New Overclocker Requesting Guidance - Phenom II 920

[Propama]

Hey guys,

I'm rather new to the overclocking scene, which is surprising to me because I've been an avid gamer for over a decade and have been building gaming pcs for friends and guildmates for a few years now. I suppose I've always had a hesitance about tweaking the bios and would rather just purchase an upgrade.

Well, now my budget is a lot tighter and I really can't afford to blow money on upgrades all of the time, so I'm trying to get the most that I can out of my current rig. In anticipation of Guildwars 2 I'm asking for some assistance in hopes of increasing my cpu power, since most games now a days seem to tax the processor pretty heavily.

Prior to making this post I went ahead and updated my bios - so I'm currently using the most recent version. I went ahead and read Dolk's guide as well which has given me some solid insight and I almost went ahead and just tried it myself, but I figured why not reach out for help and ensure I'm going in with the best information possible.

My goal is to try and get my processor speed from 2.8GHz to 3.2GHz (perhaps more if I can swing it).
My plan is to make incremental increases to the FSB frequency while keeping the rest of the frequencies and voltages at stock (with the exception of CPU/NB frequency which I plan to increase within the formula and table that Dolk listed). If I can get to 3.2GHz without having to touch anything else, I'd then like to bump the CPU and CPU/NB voltage just a tad in hopes of yielding higher speeds. I do realize I may need to increase said voltages prior to hitting 3.2GHz, though I shouldn't need to since I have a pretty decent cooler and have seen others hitting similar results without many issues.

I also have some concerns/questions, specifically about everything else that's on my bios screen (http://photobucket.com/propama_bios)
As you can see mostly everything here is on auto. I have the list from Dolk's guide that gives most of the stock voltage values that I can plug in, but there are some uncertainties:

• Should I be concerned with the DRAM frequency, voltage, or timing? If so, should I ensure my DRAM frequency is at 800 or less or should I also be overclocking it to keep up with the CPU and CPU/NB frequencies? (images 2, 3, and 4)
• Should the PCIE frequency be left at 100? (image 2)
• Can the CPU and PCIE Spread Spectrum options be disabled? (image 1)
• I've disabled cool n quiet, but is there anything else on this image that can be disabled/enabled? (image 5)

If anyone has any advice/criticism or potential problems about my plan of action, let me know. I know I'll need to download Prime95 as well in order to do stability tests. If there's anything you think I missed, please feel free to offer that information up.

I'll end with posting some of my CPU-Z and CPUID HW screens as well since that seems to be requested in these type of threads:




Thanks in advance to everyone here, I appreciate you taking the time to help me out!

Propama

 

[Knufire]

Leave PCIe frequency at 100, yes.

Other than that (sorry, not too knowledgeable on the AMD side of things), but the paperclip icon lets you insert attached images in-line instead of all grouped at the end.

You can also use the tag to insert pictures from your Photobucket straight in the post.

Image 5 looks good, C1E and Cool N' Quiet Disabled.

RAM doesn't overclock very much, and doesn't offer major performance differences. Keep it close to rated speeds, it can also be a source of instability if overclocked too high. If need be, you can raise the timings a bit to get it stable at a higher speed (low timings and high speed translate to performance, it's a trade off sort of thing).

 

[trents]

To attach pics, click on Go Advanced at the bottom of any new post window and when the Advanced post window appears click on the little paperclip tool at the top which will load the file browswer/upload tool. The rest will be obvious.

To answer your questions not addressed by Knufire:A
1. My strong suggestion is to lower the ram divider to start with and eliminate that as a possible instability variable as you focus on getting the max overclock out of your CPU. You can always go back and tinker with the ram divider and timings later to try it at the higher frequency.

You may also need to back off on the HT Link frequency but don't hesitate to do that since it will have no material affect on performance. The HT Link in that family of CPUs doesn't like to go much over the stock 2000 mhz. We recommend keeping it between 1800-2000 mhz for the Deneb core CPUs.
2. You can disable the spread spectrum options if you want. I have not found that to make any difference one way or the other. I think that is a dinosaur bios option anyway.
3. If Cool N Quiet is disabled look for something called C1E to disable as well. I'm not sure that was around in the AM2+ days, however. Then go into Windows Control Panel Power Options and configure it to High Performance. That should turn off all the green stuff.

Don't forget that just because your CPU mulitiplier is upwardly locked, it is not downwardly locked. This can come in handy when you want to increase the FSB more but run into a road block because the CPU frequency oveclock is already maxed out. You can back off the multiplier and resume the FSB increases. If you could get your FSB up to 250 mhz that would put your ram back to 800 mzh I think.

You have shown us a pic of HWMonitor but it looks like those are idle temps. That's not particularly helpful unless the cooler is not seated right or the TIM wasn't appled well so that idle temps are unusually high. What I would suggest is before you overclock anything is to run 20 minutes of the Prime95 blend test and check maximum core and CPU socket temps under full load at stock values. Have HWMonitor already open of course before you start Prime. That will give you an idea of how much overclock headroom you have from a temperature perspective. Post back with that pic afterwards.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Welcome to the forums propama. I see you have already done some research, and you are in good hands already as well with the couple guys who have already posted. Nice to see new members that want to do things the "right way".

To just address your exact questions:
- I'd try to keep ram frequency close to its rating and leave ram voltages and timings at stock. If you want to mess with them later, great. Like trents said, first focus on the CPU - a 500MHz increase will be "real". Better ram frequency or timings isn't something you can usually "feel". There is no need to keep up with CPU/CPU-NB frequencies, though increased CPU-NB frequency will give slightly better memory performance (again, not that you can "feel" the way you can with higher CPU clocks).
- I always leave PCIE at 100mhz, unless I'm just trying to get a better benchmark score. It can improve benchmark scores for PCIE based storage or graphics, but it only shows in the numbers - it doesn't improve your experience
- I always disable the spread spectrum options.

 

[Propama]

Thanks for all the info/feedback guys.

As long as I manually set the DRAM frequency and voltage, do I have to change anything to manual on the DRAM timing config screen? (pictured below):



I'll be posting a Prime95 result tonight and if everything is okay, I'll start my overclocking.

 

[Propama]

Here are my temps after about 30 minutes of running Prime95 blend.

 

[trents]

Thanks for all the info/feedback guys.

As long as I manually set the DRAM frequency and voltage, do I have to change anything to manual on the DRAM timing config screen? (pictured below):

View attachment 114172

I'll be posting a Prime95 result tonight and if everything is okay, I'll start my overclocking.

No, you don't have to manually change the DRAM timings if you manually set the frequency and voltage - but you may want to.

 

[trents]

Now, download and install CPU-z. Then post pics of these three tabs: "CPU", "Memory" and "SPD". A standard tool around here that gives us loads of information about your system and bios settings. By the way, your temps are just fine at this point. The CPU socket temp is either TMPIN0 or TMPIN1. Hard to tell which one.

 

[BeepBeep2]

Looks good.
Most early AM2+ Phenom IIs can not pass 3.6-3.8 with modest voltage.

Your temperatures look good though, so it looks like you have some room to play.

I would drop the DRAM speed to 667 5-5-5-15 from 800 5-5-5-15, and try these settings:
CPU Speed: 14x * 240 HT Ref. = 3360
DRAM Speed: 800 MHz (240 * 3.33)
HT Link Multiplier = 9x (240 * 9 = 2140)
CPU-NB Multiplier = 9x (240 * 9 = 2140)

CPU Voltage - 1.425v
CPU-NB Voltage - AUTO

If this works for you in Prime95 "Blend" test for 30 minutes, then lower vcore until it doesn't. Once you reach your minimum vcore, report that vcore here.

 

[Propama]

Here's some cpuz shots before I run the stress test. I'll report back after and we can figure out if I'm able to squeeze a little more out of it.

 

[Propama]

Let's see how many tries this takes:

1. Hit a bsod about 2 mins into the stress testing. Temps were fine (45c). Realized I didn't set the cpu/nb to auto so going to fix and try again.

2. Another bsod about 15 mins into stress test. Lasted longer this time, temps only hit 48c max. Had the cpu/nb set to auto which seemed to help.

Not sure what else to do so will wait for guidance.

 

[trents]

Looks like some of your timings may need adjusting from those latest CPU-z shots.

What are your HWMonitor core temps running now under load? Looks like you have increased your vcore and CPU frequency since the last set of pics.

 

[BeepBeep2]

Yeah, set tRAS to 15 and tRC to 20 or above. tRC by definition must be at least tRAS + tRP. Command Rate should be left at 2T.

What does the BSOD say? Might point us in the right direction as for what to adjust. If you don't remember, or it was different both times, try running WhoCrashed.

 

[Propama]

Temps were at about 48c on crash number 2 after about 15 mins.

Here is the crash info.

On Sat 8/11/2012 4:23:56 AM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini081112-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntkrnlpa.exe (nt+0x22F5F)
Bugcheck code: 0x9C (0x0, 0xFFFFFFFFB834C050, 0xFFFFFFFFB6164000, 0x135)
Error: MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION
file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntkrnlpa.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This bug check indicates that a fatal machine check exception has occurred.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time.


On Sat 8/11/2012 4:23:56 AM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: hal.dll (hal!IoFlushAdapterBuffers+0x483)
Bugcheck code: 0x9C (0x0, 0xFFFFFFFFB834C050, 0xFFFFFFFFB6164000, 0x135)
Error: MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION
file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\hal.dll
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: Hardware Abstraction Layer DLL
Bug check description: This bug check indicates that a fatal machine check exception has occurred.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time.


On Sat 8/11/2012 2:37:12 AM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini081012-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntkrnlpa.exe (nt+0x22F5F)
Bugcheck code: 0x9C (0x0, 0xFFFFFFFFB834C050, 0xFFFFFFFFB22A4000, 0x175)
Error: MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION
file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntkrnlpa.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This bug check indicates that a fatal machine check exception has occurred.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time.

 

[trents]

Work with those memory timings like we suggested. Give the vcore another boost as your temps show you have some headroom to do that. I would also give the CPUNB a small voltage bump and the ram too, the latter maybe +.025.

 

[BeepBeep2]

+1 to trents.

Instead of leaving CPU-NB on AUTO, lets try pushing it +.025 over stock. Same with DRAM, over what you are running currently for DRAM voltage.

If that doesn't work, increase vcore by a small amount. (like +.01)

 

[Propama]

Bumped the vcore to 1.437, cpu/nb to 1.2, dram to 1.83 and made the timing adjustments.

Made it 15 minutes on Prime95 this time until I hit a bsod. Max core temp was 48c and max socket temp was 47c.

Cpuz and crash log pictured below:

 

[BeepBeep2]

Leave CPU-NB voltage where it is and increase vcore to 1.45v.
If you can make it at least 30 minutes, then good.

If not, then revert the vcore adjustments and set CPU-NB voltage to 1.25v and DRAM voltage to 1.875v.

OH, and I would probably replace that PSU sometime in the future too. Corsair CX600 or GS600 would work, even. Reason being is the amount of ripple and noise FSP PSUs produce. ie. The power isn't exactly clean. However I don't think it will just blow up one day, so you are good there. Google if you need more info, it's 3:30 AM here, time for ZzZzZzzzz's.

 

[Propama]

Yea, I've been using this psu since '05, probably needs replaced.

 

[Propama]

So a vcore at 1.45 seems to be the ticket for me. Approaching the 1 hour mark and still going strong.



Thanks everyone, especially trents and beepbeep2 for your insight and helping me overclock. I'm hoping to upgrade the cpu and mobo in a few months, but a psu might be a doable and sound upgrade in the immediate future.