Overclocking Phenom X3 8750 2.4GHZ

[AMDUser77]

Ok, I know this is an old processor but I recently got in to overclocking and am trying to get the most I can out of this thing. I managed to get a stable 2.7GHz out of it but have read of about 3GHZ on the webs. Mine was higher than a few I have seen though. I have a few questions though. I was wondering if I could could I get anymore out of it?

The only things I tweaked were the CPU FSB, CPU voltage, HT Ratio, and DRAM Voltage. My board has the capability of changing Mem Ratio but when I do, it changes in bios but not in CPUID CPU-Z. It even shows the new frequency as I go through the ratios in bios. Why is this? Also, should I be changing NB, HT, or any other voltages? When is a good time to change those numbers?

I also tried lowering the multiplier (mine is locked on the upside) and then increasing the cpu FSB because I have read that it is easier to achieve 10*270=2700 rather than 12*225=2700 and thought I could get more out of it this way. Any higher than a multiplier at 11 and fsb of 225 and the system boots but seems to randomly blue screen to "clock interrupt, blah blah blah, on sec processor errors;" this on little to no load as opposed to loads from prime95 or gaming where it will run fine. Highest temps I have seen are 42C on full load and around 21-23C on idle.

Here is my system:

Phenom II x3 Phenom 8750 2.4GHz overclocked to 2.70GHz
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus Heatsink and Fan
MSI K9A2 Neo-F Motherboard
G Skill 4GB DDR2800 RAM
PNY GTX460 1GB 256bit XLR8 OC
Toolless interior Cooler Master Cavalier CAV-T03-UW midtower case and 600W Cooler Master eXtreme Power P.S.
3 HDDs, a SATA 500GB for Win 7 ultimate install. drive, SATA 1tb for Storage, and a 200GB PATA downloading/uploading drive
22X Lite-On DVDR+-DL
LG w2343tv 23in 1920x1080 LCD
Creative 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System

Current overclocking settings:

Any input or help anyone can offer is greatly appreciated!

P.S. I also managed to overclock my HTPC's old Athlon X2 4200 2.2GHz to 2.915GHz with a Zalman cnps8000a cooler chosen because of the low profile for the ANTEC NSK2480 case. Just 4 s***s and giggles.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

The only things I tweaked were the CPU FSB, CPU voltage, HT Ratio, and DRAM Voltage. My board has the capability of changing Mem Ratio but when I do, it changes in bios but not in CPUID CPU-Z. It even shows the new frequency as I go through the ratios in bios. Why is this? Also, should I be changing NB, HT, or any other voltages? When is a good time to change those numbers?

In my opinion, only raise them if you have to. i.e., if you run into stability issues raise the voltage on one of them one notch (until you find which component is running into stability issues, then lower the others to stock voltages and see if that is stable, if not repeat until you find what settings are stable) until you are stable again. I just wouldn't recommend going beyond the max safe voltage for your processor for instance, as you may fry your chip if you go too high.

Personally, I don't like raising my voltages unless I have to. Theoretically, the less voltage I'm running through a component the less its lifespan will be reduced and the longer it will last.

 

[AMDUser77]

Thanks Tweaker for your reply. I guess I will stay where I am at for now, unless anyone else has anything to add. I was just wondering if I changed some of these other settings if it would allow me to go higher. I don't see a lot of people changing the ones I mentioned like the north bridge or ht voltage but I am curious as to what type of stability issues these might address as well.

I have another question, the HyperTransport frequency stat on my motherboard is 2600MHz and the original cpuid showed before overclocking was 1800MHz. Does this mean that I could have let it rise with the increase in cpu fsb from the 1800MHz it was originally at to 2025MHz instead? By this, I mean as long as the overclock doesn't push it past 2600MHz would it be stable? If I understand correctly, dropping the HT Ratio to keep it as close to the original is part of standard overclocking method. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

 

[trents]

I had that same CPU running at 3.0 ghz on 1.485 vcore with a lapped TRUE cooler using a 780G board. You will need to bump up the vcore to get much more out of it than you have it presently. You will also want to bump up your NB (actually, CPUNB) voltage about two small increments over the default stock setting (don't exceed 1.3v) and let the NB speed increase to somewhere between 2000 and 2400. Keep the HT Link speed between 1600 and 2000. Give your ram one small bump in voltage over stock.

You have plenty of room to increase voltage from a cooling standpoint.

Your biggest issue now is the memory divider problem . . . unless your processor has an unlocked multiplier. Is it the black edition CPU?

 

[AMDUser77]

Thanks for replying trents. No, its not a black edition so the multiplier is locked when trying to increase it, but it will go down. I was nervous about going any higher on the core voltage, but if I can stay within its rated limits, I'll give it a shot. BTW, what is the deal with the memory divider not changing the DRAM?

 

[trents]

If you're not willing to exceed the factory voltage rating on our cpu vcore, you won't get much overclock. As long as your core temps don't exceed mid 50s C under load there isn't a lot of risk of damaging the CPU. They have thermal shutdown controls built into them anyway these days.

Not sure what the memory divider issue is about unless its a bios bug. Do you have the latest bios installed?

 

[AMDUser77]

Right now I bumped the cpu fsb to 235 and vcore to 1.45, there was no in between 1.408 and 1.45, and the nb voltage to 1.25. So far prime965 has been running 21 min or so and no problems. Temps are at max 42C, so I am about to bump up to 240 on fsb and go from there. If I understand correctly, even if the temps are low, doesn't raising the voltages shorten the lifespan of the part?

As for the bios, I had thought of updating it but I couldn't find a 64bit update for win 7 on MSI's site. They just had the 32 bit update. I didn't realize there was a 32bit version of win 7 but oh well. Wait, I just figured out that was their live update thingy and I just found the flash utility and bios update file. Let's see how it goes.

EDIT: The flash utility is also 32bit only. Darn it. Well back to the bump I just mentioned above.

 

[trents]

Since your ram is only rated at DDR2 800 you will soon run into stability problems with that component as you increase the fsb. To help with that, you can loosen ram timings and increase the vdimm. Show us some more screen shots. This time, include the "SPD" tab of CPU-z.

Yes, increasing vcore will shorten the lifespan of the CPU even with good temps. But do you plan to use the CPU for more than 5 years? Probably not. Most likely you will have upgraded long before that.

Concerning the bios flash utility being 32-bit, that's not a problem if you do it it from a command prompt in DOS since that would be a 32-bit OS. You would need to create a bootable DOS floppy disk or a bootable USB flash drive, however. Are you familiar with DOS? It was before Windows.

 

[AMDUser77]

Here is the screenshot for the spd tab. Same stats for slot #2 of course.

Also, I do upgrade probably every couple of years. The old parts usually get hand-me-downed to the wife or the htpc. She is actually using an athlon 64 3400. lol. So yeah I probably will upgrade again here shortly. I have been secretly looking at the X4 965, a new mb with core unlocker, and 8gb of RAM.

As for the floppy or flash drive and dos, I am familiar with dos to an extent and I think I may have an old floppy drive and even a start up disk from an old operating system like winme or something that I could use temporarily to either run the installation or copy the files to a flash drive. This will possibly have to wait a couple days though since the wife's birthday is this weekend and she took off work for today. But I will give it a go and see what happens. I didn't have the memory problem with the htpc and 2gb of the same type of RAM, so maybe the bios update will fix it.

EDIT: Found some time to flash the bios. Went very smoothly. I am now able to change the ratio on the RAM. Check below. I should now be able to get more out of this as anything else I had tried to do over the 12x multi with 225 was unstable before. For the moment I am assuming that was because of the dram freq. That will have to wait for a day or so.

 

[trents]

Glad the flash worked out. That should open some overclocking doors.

 

[AMDUser77]

With the bios update a few things have changed. I now see some features that were not there before. I can control the nb ratio and volatge, mem ratio now works properly, and a few other things. However, No matter what I do, I can't seem to get stable over 235MHz on the cpu fsb.

What I did is lowered the HT and NB to x7 and x8 respectively, lowered the mem ratio to 1:1.66, and left the ht, nb, and mem voltages the same as they were on my last stable oc of 225 on the cpu. I did that since they (not voltages) were now all lower than what they were at my stable 225MHz and could I now raise the cpu fsb even further without having to change anymore voltages other than the vcore at a time. It made it simpler keeping track of everything. I didn't do this last night and had absolutely no luck. Today, I got to only 240MHz before stability went to hell. I tried raising vcore to 1.472v, which was in the red in my bios and freaked me out a little, and it seemed to get worse... no boot at all. So I went back to the last stable cpu fsb of 235, vcore of 1.435v, mem ratio of 1:1.66, mem voltage of 1.9v, and then raised ht ratio to 8 and nb ratio to 9. Prime95 ran good for about an hour or so before I stopped it. I may do more time on it later. I think I may have hit a wall here and just got a processor that just made AMDs standards for a Phenom 8750 and I won't be able to take it any higher than 2.82GHz. Still, that is not bad I guess.

However, what do you think of my method in the 3rd paragraph of my first post in this thread? I read that it was easier to achieve a higher overclock that way with a higher fsb and lower multiplier. That wasn't possible for me before with the bios issues. But what do you think of it now as an overclocking method for me since my ratios are working properly?

Current CPUID screens:

Update: I left to go out to eat for a couple of hours and came home to a bsod. Another "clock interrupt was not received a secondary processor" message appeared like I originally mentioned in that 3rd paragraph in my first post. Again, this was with no load as opposed to prime95 or anything else running. Is it weird that it is happening during idle state? So for now I have dropped cpu fsb a point and will probably have to do so again later. I assume this message is related to the processor itself not operating properly at the higher overclock and not to any other setting other than the cpu fsb. Does this reinforce my statement above that I am hitting a wall here?

 

[AMDUser77]

Googled "clock interrupt was not received a secondary processor" and believe I have the same problem... a bad core meaning a bad overclocking cpu. Not usre what the exchange policy is for amd under my warranty, i have had the thing for 2 years I guess now. I will have to look into this later.