FX-6350 + Gigabyte 990XA-UD3

[SorryImSoAce]

Hello Overlockers!

I am new here and pretty much a noob at overclocking CPUs but have been following various threads from time to time. I am having trouble getting a decent overclock, so far I got the CPU up to 4.5GHZ and voltage was around 1.3V ... however after an extensive test on prime 95 I discovered that only core 5 stops working while the others carry on. I read in another thread something about one cpu per compute which disables the last 3 cores but I do not have this option, I was also told there are more values that can be increased for overclocking, core and ratio or something I also do not have these options. These are my only options for overclocking in my UEFI dual bios.

Core performance boost
CPB Ratio (this is the thing I press PG UP and PG DWN on to up the processor speed by 0.05 GHZ at a time)

I also do not know wether to enable or disable to following;
CPU Unlock
Cool and Quiet
C1E support
SVM
CPU Core control (I think the options are one, two, three, automatic or something, is this the one cpu per compute?)
Core C6 state
HPC mode

Finally when I see people mention voltage they talk about north bridge and core voltage etc, these are my options...

CPU Vcore
DRAM voltage
DRAM termination (greyed out)
HT Link voltage
NB/PCI/PLL Voltage
CPU PLL voltage
NB Voltage
VCore loadline calibration

I never see any of these settings mentioned and when I try to google search various settings I end up none the wiser as to what values they need to be set at or the maximum safe voltages they can be increased to. Except CPU 1.4v and the maximum temperature 62c which doesn't help lol.

Any help or just recommended settings would be massively appreciated!

 

[ShrimpBrime]

From the sounds of it, your cooling solution is stock air heat sink. If so.... 4.5ghz and 1.3v is pretty good. Stick with it until you inquire on better cooling solution.

If you have an after market heat sink, perhaps you can add a fan or something for better air flow....

Say! What are your system specs any ways. Please include everything like PSU and case as well.

 

[SorryImSoAce]

Yes I do have a coolermaster Hyper 212 evo, when I do the prime 95 at 4.5 GHZ it only reached about 50c after 20 mins. I would like to know how to do 'one cpu per compute' on my settings please is it the 'CPU core control', I figure if I only have the 3 or 4 cores running I may be able to overclock higher because only core 5 fails plus it will not get so hot.

Also should there only be one setting to tweak to increase the GHZ, I saw on the other recent thread about the 6300 where a guy was talking about increasing 1 clock then another in an alternating pattern. Also can anyone help with the different voltage settings and which settings I need to enable and disable please?

Thanks

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

Yes I do have a coolermaster Hyper 212 evo

The FX-6350 is a 125W CPU, in my opinion the 212 EVO can not handle that, you need something with 6 heat pipes like the NH-D14 or NH-D15 (note: you need a big case for these) or any other air heat sink that uses heat pipe tech, that or go with water cooling. I normally would say use what I have but it's not made any more.

Noctua NH-D14

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Yes I do have a coolermaster Hyper 212 evo, when I do the prime 95 at 4.5 GHZ it only reached about 50c after 20 mins. I would like to know how to do 'one cpu per compute' on my settings please is it the 'CPU core control', I figure if I only have the 3 or 4 cores running I may be able to overclock higher because only core 5 fails plus it will not get so hot.

Also should there only be one setting to tweak to increase the GHZ, I saw on the other recent thread about the 6300 where a guy was talking about increasing 1 clock then another in an alternating pattern. Also can anyone help with the different voltage settings and which settings I need to enable and disable please?

Thanks

Yes that's a good idea actually. And also the reason all FX 4 and 6 core cpus are actually 8 cores with some shut off.

You would go to Cpu Core control and run 3 cores, one per module. In more advanced bios's you could have the option to turn off cores 2 and 5 for example to run as a quad. I'm not super familiar with Gigabyte Bios, so you'll experiment in this department. There is no way of knowing besides what bios tells you to what cores are running in windows. In windows all cores running will be listed from 0-4 for example. Core 0 is always core 0 though. Cannot be disabled.

If you have a decent chip, around 4.7ghz and 1.4250v is a good overclock imo.

 

[K1L0]

Hello Overlockers!

I am new here and pretty much a noob at overclocking CPUs but have been following various threads from time to time. I am having trouble getting a decent overclock, so far I got the CPU up to 4.5GHZ and voltage was around 1.3V ... however after an extensive test on prime 95 I discovered that only core 5 stops working while the others carry on.

the simple way to solve that problem is to increase the CPU Vcore, on my fx-6300 i can manually set it to 1.26 in bios but shows as 1.3 in CPUID for 4.5ghz overclock. i didnt make a long prime95 run so i am not sure how stable it is, but if you increase Vcore by a few notches it should become stable eventually as long as you don't overheat.

I can suggest turning off turbo and cool'n'quiet settings, and just focus on cpu multiplier and CPU Vcore settings for simple and effective overclocks.

 

[RGone]

So as to not just...

...just go around and around. Where are we most likely?

Honestly we don't see a lot of the Gigabyte AM3+ motherboards much anymore. The number of throttling and VRM overheat and revision after revision of motherboard by Gigabyte to try and "fix" users complaints is just too great to really name and worse to try and keep up with.

So the majority of us that stay in here 24/7 and try and lend help to AMD cpu users are almost all running the top two tier of the Asus AM3+ motherboards. So much less hassle.

That link below is actually talking about the GA-990FXA-UD3 Revision 3.0 motherboard. There is also a (rev. 1.0) (rev. 1.1) (rev. 1.2) (rev. 3.0) (rev. 4.0) (rev. 4.1) I just looked about 6wks ago but now there is a rev. 4.1. AND it makes a BIG difference as to which Revision of that 990FXA-UD3 motherboard you own. You have not told us what revision you own. What is available for use in bios CAN change with each bios revision NOT to mention with each motherboard revision. The motherboard revision is silk-screen printed in the left lower corner of motherboard toward the front edge of the board.

So a great deal of what that motherboard WILL do or NOT do is up to you the individual user to find out. You want to disable cores? Try it. Post back with how it works so then we know. We really don't have any great experience with disabling cores on just about any Gigabyte AM3+ motherboards.

But I do agree with those that say to raise the Vcore to give the weaker cores the voltage they need to actually operate. That is what most overclocking is about anyway. Raise speed and then Raise voltage to try and stabilize the newer increased speed.


Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 Revision 3.0 Stay Away!

Yeah the problem seems to be on all UD3 boards, Gigabyte did a terrible job with this board and it has changed a lot of people opinions on their products I for one will probably forgo buying another board from them in the future they don't seem to know what they are doing.

We have just recently figured out that no one knows what the sensors on this board are reading, and some peoples sensors don't read properly to begin with one thing is for sure though Gigabyte has no clue what the sensors they put on the board are reading the response we got from their forum was all wrong because the temp sensor they said was reading Northbridge was just replicating the CPU temp.

On top of the bad quality board the BIOS is just as bad, it's missing a lot of controls and most of the settings are done by offsets. This includes voltage which is just absolutely ridiculous.

Good luck man,
RGone...


EDIT:
Might be a good idea to look and see what Revision of that board you have and let us know. It is afterall, very important. Greatly important to the overal outcome of your overclocking journey. I just 'searched' cpu core control and the GA-990FXA-UD3 and two pages of looking at search hits showed "nothing". That generally means not many are using that bios feature. So you surely will have to try it for yourself and see what happens.
END EDIT.

 

[SorryImSoAce]

Thanks for attempting to help guys, I will open op and find my rev number in a little while and post back here.

With the VCore voltage my only options are 'Auto' 'Normal' or -0.800 or something, so it seems my only options are to reduce vcore.

So overall you guys are suggesting I get a different motherboard and perhaps a different CPU? Would it be worth the cost of switching to intel and would all my other components still work if I just swapped motherboard and CPU brand?

 

[RGone]

With the VCore voltage my only options are 'Auto' 'Normal' or -0.800 or something, so it seems my only options are to reduce vcore.

So overall you guys are suggesting I get a different motherboard and perhaps a different CPU? Would it be worth the cost of switching to intel and would all my other components still work if I just swapped motherboard and CPU brand?

Man you really need to get that board revision so we can at least 'search' for some information relative to that particular mobo. I FIND it hard to believe that those are the only options for Cpu Voltage. IF that is now true...well then I do suggest you get another motherboard. As for going to Intel...well that would be up to your and your real wants and desires. Ram usually crosses over as well as power supply...well you get the idea. I don't know what you are using for cooling but most AfterMarket coolers, usually had Intel as well as AMD mounts in the box.

Like I said, get the board revision and THEN we can do some real looking around to see what is really going on.

RGone...

 

[Johan45]

I don't think you really need to get a new system. That's not what people are suggesting just that gigabytes can have issues depending on the revision. One good thing I see is that you have HPC which you should enable in the bios. Disable cool&quiet, C1E and C6. Then it comes to core voltyage. Seems your board works only with offset voltages, you should be able to hilight it and use the "+" key to increase it.

 

[SorryImSoAce]

Ok that's good to hear and sorry it took so long, my motherboard displays 'rev 3.0'. I will try and record a video on my phone later, upload it to youtube and post a link here.

 

[Johan45]

Well with the revision 3 and that cooler you probably wont get too much higher. The REV3 was terrible for throttling.

 

[SorryImSoAce]

Would it be recommended to get a new motherboard? Unfortunately I have never built a PC myself so take into account replacing the motherboard and all of the components will be a big task for me.

 

[Johan45]

I would try to see how far your current setup will go. What are you doing ? Just gaming?

 

[SorryImSoAce]

Yes, Arma 3 has terrible lag spikes too :-(

Is the corsair h100i worth an investment and would it fit inside my Corsair carbide 300r case?

Sorry for the continuous barrage of questions but I am really interested to learn about all of this.

EDIT: just to add, I found a few more adjustable settings. These being BCLK Clock control, CPU Northbridge frequency and HT Link frequency.

 

[Johan45]

The AIO coolers are decent but your motherboard will stop you from using it effectively. I think the best thing to do would be to see how we can do with what you have then proceed from there. Can you do a stress test at your current settings such as P95? If so download and open HWMonitor free version and run it for 20 minutes. Then post a SS while it's under load. Also post up some CPU-z shots main, memory and SPD tab if you can. This will get us all on the same foot and will show us what's going on with your PC. There's also a good link in my sig for overclocking an FX CPU. You should give it a read.

 

[SorryImSoAce]

My only CPU control options are 'one core, two or four' .. I set it to four and my PC wouldn't boot so I had to touch the two pins on the cmos to reset (I was pretty scared I'd broken my PC until I read this method)

These are the results of a 20 min stress test at 4.5GHZ. Besides disabling all the additionals like cool and quiet etc and enabling HPC mode, I have only upped the CPB ratio, and NB Voltage to 1.35.



Also should I have CPU unlock disabled or enable?

Thanks again, I really appreciate that you guys go out of your way to help others like this, restores my faith in humanity

 

[RGone]

YOU have no cores to unlock since there are no cores to unlock. I disable.

RGone...

 

[SorryImSoAce]

I don't understand what you mean RGone.

Are there any voltages I could increase and should I overclock using the BCLK Clock control, CPU Northbridge frequency and HT Link frequency or just use the single CPB ratio?

I feel so dumb with all of this, it's massively confusing.

 

[RGone]

I don't understand what you mean RGone.

Are there any voltages I could increase and should I overclock using the BCLK Clock control, CPU Northbridge frequency and HT Link frequency or just use the single CPB ratio?

I feel so dumb with all of this, it's massively confusing.

Also should I have CPU unlock disabled or enable? < I wrote > YOU have no cores to unlock. Since there are no cores to unlock; I disable.

Use ONLY core ratio increase to overclock at first. Therefore it is not confusing. Leave the others you just asked about on AUTO or default for NOW.

RGone...