for storage, since they're already paid for.
 
I just bought the Phenom II 965 X4 BE for my Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe mb that I bought in 2006 running 4 GB of ddr2 @ 667 MHz and I can tell you that neither your cpu or your ram is your bottle neck, it's definitely your motherboard with the n-force 200 chipset. My Asus runs the n-force 590sli and it scores on par with my current setup that has newer GPUs and DDR3 with the n-force 980sli chipset and a Phenom II 1090T X6 BE @ 3.9 GHz.

The NF200 running a 965 X4, amazed you even have it running in that thing.

On the settings, the CPU frequency (220) is your FSB x the CPU multiplier (18) give you the value of 3960 MHz, or your CPU frequency. I notice all of your key voltages are on auto, that wont help with the fine tuning of your OC. I would call it good that you're getting what you have out of that thing and save for a newer AM3+ board like stormchaser said. Cut your losses before they happen.
 
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