Getting serious

[Rigit]

I've been overclocking for years now but not really hard core. I'll get a black edition and do the basics and get 3.6 out of a 3.0 phenom II 945 but when I hit a wall just call it good and move on. Now I'm going to start pushing. I need to update my sig I think to reflect my current rig. I have a few questions not found in the Dolk's guide.
1. For some reason gigabyte decided to allow a multiplier up to 20x for cpu NB but only up to 13x for htlink. Those 2 must match so if I want to go past 2600mhz I must bump the fsb. My memory really hates that and will cause a crash at a paltry 205mhz. It's 1033 ram so I lowered it to 800mhz and I'm able to push fsb much higher. Question is does lowering the ram speed negate any increase in cpu speed? I haven't tried yet but I could push timings as well. According to Dulk 2600mhz should get me to 4000mhz but I've failed to get it rock stable at that speed.

2. What is HTLink width? does it have any benifits for oc'ing?

3. There's lots of settings for memory that I have no idea what they do. DQS drive strength datadrive strength memclk drive strength the list goes on. there's at least 10 of these things and I have no idea what they do or if it's even of any benefit to change them.

That's enough for now. As always I appreciate the input. No place better than here.

 

[RGone]

For some reason gigabyte decided to allow a multiplier up to 20x for cpu NB but only up to 13x for htlink. Those 2 must match >>> No they do not have to match. Not at all. The Phenom 2 cpu still is one that CPU_NB should be faster than HT Freq, so the bios is designed to do just that.

What is HTLink width? does it have any benifits for oc'ing? >>>> Has to do with number of lanes generally designated to the cpu. The more the better is what most use and thus 16bit is normally used. I never swap mine to 8 from 16.

There's lots of settings for memory that I have no idea what they do. DQS drive strength datadrive strength memclk drive strength the list goes on. there's at least 10 of these things and I have no idea what they do or if it's even of any benefit to change them.
>>>> Most of the ones you have named off are hardly ever in need of change.

 

[Johan45]

You beat me to it RGone
When you drop your memory to 800 that would be at a HT base freq of 200. So when you up the HT base freq you will be speeding up your ram as well.
You can check what that is in CPU-z

 

[Rigit]

For some reason gigabyte decided to allow a multiplier up to 20x for cpu NB but only up to 13x for htlink. Those 2 must match >>> No they do not have to match. Not at all. The Phenom 2 cpu still is one that CPU_NB should be faster than HT Freq, so the bios is designed to do just that.

What is HTLink width? does it have any benifits for oc'ing? >>>> Has to do with number of lanes generally designated to the cpu. The more the better is what most use and thus 16bit is normally used. I never swap mine to 8 from 16.

There's lots of settings for memory that I have no idea what they do. DQS drive strength datadrive strength memclk drive strength the list goes on. there's at least 10 of these things and I have no idea what they do or if it's even of any benefit to change them.
>>>> Most of the ones you have named off are hardly ever in need of change.

Wow! NB needs to be higher than HT! Now maybe I'll get something done. What's a good ratio? Like 13x for NB and 10x for HT something like that or should I just play with it? Not sure about the memory answer though. If I change the FSB I change the speed of the memory. But I was not aware that increasing the HT would do the same. This could be an issue since my ram seems rather touchy. But how much of a hit will I take by dropping down to 800mhz and lowering timings if I take a hit at all?

 

[Johan45]

Sorry for the confusion Rigit. I call the FSB the HT reference frequency.
So when it comes to the ram if you drop it to 800 and have the FSB at 250 your ram will run at 1000.
On my 965 I have the NB around 2500 and the HT link around 2000 to 2200