AMD Phenom II B55 @ 4.00ghz

[agent00kevin]

Hai all, Im new here but not to building PCs. Im kind of new to overclocking but have learned fairly quickly.

I know there are some crazy overclocks here, but Im happy with my own accomplishment thus far. I had been hitting a wall at 3.83 GHZ using the HT bus speed as it pushed the RAM up to 1594mhz and the HT link to ~2400mhz. Anything more would result in a eventual system freeze or the things I had running would go crazy and freeze up.

I was pretty happy with that, but Ive been playing Planetside 2, a very hardware demanding game right now. (poorly optimized, it seems to require an overclocked i7 3770k to get acceptable framerates)

So I set out to hit 4 ghz. And I did, pretty easily once I did a littl research into overcloking means and methods. I bumped the NB voltage one notch and the vCore up a notch, then set the multiplier to 20x with the stock HT link bus speed.

Voila! 4.00ghz, so far seems stable. Under 75% load it runs in the 40's Celcius.

So now I suppose Im looking for tips on pushing it beyond that. Id like to hit 4.5, but I do not want to bump any voltages past their maximum in doing so. I may be limited by the mobo or RAM, which is listed below; Ive heard good and bad things about BioStar. (so far Im happy with 3 recent BioStar builds in the house)

BioStar A880G+
AMD Phenom II X2 555 3.2ghz unlocked to X4 B55 @ 4.0 ghz
2x4GB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3 1333mhz
EVGA GTX 560 SC overclocked again to 900mhz/2172mhz
Corsair H50 Liquid Cooling (exhaust out of the top of the case)
2x 120mm Cooler Master case fans (push/pull)
Thermaltake 850w PSU

 

[trents]

Does it pass at least two hours of Prime95 blend?

 

[agent00kevin]

Does it pass at least two hours of Prime95 blend?

Havent tried it yet. I need to go redownload; Im on a fresh install of W7 for the most part. Planetside 2 has been the only test Ive done so far; the previous attempts would crash within a few minutes. Now Ive played for about 6 hours without problems.

 

[agent00kevin]

Barfed on me at 5 min running Prime95

Set memory to run at 800mhz, turned the multiplier back down to 16x and set the HTT link to 249 to clock it at 3.984. DIMM timings were 9-9-9-24 now running 6-6-6-20. That seems to set itself automatically, so Im not messing with it.


Ran Prime95 again for 15 min, no issues. Typically problems manifest themselves long before 2 hours time, but I will run it again for at least an hour when I get it where I want it. 5 minutes was a bummer having just ran PS2 for 6 hours though At least it seems I was right when I suspected memory as being the culprit.

Im also going to go back to using the multiplier for now as I dont want to cause instability in running the HTT higher than 2490mhz. I hear that can cause problems as well and OC the HTT doesnt produce results anyway.

 

[trents]

We frequently have folks excitedly join the forum and proclaim some outrageous overclock success and when we ask them to test the stability of the settings with Prime95 blend they come back soon very humbled. It separates the professors of system stability from the possessors. Now your Phenom II B55 at 4.0 ghz is not an outrageous claim but I'm not sure I have heard of anyone getting one of those past about 3.8 Prime95 blend long test stable on air cooling. Some of the guys around here who do folding will insist the system isn't truly stable until it will pass an 8 hr. Prime95 stress test but I've settled on two hours for my purposes.

By the way, next time you post please post CPU-z tabs: CPU, Memory and SPD. All three are needed to get a complete picture of your settings.

 

[davedree]

trents me old boy, i havent been on here in ages. hows life treating you? just noticed b55 in amd section so thought id have a read. did you forget my old chip was 4.2 stable using a titan fenrir? and cool and quiet enabled?

 

[trents]

Yep, forgot. Fenrir?

 

[agent00kevin]

We frequently have folks excitedly join the forum and proclaim some outrageous overclock success and when we ask them to test the stability of the settings with Prime95 blend they come back soon very humbled. It separates the professors of system stability from the possessors. Now your Phenom II B55 at 4.0 ghz is not an outrageous claim but I'm not sure I have heard of anyone getting one of those past about 3.8 Prime95 blend long test stable on air cooling. Some of the guys around here who do folding will insist the system isn't truly stable until it will pass an 8 hr. Prime95 stress test but I've settled on two hours for my purposes.

By the way, next time you post please post CPU-z tabs: CPU, Memory and SPD. All three are needed to get a complete picture of your settings.

I dont have air cooling; I run liquid. Its listed in the specs 2 hours is fine but most of the time if there is a problem it wont take 2 hours to find it. Ive used Prime95 many times in the past on older builds and found when it fails, its typically within just a few minutes. However, a little over an hour or so is the longest Ive ever run it.

Passed a ~45 min run of Prime95 earlier today, unfortunately, it wont POST. Had to clear CMOS then fiddle around for a bit, but it wont POST so far @ 4.0. Tried a few other voltage adjustments and failed. Any ideas why it could run almost an hour of Prime95 yet not post would be nice. Im fairly confident if I can get it to post I can have it pass a couple hours of torture test.

Cooling isnt the problem. It runs under 60c at full load (and only occasionally touched it with a dirty radiator/fan, which has since been cleaned - ran in mid 50s most of the time) with the H50. Could be the board just doesnt like it, could be I just havent found the settings to make it so.

3.84 ghz is my limit so far; I reverted to HTT Bus speed for my OC purposes for now. Once I feel like playing with the CMOS jumper over and over again, Ill shoot for a stable 4.0 once more.

A last question I have is what effect would lowering the BUS speed but upping the multiplier do? What voltages would I have to bump? Would it adversely affect the overall speed of processing? Or should I stay on the path of bumping the multiplier for now?

Thanks

 

[trents]

How is your LLC set? If there is too wide a spread between baseline voltage as set in bios and the supplement under heavy load, it is possible for it to be stable under load but not have enough voltage to get it started.

There is no impact on overall speed of processing if you choose to overclock using only the FSB, only the multiplier or a combination of the two. It is as always, just a matter of what the frequencies are of the CPU, RAM and CPUNB, regardless of how you achieve that frequency. The only thing I have to say about that is rather general and that is most veteran overclockers find that the max overclock can usually be attained on a little less vcore when a combination of FSB and multiplier. Exactly the what is the mix of that doesn't seem to be important as just having the mix.

Speaking of CPUNB, what is your current CPUNB frequency. If you have been increasing the FSB the frequency of the CPUNB has also been increasing and if you have not compensated either by lowering it or giving it more volts (the CPUNB, that is) it could be what is causing your problem with booting. The CPU speed, the ram frequency, the HT Link Frequency and the CPUNB frequency all grow with the FSB because they are tuned to the FSB.

 

[manu2b]

2 hours is fine but most of the time if there is a problem it wont take 2 hours to find it. Ive used Prime95 many times in the past on older builds and found when it fails, its typically within just a few minutes. However, a little over an hour or so is the longest Ive ever run it.

Actually not.

To make sure your system is 100% stable, a 12 hours run is necessary.

If you use your system for gaming, of course, you don't really care if it's really stable or not.

But when you work with it (photoshop, rendereing...), I can tell you it's really not funny to lose your work.

What I can tell you is 1hour prime95 (or OCCT) is far from enough, and I am talking from experience...

My last 2600k was running@5GHz/1.448v stable for a couple of hours under P95, but was giving BSOD after 3.5hrs. It needed a 0.01v extra vCore to pass the 12 hours run.

And a BSOD after 3.5hrs of P95 could mean a reboot using some filter on PS...

In a few words, there is not such a thing as "almost stable".

A system is stable or not, period. And 45 mins of P95 means nothing.

EDIT:
60°C is an issue with PhII. When you reach the 3.9/4GHz range, this CPUs really don't like to go over 55°C and get extremely unstable.
One more example: my PhII 955 with a crappy cooler, was [email protected]/65°C on load, but to reach 4GHz and over, it needed to stay below 53°C.

 

[RGone]

@ manu2b so you are saying close is only good in hand grenades and horse shoes? I hear that man.
RGone...

 

[manu2b]

^Yes

 

[trents]

But if all you need to do is play horse shoes . . .

 

[manu2b]

Or hand shoes and horse grenade...

 

[RGone]

Or hand shoes and horse grenade...

ROTFLMAO

RGone...

 

[agent00kevin]

It doesnt have to pass a 12 hour run for what I do. I mostly game and make Source Mods. Hammer saves my work every so often and even if I got a BSOD on compile I wouldnt lose the work itself. I do some photo editing but save a lot by habit.

Planetside 2 is a very taxing game itself and a bit unstable, so if I can run it for several hours that all I really need. If I dont get a crash on an hour or two of P95 its highly unlikely Ill ever see one. Plus, an hour on the second run over 5 minutes on the first means something: I made forward progress. Baby Steps.

And yeah, I pretty much just need to play Horse Grenades. Im not going for a 12 hour 'look at me I have a stable overclock' kind of thing. Im not here to impress, Im here for a little guidance.

I had vCore bumped but it very well may have not been enough. I also know the HTT Bus controls the other speeds; thats why I went with the multiplier the secong go around. I figured the RAM being 1333mhz wouldnt like more than 1600mhz, and at 3.8ghz using the bus Im at 1594mhz. The board itself only supports 1333mhz. Also had the HTT bumped and NB voltage bumped.


I'll probably be back on it Sunday. I'll try bumping the voltages a bit more, and try lowering the bus and upping the multiplier too.

Edit: Never heard of the Ph II not liking 60c. I believe it has an 80c max; 75c being my limit but have never touched it. Hung out around 55c most of the time anyway. Stays in the 40s when compiling and running games, upper 30s at times depending on the game. This isnt my first rodeo, but you do learn something every day. Ill see what the rest of the interwebs have to say about that. Ultimately, Ill be fine if 3.8 is all I can get. I bought a dual core @ 3.2ghz and have a quad at 3.8ghz. I got my $$ worth.

Current speeds:

Core: 3824.18mhz Core Voltage: 1.416
Multiplier: x16.0
Bus Speed: 239 mhz
HT Link: 2390.00 mhz (same as NB) NB V 1.20
DRAM Freq: 796.7mhz 9/9/9/24 1.50v

 

[RGone]

Sounds like you have a plan. Luck man.
RGone...

 

[agent00kevin]

Had a little down time this evening, so I decided to play again.



Its posts this time with vCore bumped .100v. Set the CPU v to 1.35. I originally had it at 1.5, but the vCore was set to + .200 so when I loaded CPUZ I freaked out as she was running with 1.71v! Immediately shut her down and lowered the voltage on both.

Going to run P95 later. If anything looks out of the oridinary or sketchy, let me know.

EDIT: BTW I dont use AMD OD to overclock. I do it all in BIOS. Its a handy set of 'gauges' though

Also forgot a pic. 100% load @ 47c using AMD's stability testing tool.

 

[Mandrake4565]

agent run prime with HWmonitor open that will give a better indication of what the temps are like. The temp1 I believe is the socket temp and on my phenom my core always ran hotter then the socket. If that is the case then you are somewhere in the 50's on the cores.

 

[trents]

agent, please don't capture a pic of the whole desktop like that. It makes the images so small you can't read the values, even when you click on the bar and make them a little bigger. I'm using a laptop right now and the screen is fairly small. Crop and save each individual one then upload each one. You can upload up to three with each post and then go back and add more if necessary.