New to overclocking: Have some questions about my 6300

[RGone]

You can crossfire them but it will only act as two 7850s in crossfire since it drops to the speed of the lesser card and I don't think Crossfire or SLi adds the video ram together either. Not sure but think that is what it does about the ram.

 

[ssjwizard]

Memory is in parallel limited to lowest limit, GPU speeds are equal, all cores are active on both cards. This would be slightly faster than 7850s in CF but not by much.

 

[Wipeout]

I was thinking about upgrading the video card as well. But everything is still pretty expensive when it comes to something better than the 7850. I can still easily get 50-60fps on Battlefield 3 on ultra settings at 2560x1440, with MSAA set to 0. If MSAA is set to x4 (like it is by default on "ultra") then my FPS will lower to about 35-42 fps, so I just leave that option turned off, I dont really notice a difference anyways.

What about running 2 7850's on crossfire? Would that alleviate the problem, or at least make the games run a bit better? Or do I need something bigger than 7850 all together?

Its funny how people get set in there ways.I always went the evga gtx route,but amd has some kick *** cards.I always wanted to run dual cards,but at what expense.Good psu,the key here, hx series vs tx series,concerning Corsair.High end mobo ect...I'm getting a 660Ti,have the 560Ti,but this should handle Skyrim on Ultra, with high textures,much better than my 560, without losing the eye candy.I wish I had the budget,but still very happy with the latter! Actually,I do,currently sold some pc stuff through Amazon,and tax return so,I'm ready to build another fx 6300 gaming build,and have 2 good gaming builds vs 1 very expensive build.

 

[Ben62884]

Ended up getting the gigabyte 7950. Only had 10 minutes to play with it so far but it is definitely a decent upgrade. Now just waiting on the gigabyte ud3 to arrive on Wednesday

 

[Wipeout]

Ended up getting the gigabyte 7950. Only had 10 minutes to play with it so far but it is definitely a decent upgrade. Now just waiting on the gigabyte ud3 to arrive on Wednesday

That's a nice upgrade! That should keep you happy!

The main reason I wanted to build again..

1.An excuse to get another FX 6300!

2.Having a spare video card ,and 8 gigs of back-up ram makes my upgrade very cost effective! It will be nice not to run my main vc 24/7 like I always have

 

[RGone]

Okay this list is from someone who has helped many in this forum and has owned at least one UD3 mobo and now has a Sabertooth 990FX R2.0.

I would say that my list of approved AMD mobos In order would be
"ssjwizard" and "Anonaru" (who sells systems to his customers) are two that may know more about the UD3's than anyone in this forum section.

Take it easy and baseline that mobo and post up the 3 CPUz's and HWMonitor so that when they see it they might know what is going on.
RGone...

 

[ssjwizard]

Yes I have used all 3 of the Gigabyte UD3 boards(below Rev3). I had a 990Xa-UD3 Rev 1.0, 990FXa-UD3 Rev 1.0 and 1.1, and I helped a friend with a 970a-UD3 Rev 1.1 a few months back. The UD3 boards are not spectacular but they give you the fucntionality of a high end board without all the fluffy features all at the price of an entry level mobo.

 

[Wipeout]

I am currently using the GA-970A-UD3/rev 1.2.I have 2 of this version,and a 1.1version. I flashed the bios to F7 before installing the 6300 using latest board,but I have one question? Do the 990 chip sets work better vs 970 chip sets,specifically,using fx cpu's for comparison? I have no problems on current board,but then again, I have nothing to compare.

 

[ssjwizard]

The main difference between 970 and 990FX is the total number of PCI-e lanes available. The other thing is due to price points most 990FX will come equipped with slightly nicer components alot of times.

In your case running a single GPU + and FX chip there is pretty much no difference between the 990FXa-UD3 and the 970A-UD3. If you were going to upgrade I would be inclined to point you towards an even higher level motherboard.

 

[Wipeout]

Thanks for the information.I only run 1 vc,but I see your point,that would be the next step up in a ud3 board.This board looks sweet http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514,and would fit my black and red theme.Is it true,the nb runs hot on these boards? The 970 uses plastic pins to hold nb hs.The 970 is a cheaper board,but temps don't seem to be affected.What did you have in mind? The most I ever spent on a mb is 110.00 dollars lol.The 970 has been my lucky board,so that's why I bought it,3 times over.While were on that subject,why doesn't amd have boards with higher power phases.The highest I've seen is 8+2,which seems to be the norm.I would like a new board for my 660Ti,which I plan on getting together.

I tried to oc @ 4.5g on 1.35v vs 1.37v,and it would not pass prime 95.One of the cores kept dropping out.I backed it down to 4.4g @ 1.35v,and ran stability test in amd overdrive for 2 hours.It seems to work fine @ that oc.My goal was to get highest clock,but keep temp under 50C.

 

[Ben62884]

so wait, now you're saying that the 970 board isn't even that inferior to the 990 FX? and they are practically the same? I thought the whole reason I was upgrading was because it was a much better board than what I currently have, and the board I currently have is a asrock 970.

 

[RGone]

so wait, now you're saying that the 970 board isn't even that inferior to the 990 FX? and they are practically the same? I thought the whole reason I was upgrading was because it was a much better board than what I currently have, and the board I currently have is a asrock 970.

Actually Ben62884 part of the problem is another user has gotten into your thread and walked all around in it, instead of starting his own. This is what the 5th page (edit 6th page) of this thread and you have not done most of the question asking and posting. Others have.

So to your quote above, I would say this as it is how I actually feel and spend my much lesser monies today than just back in 2010.

MOBO: ASRock 970 Extreme3 in your signature is not nearly the board for overclocking that this board is >> GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128519

Now I cannot remember for sure if that Giga board is the one you upgraded to but if you did you are ahead of your current board.

I have a personal opionion that will not be the same as others, but I believe the 990FX chipsets boards would be better than the 970 chipset boards in construction because they must carry more PCI-e lanes and generally have more sata ports and bells and whistles that we may not need but we 'get' in order to move to a good board that happens to be a 990FX chipset board that is most generally more performance oriented. In general the 990FX chipset boards from just about any motherboard manufacturer just look more polished that the 970 chipset motherboards. Just take a look at the pictures of the mobos.

Now you go compare these two Asrock motherboards. One a 990FX mobo and the other a very freeken popular Asrock 970 board. Look at the VRM layout and the number of VRM phases.

ASRock 990FX Extreme4 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157266

ASRock 970 EXTREME3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157280
Asrock had a better board than the Asrock one you bought. But everyone said oh you don't need 990FX because you are not going Crossfire or SLi or some other reason and the price. Oh well, you got what you got. Everything is fine until the bug to run the parts and pieces out of spec AKA overclocking enters the picture.

Many cheap mobos would do pretty good when fitted with Pre-Bulldozer and PileDriver, FX-type cpus that draw a ton of power thru the VRM circuits and everything else on the mobo and put out probably twice the heat of an overclocked 965BE @ 4.1Ghz. But things have changed. And dramatically so when wanting to REALLY overclock a new style AMD FX-series processor.

But again things have changed. The old just let me get bye with this $90.00 motherboard so I can buy a $250.00 video card are not playing so well in the audience as we see them come in here everyday now wanting to clock a six or eight core FX processor with a cheaply constructed motherboard that will run the processor at stock and has adjustments in bios to make it GO faster but not enough brawn to back it up. And no motherboard maker warrants overclocking so the legwork and weeding out of the junk is even more important than ever today.

You look around in this forum section and look at what the fast boys are running. You see a trend? I do. I know them. Most are running a $230.00 Asus mobo. You got to have that to run fast more easily? Nope, not really after I have put this single example of the ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157267 through a testing of an FX-6300 pushed faster than most in this forum section will ever push one since it took a major ton of Vcore to run over 5.0Ghz. But the point is that Asrock board was for sale when you bought the cheap 970 Asrock board and got a board that does not well support your overclocking endeavors.

I know I ran on far too long, but I see this same scenario of mobo choice and FX processor and ADD overclocking just bite the user and bite the user. Good luck to you.
RGone...

EDIT:
So the Asrock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional is out of stock now; but it will not be forever. Wonder if my little min-test had anything to do with it selling out at the Egg? If it did they owe me a board since this one is borrowed.
END EDIT.

 

[ssjwizard]

so wait, now you're saying that the 970 board isn't even that inferior to the 990 FX? and they are practically the same? I thought the whole reason I was upgrading was because it was a much better board than what I currently have, and the board I currently have is a asrock 970.

First let me apologize for going off topic in your thread, second I agree with what RGone has posted here.

We were discussing a different 970 motherboard, but in terms of chipset alone there is not alot of difference between 970 and 990FX. The real issue is how well equipped the motherboard is. All of the Asrock motherboards in the 900 series except for the fatal1ty are poorly equipped.

The other user was discussing the change from the 970A-UD3 to the 990FX-UD3, which is not a major upgrade as both boards use nearly identical parts top to bottom. Similarly the Asrock 970 and the 990FX extreme 3 are nearly identical outside of the chipset.

 

[TechJunky]

Ben, good choice on the UD3. I am using the same board and have experienced great results. The bios was a little funky, but once you figure it out she clocks that 6300 real well.

Hope you get it straightened out.

 

[Ben62884]

So I just got my new Gigabyte 990FX UD3 motherboad installed. Now onto the overclocking process. I was looking at the BIOS and it has some features im not familiar with since they werent on myother board. Its got an option to "unlock" the cpu. I tried messing with the multiplier but it wouldnt let me actually do anything with that option, when i pressed enter it didnt do anything. Do I need to unlock the cpu before its able to start overclocking? Some help would be appreciated on where to get started on this board. I know most of the features i need to diable, such as the turbo, cool n quiet, c1e, etc.. Are there any other ones that need to be disabled as well?

 

[trents]

"Unlocking the CPU" probably refers to unlocking processing cores on those CPUs for instance, that are sold with as tri cores but really have a hidden fourth core or sold as quad cores but have two hidden, locked cores thay sometimes are viable.

 

[Ben62884]

"Unlocking the CPU" probably refers to unlocking processing cores on those CPUs for instance, that are sold with as tri cores but really have a hidden fourth core or sold as quad cores but have two hidden, locked cores thay sometimes are viable.

Howcome I'm not able to control the CPU multiplier or anything like that? I can't even turn the multiplier setting from "Auto" to Manual... Is there an option I need to change before I can manually set the multiplier, voltage, etc.?? Really need some help, as I would like to get the chance to get this done tonight, because its the only free time I have this week :/

 

[trents]

Generally, there is an item that appears right at the top of the overclocking section in bios that must be changed from Auto to Manual before any of the other controls can be accessed. Typically, it's called "OC Genie" or OC Wizard" or something like that. If you could take a digital camera pic of the OC section of your bios and upload it, we could probably spot it for you.

 

[Ben62884]

I found it. Didnt have any weird option like that. Instead of pressing Enter on it like everyhing else in the BIOS, I had to press PAGE UP/DWN in order to change the setting. Weird thing is, I disabled all the "green" stuff, and upped the multiplier to 20.5 (4.3ghz) and left the voltage at stock.. it failed p95 by having a core drop out. So I bumped the vcore by +.25 and its able to run prime95, but the multiplier keeps dropping from 20.5x to 15x during the stress test, and the voltage seems to be dropping a bit too. I have LLC setting at "Extreme" thinking that would alleviate the vdroop... Any suggestions?

 

[trents]

Most likely, your multiplier and voltages drop under load because the motherboard is exceeding the power draw envelope and it is protecting itself. Did you disable APM in bios? Have you checked Package and CPU (socket) temps under load?