Hi.
After a lot of searching for a best-bang-pr-buck setup, the AMD X4 960 paired with Asus M5A99X Evo and 8GB of Kingston 1600 RAM are now in my possession.
My previous build was based on a Intel E8400, where all you had to do was to increase the FSB to get a performance jump. Overclocking my new build is something I haven't entirely wrapped my head around.. Yet..
I read Dolk's AMD OC guide, but the information was a little bit too general to be of any assistance to an idiot such as myself.
Bottomline; are there anyone out there who has done some experimenting with OC'ing the 960T utilizing
only 4-cores? If you have any good OC settings to share, please feel free to do so.
I'll be one greatful sûcker. We welcome any kind of setup, both on the hardware and bios setting sides.
Primary use of this computer is gaming, so I don't really care about the core unlock.
The current cooler used in my rig is a Thermaltake Blue Orb II, a pretty solid aftermarket CPU cooler. Just in case you were wondering.
I'm planning to try out two different types of stock coolers as well.
Happy to be a part of the community! (^^)v
A sweet spot for me:
AMD Phenom II x4 960T BE/Boxed edition w/Zosma core.
ASRock 770DE+
XFX/ATI 5770 GPU
RAID CARD HIGHPOINT|ROCKET 620-OEM
Samsung 720 SSD series drives
8gb Gskill DDR2 1066 in dual channel mode (Unganged).
Stock AMD cooler that came in the box.
Windows 7/64 Home Edition
Base Clock: 220 (I'm able to go as high as 240 before it starts crashing, but performance gain doesn't seem to be worth stressing the hardware, so I drop back to 220 for an everyday setting).
PCIE: Stock @ 100 (I haven't played with this yet)
Multiplier: 16x
CPU Voltage: 1.300
HT & NB @ 10x (That is a the 2000 setting but by rasing the base clock it pushes it to around 2200).
NB Voltage 1.125
Memory 2.14v @ 5:5:5:15 (This set of memory seems to be my finicky point at getting stable overclocks. This memory likes the voltage...too low and I get crashes after about 20 minutes of Prime 95. Push up the memory voltage and purrs right along).
I start with the memory clocked at 400mhz. Raising the base clock drives this up some, but still well under the memory's rated speeds. I haven't messed with trying to 'overclock' this memory, as my understanding is that with the AMD platform it doesn't offer any performance gains to mess with it anyway?
I do keep Cool and Quiet enabled, so the processor steps up and down as needed.
I leave Turbo Mode enabled, and if my math is correct this does get used, as CPU-Z shows the processor running a little faster than I calculate it should be based on the base clock/multiplier settings I have.
I also run SATA III SSD drives over a cheap 10 dollar PCIE version 2 card (the native SATA stuff on this board is SATA II)...to me SATA III with SSD (or some other high performance hard drive) is the biggest performance booster for the money of just about anything you can spend money on for a PC these days. While they seem a bit pricey, I was delighted to learn how much STUFF comes with the typical SSD drive these days. I don't try to move/disable the page file and all that OCD stuff to prolong the life of the drive (speed is why I got the thing in the first place, and it'll still probably outlive most mechanical hard drives out there). I.E. The Samsung comes with a Batman game to to me is worth at least $100 (It's been a really fun well crafted game). It also comes with Norton Ghost. So at the end of the day you get alot of nice stuff for the money. I figure when they start offering OEM versions of the drives without all the extra brackets, cables, and software and stuff bundled in fancy packaging, the prices will go way down!
This is a low stress OC that is very stable for me on 4 cores. It runs at around 3.5ghz overall this way and does well with gaming (more GPU intensive anyway, offering a slight improvement over stock settings benchmark wise, but an overall 'smoother feel' for the few games I run. ON the stock cooling temps max out around 60C with extended Prime 95 stress. In reality, it usually runs under 50C with typical usage for me.
I'm not able to unlock any cores with this motherboard (or at least I have not figured out how). I can get 6 cores to show up by enabling AAC but AAC itself will only address 4 of them. It locks up trying to boot windows with AAC enabled in any way.
I can easily knock up the main multiplier and run it all stable between 3700 and 4ghz if I add more voltage across the board (for some reason memory voltage is the biggie for me, but any multiplier over 17.5x and I have to give everything at least a half a volt more juice), but the performance gains aren't really huge for daily use, and it does start getting pretty hot on the stock cooling, so why stress it?
Bottom line for me...on a DDR2 based setup...
The little extra boost to the base clock (which adds 200mhz to HT and NB and around 500mzh to the processor seems to give games a little smoother feel. For what I use my PC for every day...it's not really noticeable between running on the stock 16x multiplier and attempting to push it up past the 3.5ish ghz mark. I suppose if I zipped lots of stuff, or worked with intense video/graphics compression I might feel a difference...but for what I do, just giving the base clock a slight boost and keeping everything at stock settings (or even undervolting them a bit for a cooler/quieter running rig) seems to be the sweetest spot for me
On trying to OC memory...or even to keep tweaking in order to run it at 1066, I haven't piddled with this just yet. Is it worth the bother? I read somewhere that pushing the memory past 400mhz doesn't offer any performance increase on any AMD processor, and that the only reason to mess with memory clocks at all is to get timing right for stability. Is this true?
And there ya have my experience with the 960T BE. I'm by no means a pro OCer. Just someone who has the kit and gave it a try.
Credo
And might have to get a new CPU. Which is sad, cause it seems to unlock into a 6 core on the Gigabyte mobo. Can't say for sure though, I can't get into Windows to stresstest it.
, thanks for all the great tips and hints. I'll won't give up the struggle for a OC'd quadcore CPU just yet. 
