Need some help with Athlon II X4 630

[Lyane]

Hi guys I'm new to overclocking and it's been a very frustrating week for me.

Here's my setup:

AMD Athlon II X4 630 CPU (2.8ghz stock)
Asus M4A785TD-V Evo motherboard (AM3)
Thermax Eclipse II 6 CopperPipe Heatsink (It's very good, big temperature drop vs Stock)
1333 DDR Ram (The label on the ram says 1600oc and I have no idea why)
Radeon 5750 1G DDR5


I've been doing alot of homework and my results are follows:

3.4Ghz Running stable max load with Prime95
3.5Ghz Crashing after 1 hour @ max load with Prime 95.

By default running at 2.8Ghz my CoreVoltage is 1.4 / NBVoltage 1.175
When I over clocked to 3.4Ghz or 3.5Ghz I set it at CoreVoltage 1.5 / NBVoltage 1.375

Been doing this all week and these are the settings that I don't crash so much with...
I haven't had a crash yet at 3.4Ghz, but I think I have my core voltage higher than what it's suppose to be... what I
mean is I see people running stable at 3.5Ghz with only 1.14 Core V....
I'm sure my Voltage on my Ram or chipset might need adjustment, or HTLink Mhz as well but I have no idea what the
values should be...

Here's a screenshot of my CPU-Z

I would like to run at 3.5Ghz or more, do you guys think it's possible? I need more knowledge on other settings other
than just the Core Voltage and NB Voltage adjustments >_<

Thanks in advance.

 

[trents]

Here's one problem: Your HT Link is way to high. Stock is 2000 and it won't tolerate much increase in that at all. Adjust that so that in your overclock it stays between 1800-2000 mhz. Realize that the HT Link, The CPUNB (or "NB") and the memory frequency all grow in lockstep with the CPU frequency when you overclock with the front side bus like you are doing and must do with a locked multiplier CPU like you have. These other frequencies I mentioned above are all "tuned" to the fsb and that's why they grow with it. You will need to make adjustments to them to keep them from getting too high and causing instability.

Also, please include screenshots of CPU-z tabs "Memory" and "SPD" whenever you attach pics of CPU-z. The "CPU" tab pic doesn't give enough info.

 

[Lyane]

Sorry here's an updated picture with more info.

 

[trents]

Besides the HT Link frequency problem it looks like some of your memory timings may be too aggressive. I suggest manually adjusting them to coincide with JEDEC column #3. The "Memory" tab of CPU-z shows your current memroy frequency and timings. The "SPD" tab shows the manufacturer's recommendations for such at various frequency levels. The XMP-1600 is the "xtended profile" which is kind of the overclocked profile, to answer your earlier question about this.

 

[trents]

I would also suggest bumping your ram voltage from 1.5 to the next smallest increment, say 1.525 or 1.55 and increasing your CPUNB or "NB" to 1.225v.

And 3.5-3.6 ghz is about the limit for hat CPU on air. I have one of those and recently retired it for the one in my sig.

 

[Archer0915]

I would also suggest bumping your ram voltage from 1.5 to the next smallest increment, say 1.525 or 1.55 and increasing your CPUNB or "NB" to 1.225v.

And 3.5-3.6 ghz is about the limit for hat CPU on air. I have one of those and recently retired it for the one in my sig.

Well IDK why but I never had much luck with the 785 chipsets either.

 

[Lyane]

Thanks for all the great tips I'll start with adjusting the HTLink.

I'm looking everywhere in my bios but the only option where it allows me to adjust my HTLink is HTLink Frequency. And no matter what I set it at it goes pass 2000 like it would just ignore my settings.

When I oc it to 3.4ghz, it goes to 2400
When I oc it to 3.5ghz, it goes to 2500

I OC with my bios, it's one of the older asus bios without the AI tweaker so this is what I do.

Advanced > CPU OC set to manual.
Then I get an option saying CPU/HT refernce clock mhz (stock @ 200), so I adjust this to increase my overclockin speed.

here's a pic of what my bios looks like

http://ascii.jp/elem/000/000/483/483130/img.html

Notice that it does say CPU/HT so Im guessin this is why it's increasing my HTLink as well. How do I stop it from increasing the HTLink?

 

[Lyane]

Thanks for all the great tips I'll start with adjusting the HTLink.

I'm looking everywhere in my bios but the only option where it allows me to adjust my HTLink is HTLink Frequency. And no matter what I set it at it goes pass 2000 like it would just ignore my settings.

When I oc it to 3.4ghz, it goes to 2400
When I oc it to 3.5ghz, it goes to 2500

I OC with my bios, it's one of the older asus bios without the AI tweaker so this is what I do.

Advanced > CPU OC set to manual.
Then I get an option saying CPU/HT refernce clock mhz (stock @ 200), so I adjust this to increase my overclockin speed.

here's a pic of what my bios looks like

http://ascii.jp/elem/000/000/483/483130/img.html

Notice that it does say CPU/HT so Im guessin this is why it's increasing my HTLink as well. How do I stop it from increasing the HTLink?

This is crazy, when i set it at 1800 or 2000 it would ignore my settings, when I set it all the way to 200 and I use 8bit linkwidth It actually didn't ignore my settings.

I'm going to play around with it alittle more before I bug you guys again and tell you my results, I'll look into all the things you've suggested, I too thought the problem was with the HTLink being too high i just didn't know it plays such a big role in stability. Thank you so much again for helping me with this.

But first thing's first, how does my Core voltage and NB voltage look?

Core @ 1.5v and NB @ 1.375, I ask it's because this was actually stable at 3.4Ghz like i mentioned in my first post. However you suggested 1.225v for NB, is this sufficient?

 

[keny]

In you're bios screenshot the one that will adjust the ht, will be the one that is labeled "HT link frequency" this should be a multiplier with a "x" value , you have it set on x10 you want to adjust it to x8 to bring it inline.

 

[trents]

"1" is the HT Frequency, not the HT Link frequency. "1" is the man system bus or the "fsb", what AMD calls "HT Reference".

"2" is the HT Link frequency. You need to take it off "Auto". I would leave the HT Link bus width on "Auto".

If you take the HT Link Frequency off of Auto, what do you see? You may see multipliers or you may see a frequency value. If you see a multiplier, you need to adjust it downward from 10x (stock) to 8x. The HT Link frequency is a multiple of fsb. At stock, the fsb is 200 mhz and the HT Link mulitplier is 10x: 200x10+ 2000. If you increase the fsb to say, 240 then the HT Link frequency will be 240x10 or 2400. To lower that you must lower the multiplier.

 

[Lyane]

Yeah sorry for my lack of knowledge on it it's all adjusted now.

Current setup:

FSB@250 (3.5Ghz)
HTlink @2000 mhz
Core Volt @ 1.5v
nb volt @ 1.225 (lowered from 1.35)
dram volt @ 1.515 (next lowest increment like asked)
dram timings (all setup just like JEDEC#3, the one you circled)
cl:9 tRCD:9 ras:9 tRAS:24 tRC:33 CR:1

Gonna run prime95 and stress for 1hour and come back with results.

Thanks guys!!!

 

[Lyane]

The results are much better! ATleast it would run prime95 for over an hour until it crashed, before it would only stay on for no more than 15minutes without load.

This time it stayed on for more than an hour with max load.

What shall I look into next? I'm getting close i think!

 

[keny]

What sort of temps are you getting @ 1.5v vcore while running prime ? At the moment I can't see much wrong,but you cold try lowering you're NB back down to stock and see if that helps as a stab on the dark !

 

[Lyane]

What sort of temps are you getting @ 1.5v vcore while running prime ? At the moment I can't see much wrong,but you cold try lowering you're NB back down to stock and see if that helps as a stab on the dark !

It's around 55c now. (Max load prime95)

I recall seeing the temp around 57c before it crashed so Im guessing it crashed at 58c.

 

[keny]

55c is usually where instability occurs, it may be affecting you're oc at those levels, try it with you're case side off and see if you're temps go down to see if that also helps

 

[Lyane]

55c is usually where instability occurs, it may be affecting you're oc at those levels, try it with you're case side off and see if you're temps go down to see if that also helps

Ok I took off the side panel off for now temperature dropped by 4 degress. It's weird because when I put my hand on the heatsink it's not hot at all it's not even warm, it's just cool like there's no heat going thru it. But it's not freezing cold like it was when I first took it out of the box.

I've included a picture of my current settings after help from everyone.

 

[keny]

It all looks good to me , have you tried lowering you're NB back down to see if it will prime at that (stock 2000)

 

[Lyane]

It all looks good to me , have you tried lowering you're NB back down to see if it will prime at that (stock 2000)

When you say NB I thought you were talkin about NBVoltage which at stock was 1.175, i have it at 1.225 now.

I'm not sure what you meant by stock 2000.

 

[Lyane]

Ahhh Nevermind you mean NB Frequency on the ram hm... I'm not sure I know how to set this in the bios but i'll look for it now.

 

[keny]

CPU/NB frequency in you're bios