Pushing the boundaries?

[Sologuy]

Hi,

I'm trying to raise my BCLK value from its stable 255MHz & have tried raising the following on the mobo in my signature, the ones listed as 'auto' I have not touched yet:

CPU/NB manual voltage = 1.31250

CPU VDDA = 2.62500

DRAM = 1.510 (memtest86+ stable) and stable in Windows.

NB Voltage = 'auto' (1.110v listed as current value)

NB HT voltage = 'auto' (1.20v as current value)

NB 1.8v = 'auto'

I'm not sure what values the board aims for when 'auto' is selected for those options I have listed.

Reading around the traps indicates raising NB voltage to 1.20v is safe with air cooling and can help with high BCLK or FSB values, but raising this to 1.20v doesn't produce any more stability than when left on auto, that is IF I raise the BCLK any higher than its current 255 value. I have my NB frequency and HTT set to sync with the BCLK value, that is "255" across the board (if you know what I mean, so NB frequency becomes 2550 etc..

What other options can I fiddle with to get it stable at say 260MHz? Just to get it set at 2600 NB and subsequently HTT value

Thanks in advance.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Sologuy, when raising the FSB are you leaving the Cpu ratio at 17.5? You may find it easier to drop it to 17 just to see if you can get it stable at 260. If you get stable at say 17x260 and then raise the Cpu ratio back to 17.5 and it is then unstable, your likely culprit is lack of Cpu Voltage. Though, sometimes when really pushing some additional Cpu Nb Voltage is helpful.
Two good reads:
ASUS CHV overclocking guide, higher end board but some of the options in the BIOS are the same and this will tell you what voltages do what.
AMD Fx performance tuning guide. This is a PDF directly from AMD, note page 19 for safe voltages, this is also a helpful guide.

 

[Sologuy]

Sologuy, when raising the FSB are you leaving the Cpu ratio at 17.5? You may find it easier to drop it to 17 just to see if you can get it stable at 260. If you get stable at say 17x260 and then raise the Cpu ratio back to 17.5 and it is then unstable, your likely culprit is lack of Cpu Voltage. Though, sometimes when really pushing some additional Cpu Nb Voltage is helpful.
Two good reads:
ASUS CHV overclocking guide, higher end board but some of the options in the BIOS are the same and this will tell you what voltages do what.
AMD Fx performance tuning guide. This is a PDF directly from AMD, note page 19 for safe voltages, this is also a helpful guide.

Thanks Mandrake4565 for your reply, I'll try changing the multi to 17 and see what happens, just trying to get the system coordinated so BCLK, NB & HTT are aligned and synchronizing, this board seems to love that kind of setup. in other words, its remarkably stable when running all values aligned. Probably just a 'quirk' of this particular mobo with the ram I have. Will take a look at those guides you linked too but I have a concern about the release date of the 'AMD Fx performance tuning guide' as its listed as being released in 2011 and this FX-6300 didn't get released until Oct 2012. I mean, basically its probably all the same but.... well, I think you know what I mean.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Thanks Mandrake4565 for your reply, I'll try changing the multi to 17 and see what happens, just trying to get the system coordinated so BCLK, NB & HTT are aligned and synchronizing, this board seems to love that kind of setup. in other words, its remarkably stable when running all values aligned. Probably just a 'quirk' of this particular mobo with the ram I have. Will take a look at those guides you linked too but I have a concern about the release date of the 'AMD Fx performance tuning guide' as its listed as being released in 2011 and this FX-6300 didn't get released until Oct 2012. I mean, basically its probably all the same but.... well, I think you know what I mean.

The Bulldozer and Vishera architecture are basically the same.

 

[Sologuy]

Tried raising BCLK to 260 and made relevant adjustments to Vcore with 17 multi, boots into Windows fine and can fire up stability testing apps but not stable. From what it sounds like your trying to tell me Mandrake4565, raising Vcore will make BCLK value stable? As far as I know, raising Vcore only makes outright clock speed stable for given GHz or MHz range. eg. 4.5GHz. How is raising Vcore aiding BCLK or FSB value effecting it?, wouldn't some other voltage option directly effect BCLK value apart from just sheer Vcore?

Thanks in advance.

As a side note, the diff between bulldozer & piledriver are clearly indicated from this excerpt via wikipedia:

The changes over Bulldozer are incremental. Piledriver uses the same "module" design. Its main improvements are to branch prediction and FPU/integer scheduling, along with a switch to hard-edge flip-flops to improve power consumption."

"Piledriver includes improvements over the original Bulldozer microarchitecture:

Clustered Multi-Thread
Higher clock rates
Instructions per clock (IPC) improvements
Lower power consumption and temperatures
Turbo Core 3.0
Faster integrated memory controller (IMC)
Fixed hardware divider
Improved branch prediction and prefetching
Improved floating-point and integer scheduling
Support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX)1.1,[8][9] FMA3, FMA4, F16C, BMI1 and TBM
Larger L1 translation lookaside buffers (TLB) and L2 efficiency improvements
Switch to hard-edge flip-flops, allowing a decrease in power consumption
Cyclos resonant clock mesh (RCM) technology[10]
17–220 W thermal design power (TDP)
Video Coding Engine"

So I have my reservations about the accuracy of that OC guide you linked to in regards to piledriver.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Sologuy what I was saying about the Oc was. If you can get stable at 17*260 or 4420 Mhz and then raise the Multiplier to 17.5 or 4550 Mhz and it's not stable, the likely culprit is lack of Cpu voltage. My reasoning for suggesting you drop the multiplier to 17 was. If you tried raising the Fsb to 260 with the multiplier left at 17.5 and found the system unstable, it would be harder to trouble shoot the cause. Note, also should have suggested to drop the Dram divider as well.


As far as what I said about the Bulldozer and Vishera yes the architecture changed slightly, but as far as overclocking them and the considered safe voltages have not.

 

[Johan45]

Tried raising BCLK to 260 and made relevant adjustments to Vcore with 17 multi, boots into Windows fine and can fire up stability testing apps but not stable. From what it sounds like your trying to tell me Mandrake4565, raising Vcore will make BCLK value stable? As far as I know, raising Vcore only makes outright clock speed stable for given GHz or MHz range. eg. 4.5GHz. How is raising Vcore aiding BCLK or FSB value effecting it?, wouldn't some other voltage option directly effect BCLK value apart from just sheer Vcore?

Thanks in advance.

As a side note, the diff between bulldozer & piledriver are clearly indicated from this excerpt via wikipedia:



So I have my reservations about the accuracy of that OC guide you linked to in regards to piledriver.

The BIOS setting you'd be looking for is CPU_PLL whether or not your bios has it is another question. Actually I think it's VDDA on these AMD boards. We have done some experimenting with this in the past. http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/723803-FX-Vishera-series-and-CPU-PLL but results were inconclusive. I have SEEN results on another site where on a Sabertooth the poster was able to stabilize an OC using this voltage up to 2.8 IIRC that when the same set-up was run with VDDA at stock it would fail. This is one of the FEW times I have seen proof it helped. I never mess with it much till I'm going for broke

 

[Sologuy]

Sologuy what I was saying about the Oc was. If you can get stable at 17*260 or 4420 Mhz and then raise the Multiplier to 17.5 or 4550 Mhz and it's not stable, the likely culprit is lack of Cpu voltage. My reasoning for suggesting you drop the multiplier to 17 was. If you tried raising the Fsb to 260 with the multiplier left at 17.5 and found the system unstable, it would be harder to trouble shoot the cause. Note, also should have suggested to drop the Dram divider as well.


As far as what I said about the Bulldozer and Vishera yes the architecture changed slightly, but as far as overclocking them and the considered safe voltages have not.

Thanks, but I"m well aware of increasing the Vcore if cpu clock speed is increased. Droping the Dram divider to lower ram bandwidth would be like underclocking my ram (see signature, its rated @ 2133Mhz) but if I try tightening the timings it could compensate for the drop in bandwidth.. more experimenting required. Apart from that, the ram divider issue could effect raising BCLK value.. again, only experimenting will confirm this.

The BIOS setting you'd be looking for is CPU_PLL whether or not your bios has it is another question. Actually I think it's VDDA on these AMD boards. We have done some experimenting with this in the past. http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/723803-FX-Vishera-series-and-CPU-PLL but results were inconclusive. I have SEEN results on another site where on a Sabertooth the poster was able to stabilize an OC using this voltage up to 2.8 IIRC that when the same set-up was run with VDDA at stock it would fail. This is one of the FEW times I have seen proof it helped. I never mess with it much till I'm going for broke

I recall reading in another post on this forum, a member stating raising VDDA helped him stabilize his BCLK value with FX-6300, but can't recall exactly what mobo he was using atm. I'll check out that other thread you linked too and thanks for your advice. My only concern is that although I use performance air cooling and monitor temps via HWMonitor, don't want to raise this VDDA setting too high for fear of thermal challenges.. but only experimenting will reveal this.

Edit: after reading through those threads, there is no definite answer as to weather or not VDDA effects BCLK values (at least back in late 2012 with those mobo/cpu combos mentioned in those threads) so because mobo vendors updated bioses, this could make VDDA more effective IF any effectiveness at all. On the other hand it could be another one of the tech industry's e-peen marketing BS & try to make 'placebo' effect for OC enthusiasts to see the bios has sophisticated options and try to impress the user... don't know either way... just my opinion.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Sologuy, I feel you are misconstruing my intentions or maybe I am yours. What I gathered from your original post is you're trying to see how far you can push the Fsb. As you may know already when one overclocks using this method they are changing more then the Cpu speed. My intentions when suggesting to drop the multiplier and later the Dram divider was merely to try and eliminate what could cause instability when using this method. So like I mentioned, if you can get the setup stable with it at 17x260 and also if you drop the ram divider. If you then decide to either put the Cpu back at 17.5 on the multi or put the ram divider back up and then it is unstable you'll know which is causing the issue. I wasn't trying to imply that you didn't know if you pushed the cpu speed back up it may need some more voltage. I was just trying to make the point that at least you would have a better idea of what voltage was needed to get stable again.

It can get tricky when one is really starting to push the Fsb because there is more then one component that can be hold one back.

 

[Sologuy]

Thanks Mandrake4565, hey its cool, no offense taken, we are communicating only via forums but anyway... dropping the ram divider down produces barely 1700Mhz ram bandwidth, but yeah I get your drift to isolate what is the issue with being stable at 260 BCLK. When I get time again, I'll put the system in that state and see how we go.. Cheers.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Thanks Mandrake4565, hey its cool, no offense taken, we are communicating only via forums but anyway... dropping the ram divider down produces barely 1700Mhz ram bandwidth, but yeah I get your drift to isolate what is the issue with being stable at 260 BCLK. When I get time again, I'll put the system in that state and see how we go.. Cheers.

Yes without actual emotion it's tough to know where someone is at. As far as Ocing using the FSB, especially when pushing into the unknown. Life can be a lot easier when one removes other possibilities of instability, then adds them back into the Oc.

 

[Sologuy]

Yes without actual emotion it's tough to know where someone is at. As far as Ocing using the FSB, especially when pushing into the unknown. Life can be a lot easier when one removes other possibilities of instability, then adds them back into the Oc.

Thanks, for the money I spent on this chip (AUD$135) approx 2 yrs ago & its overclocking value, is fantastic!

My system is stable for me for what I do on it. Even raising the multi to 18 and a quick bench with CPU-Z bench tool reveals IPC improvements in the order of 15% more than steamroller comparing with the options available in that app. It's highly competitive with i7-3960X in single thread performance, I'll put a screenshot up for proof when I get on that machine later... sure it's at 4.6GHz but its an easy chip to OC anyway..