Dolk's Guide to the Phenom II

[Arzack]

And please do disable CnQ.

Why? It's stable. Ok, i did it.

 

[Dolk]

When you overclock, its best to turn off all power saving features. It creates a much more stable environment, and secondly your defeating the purpose of overclocking if you want to scale power when you need it.

 

[i6pwr]

Excellent article...

I just received some Dominator 4x2 1600 and when I tried to set it up, apparently I must have forgotten about the multiplier as I had a blank screen and the PC did a windows repair. I changed the voltage and freq but it wouldn't start up...never had the PC act up like this after a small screw up but it let me know what time it was....

Having some cold feet now I want to be sure I set everything correctly in my BIOS. MB is the M4A89GTD Pro USB3, if you could give me a good starting point that would be great.

I haven't OC'd the CPU yet but interested in this as well keeping it on air.

 

[Dolk]

I am a little confused, are you trying to OC your RAM?

 

[i6pwr]

Yes.......the oc of the CPU is just a sidenote.... What I'm after is setting my ram up to its recommended speed of 1600. Again this is my first time oc'ng so I've been over the article, been through the manual.....its staring me in the face but I obviously need some help. I cant seem to correctly change the CPU/NB which is likely the reason it didn't boot when i changed the DRAM freq to 1600.

 

[Dolk]

I would not play with your CPU-NB right now, you just do not need to worry about it at this moment. It is probably your voltage that is not setup right or your timings. Can you take BIOS screen shots of your memory and voltage?

 

[i6pwr]

I will tonight when I get home. I had the NB offset at .2, ram volts at 1.6, timings at 8-8-8-24 and that's when it wouldn't boot.

 

[Dolk]

Do not use offset, change that setting to the other one.

 

[i6pwr]

Here's a shot of the BIOS at the settings I used when it would not boot. The only difference I see now is the CPU/NB voltage..I wasn't going to change it per your request, I just wanted to show what I did when it failed to boot.

However..this time when I entered .2, it gave me a red bar and the last time it would only display .45000 regardless if I entered a .15 or .2 so i'm leaving it on AUTO for now.

Currently it's all on AUTO, this was only for past-reference.

 

[i6pwr]

To avoid any confusion, this is how it's currently running with all on AUTO.

 

[Krusher33]

Is the RAM speed and timings portion of the guide still holds true with the Thubans?

The difficult part for me when overclocking my 1055T is knowing what speed will the RAM be at and what to set the timings at. And even then, if I made it boot to Windows, how to determine to loosen or tighten to get it more stable... and which timing to adjust.

I understand the ratio to determine the RAM speed and will put it to practice tonight... but adjusting the timings is still a big giant question mark in my head.

Plus let me know if this is a good guide to follow or not?
tRAS = CL + tRCD + tRP
tRC = tRP + tRAS

Because the max setting in BIOS I can go on tRC is 41.

I've been told by my folding counterparts that maintaining the RAM speed at 1700+ is beneficial for bigadv. I don't know why... but it's worth a shot. My PPD is pretty crappy at 1400-something.

 

[Dolk]

@i6pwr

first off change the CPU % NB Voltage Mode to Manual instead of Offset.

Your RAM timings should be something like 8-8-8-24-32-1T with 1600 MHz @ 1.7v This may work. You will have to adjust the Row Cycle Time a bit to find a good spot for the memory to work.

With this you may want to push your CPU-NB up to 2200 MHz to help lighten the load on the RAM but an increase in the CPU-NBv is unnecessary.

@Krusher33

The Ram and Memory parts of Thuban are still up to date. I'm not familiar with the RAM timing formulas. I have not read enough about memory to really get into it. I have a lot of problems with RAM as well especially in the higher end. One suggestion I have is to base everything on the bus and worry about the multipliers second. You can raise the FSB/HTT bus much higher than the fixed multipliers, so why not set the bus high and scale back on the multipliers?

 

[Wheelzz]

I have a X4 955 @ 3.81ghz that pretty much stays below 44C in most games, hits like 46C in TF2 and some other games. I have seen it hir 48C in L4D and BF3. I think the max it hit in Prime 95 after 6 hours was 51-52C! All I did was change the multi to 19 and up the volts. Im thinking of trying for a little bit less volts just because. Also, what should I change my NB + HT to?

 

[i6pwr]

So far so good, I assume a stress test is in order to some degree, everything is definately.."snappier" What program should I run to determine if this speed is good or how far I can take it?

 

[Dolk]

@Wheelzz You do not have to increase the CPU-NB and HTT that much, you could increase it to say 2400 for both. You will not see to much of a change in performance but it could help stabilize down the road.

@i6pwr, Prime95 is the best tool for stressing both the CPU and Memory.

 

[storm-chaser]

@i6pwr
With this you may want to push your CPU-NB up to 2200 MHz to help lighten the load on the RAM but an increase in the CPU-NBv is unnecessary.

Push your NB up to 3000mhz and call it a day

 

[storm-chaser]

@Wheelzz You do not have to increase the CPU-NB and HTT that much, you could increase it to say 2400 for both. You will not see to much of a change in performance but it could help stabilize down the road.

@i6pwr, Prime95 is the best tool for stressing both the CPU and Memory.

Also note prime95 is overkill for the average joe overclocker. If your system is stable with all the games you play and complete functionality utilized with no BSODs, there is NO need for a prime 95 marathon to prove your system is stable.

 

[ice445]

Also note prime95 is overkill for the average joe overclocker. If your system is stable with all the games you play and complete functionality utilized with no BSODs, there is NO need for a prime 95 marathon to prove your system is stable.

It certainly feels better to know that your overclock is stable in every possible situation.

 

[Dolk]

Push your NB up to 3000mhz and call it a day

Unnecessary to the full degree. Increasing the CPU-NB causes a parabolic gain in performance. Finding the absolute max is something you can do on your own time. Usually something in the neighborhood of 2200 - 2400MHz with up to a 40% increase on your CPU is sufficient.

 

[i6pwr]

Forgive me if this has been discussed and I feel it has, as for the NB, can it be pushed to 2200 alone or does it require a balance from somewhere else? Is there a ratio as far as volts to Mhz or other settings I need to increase as well?

I know these are basic questions but they are being committed to memory. I'd rather ask as I go than to dive in and screw something up. The addiction is starting.....