Hiya, I'm interested in overclocking my AMD Phenom 960t Black Edition and am wondering on what a perfect, and optimal overclock for gaming performance would be.
My tech specs are as follows:
AMD Phenom 960t BE (3.0GHz)
Sapphire Radeon 7850 OC Edition (2GB)
12GB Corsair DDR3 RAM
XFX Pro 550w PSU
MSI 870a-G54 Motherboard
I'm wondering what the highest OC achievable is on this system, and what would be the best for gaming at. This is slightly due to the fact that I think my CPU is bottlenecking my Graphics card, I seem to be pulling on average 40fps in most games on high, which doesn't make sense to me. Unless that is what I should be getting.
I'm relatively new to Overclocking, I've fiddled around with AMD Overdrive just because I found it easier to use and less scary looking than the bios
Thanks in advance!
well... overclocking is mostly about trial and error. there is no way to guess what types of overclocks your cpu will achieve and what settings you'll need to set to make it happen.
So...
my answer comes in 2 parts.
1) educate yourself... this thread was invaluable for me to learn how the PhII overclocks
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596023
not many better guides out there. this will give you a place to start...
2) trial and error. you're gonna have to try yourself, play with the settings, and refer back to that guide as you learn more about how your system responds to the overclocking.
some baselines though to remember.
1) the PhII shouldn't ever be over 55C... though there is some debate on this point generally speaking from 55C-62C the PhII starts to have errors, blue screen crashes and lockups... over 62C you risk damaging your cpu. So when you stress test the cpu (using prime95, or some other stress test to make sure it's a stable overclock), keep a keen eye on the temps.
2) Generally speaking, you want to only play with Voltages when the system becomes unstable. overvoltage can be as harmful as undervolting.
3) take it slow. small overclocks, small steps. make sure it's stable then take it the next step.
4) there will come a point where small bumps in voltages will no longer work for stabilizing the system with your progressively higher overclocks. At that point you'll generally find voltages will need to increase nearly exponentially to get the next "step" in your overclock and stabilize the system. once this happens you're near the end of the line for your overclocking, unless you have a badass cpu cooler. and even then there will be a limit to how far you can take it (as increased voltages will mean increased temps)
5) don't forget your ram. there will probably come a point where, though temps are fine and voltages aren't really being played with much, your overclock will seem to hit a wall. It stumped me when this happened... though I knew it was the ram that was unstable from the BSOD messages i was getting, I couldn't figure out the problem. Ram settings matter... as do voltages to your ram. from time to time in your overclocking you might need to play with the ram's timing/voltages/speed to stabilize the system.
6) the types of crashes you have can tell you something, in my experience...
-Freezes/Black screens = not enough voltage to the cpu, same with reboots with no bsod or programs crashing to the desktop
-blue screens = ram issues (either ram instability, or not a fast enough HT/NB setting or voltages or something)
*understand this is "generally speaking"...
To the forum twofatslugs. 
