overclocking the athlon 64 x2 5000+ cpu...are my overclocks good?

[TheAndroidNerd]

so I have a athlon 64 x2 5000+ cpu that I have been playing around with and overclocking carefully...im pushing it to see what the stability limits are, so far this CPU has proved to be very good at overclocking...the stock speed is 2600 Mhz, I have been able to achieve a stable overclock at 3112 Mhz...thats like a 17% overclock which I think is pretty good on air only cooling and not aftermarket either, I have a well ventilated computer case with two 120 mm chassis fans and a few smaller fans that handle the GPU and other components...has anyone else on here tried overclocking this cpu?? I've heard some have had issues at 3ghz with the cpu, but it seems to vary alot, im sure with water cooling this cpu could reach 3.5 ghz easy

still going from 2.6 ghz to 3.1 ghz on air only seems like a pretty good overclock...my temps are:

45° Celsius at idle
57° Celsius at full load using Prime95

im currently running prime96 right now as im typing this at 3.1 ghz, the vcore is slightly volted up by 20/th of a volt to increase stability, also my cpu is currently is 58° Celsius at 100% load and the aux temps on the mb are 32.5° and 37° respectivly...I think these are all good eh? my gpu is also 38° , its a radeon hd 6670 (2gb)

 

[RGone]

Sounds pretty good for stock cooling. Enjoy and have fun if it turns out to be at least a couple of hours Prime 95 stable on blend test mode.

 

[TheAndroidNerd]

core temp reports somewhat idle temps from my cpu

I decided to attach a pic from core temp...hope it helps

 

[peanutbudder]

Not bad you should run cinebench 11.5 @ base clocks then @ overclock. I would like to see what the net gains are from that overclock

 

[TheAndroidNerd]

for sure!

Not bad you should run cinebench 11.5 @ base clocks then @ overclock. I would like to see what the net gains are from that overclock

Hi, so yea i will try that and then post the results...stay posted, im pretty happy with the overclocking and the stability, whats also cool is that im using the utilty that came with this motherboard to overclock my cpu which means i can change everything while windows 7 is running with no issues, like changing the multiplier and fsb speed.

 

[TheAndroidNerd]

here are the cinebench results, stock and oc'd

Not bad you should run cinebench 11.5 @ base clocks then @ overclock. I would like to see what the net gains are from that overclock

so here are the results, i know on the oc'd side it says 2.74ghz, but I AM running at 3.1ghz, I checked with cpu-z and other windows 7 gadgets and they confirm that im running 3.1ghz, not sure why cinebench is confused, but I have a idea its reading the registry under local machine/system...and that only changes on reboot...still the results are obv accurate...tell me what u think?!?!

 

[peanutbudder]

It is a start in the right direction since I don't know a whole lot about AMD cpus' I would try to overclock the northbridge maybe that will increase the scores a wee bit more. Does that platform use ddr or ddr2 ram?

 

[TheAndroidNerd]

It is a start in the right direction since I don't know a whole lot about AMD cpus' I would try to overclock the northbridge maybe that will increase the scores a wee bit more. Does that platform use ddr or ddr2 ram?

its actually a new motherboard I bought less then a week ago, it supports 8 Gb of DDR2 or 8 Gb of DDR3...not at the same time...gonna be buying 8gb of DDR3 later this month.

 

[TheAndroidNerd]

forgot to mention...

sorry i forgot to mention that ive currently got 4 Gb of DDR2, in order to use the 8 Gb of DDR 3, it needs a AM3 cpu, the AM2 one im using will not work.

 

[peanutbudder]

What motherboard do you have? Usually it is always better to set an overclock from the bios because most windows based overclocking utilities are flawed in reporting accurate numbers like temperature, voltage, and clock speeds.

 

[TheAndroidNerd]

I have a ASROCK N68C-GS FX...it will actually take the amd fx-8150 8-core cpu

 

[peanutbudder]

Ok, so after reading the specs of the board a couple of things you should know so you don't damage your new toy. The max rated TDP is a 95w cpu which will not allow you to upgrade to a 8120/8150FX since they are 125w. I mean you could probably do it with zero overclocking because the VRMS and Mofsets are not cooled by a passive heatsink which will cause overheating or failure. If the mofsets go or the voltage regulators then rest assured it will take your ram and cpu with it. This board will allow overclocking but do not push it to hard or it will fail on you I would suggest putting some sort of active cooling on the VRMS like a direct fan.

 

[TheAndroidNerd]

why would the motherboard and the box it came in say explicitly that it supports the fx 8150 8-core cpu?? odd eh? I do have a 40 something mm fan blowing on the motherboard as well as two 120 mm chassis fans and the 120 mm fan in the 500 watt power supply as well as two other 40 something mm chassis fans pulling air from the back of the case...is this good enough?

 

[peanutbudder]

That is fine for your current cpu since it pulls only 65 watts at stock speeds and maybe 70-75 watts with the overclock. It will support a 8120 95w that is a OEM product which means limited supplies and higher cost to you. The best performance/cost ratio would be a Phenom ll X4 955 Denab that is also a OEM cpu but runs only $99.99 on newegg.