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New member, and my first question

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SketchyD

New Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2015
So I just typed all this out and my computer wigged and I lost it.

Anyway, Hi I'm a new member. I'm also rather new to overclocking. I've been familiar with the principle for some time, but never done it myself. I built my computer a little over 2 years ago, and have done some minor updates in recent months. I started trying to overclock for better Arma 3 Epoch performance. I've done a lot of reading, and watched many videos, but I've never been a good textbook student. I prefer to do, and be involved. So I thought it high time I got involved with some people with experience, and ask some questions specific to my case.

A few months ago I got an SSD, followed by a hand-me-down 7850 GPU (replacing my 6850). A couple weeks ago, I decided I should upgade the stock CPU cooler that I've been running for 2+years. When I went to my friend's to install it, he dug out an unused rig he had, which he had bought, added the 7850 to, and then discarded because he didn't like it (primarily because of MSi microATX he didn't like, and he wanted to build from scratch). In addition to a new cooler, my setup got a new case (better cooling, and cable management), more RAM, and an FX-8120, over a 6100. Our "8>6" mentality behind that move was based on what we've learned and experienced with Arma: that while it's a notoriously bad performer, it's very CPU intensive, and more should be better.

Well since then, I've been trying to overclock this 8120. The more reading I've been reading, and watching, here and elsewhere, it seems like this may have been the wrong move. It appears my mobo may not be able to handle an 8-core.

My rig, as it stands now:
AMD FX-8120 with CoolerMaster Hyper T4
ASRock 970 Extreme3 (ver. 1.1 I believe) with UEFI BIOS ver.1.8
PowerColor 7850
G.Skill Ripjaws (2x4GB) 1600
G.Skill (also Ripjaws I think) (2x8GB) 1600
Antec EarthWatts series EA-750
Samsung 840 pro 256
Windows 7 Home Premium
all wrapped in a CyberPowerPC case that I'm not particularly fond of.

I've been attempting to get a pretty basic overclock wtih this, but I'm having difficulty getting stable at even 4.0GHz. Stress testing with Prime95 hasn't yielded any failed workers, however the closest to stable i got, was resulting in higher temps than I felt necessary, and lower voltage was resulting in Windows failures, or complete hardware crashes. I saw this guy a few times for the first time in years.
blue-screen-of-death-reaper-costume.jpg

I've read that this mobo may not be up to the task of an 8-core CPU, and all the tutorials I've found for this mobo, seem to use 6-cores. I feel like the likely culprit for my poor results is the 8120. I got frustrated, since over the past week Windows has had to recover itself a few times, so I decided to reinstall yesterday. Doing drivers today, as I type this. (I think that's what caused my loss of the first draft of this post :bang head ).

We donated the remainder of our parts to a mutual friend to jumpstart a build he had planned for his kids to use. However it was incomplete the way we gave it to him, and has not been fully assembled yet. I still have access to the 6100, and we know the 8120 works with the mobo given to the kids.
So here I am, and my first question is:

TL;DR
Should I continue to try fine tuning to get a stable OC with the 8120, or should I reinstall the 6100 and try for better results?

Thanks in advance for any input and advice. I've been browsing here for the past couple weeks and it seems a very informative place. If you've read this far, my second question is about the RAM. The computer recognizes that there's 24GB available, but only seems to want to utilize 16. Should I just remove the 2x4GB?
 
That motherboard has a 4+1 VRM, you're going to have trouble getting an OC stable.
Luckily, it has a heatsink on the VRM, so it isn't worst-case scenario.

It'll definitely handle a 6-core chip much better than an 8-core chip though, but still don't expect to hit the high numbers.

Mismatched RAM is never a good idea. Is there some reason you need more than 16GB??
 
That motherboard has a 4+1 VRM, you're going to have trouble getting an OC stable.
Luckily, it has a heatsink on the VRM, so it isn't worst-case scenario.

I'm not familiar with this. Could you elaborate, or point me in the direction of where to find out more?

It'll definitely handle a 6-core chip much better than an 8-core chip though, but still don't expect to hit the high numbers.

that's sort of what I had been thinking after recent trials and research. I'm not looking for crazy numbers, but I figure 4.0-4.2GHz should be doable, based on what I've seen others manage. Is this unreasonable?

Mismatched RAM is never a good idea. Is there some reason you need more than 16GB??

Becuase we had it? lol, I would have already pulled it but one of the 4GB sticks is under the cooler, so not as easy as just pulling the side cover.
 
Mismatched ram isn't good. Ever. There may be some advanced setting in the BIOS RGone mentioned that seems to allow mismatched ram sticks to play well together iirc. I would go with 8 gigs of matched ram if you have that on hand. Also as others have stated any 4+1 phase power board is not a good candidate for overclocking either a six or eight core cpu. That goes doubly for an ASRock AM3+ board. If you overclock you probably will get thermal throttling and actually be running way slower than stock settings would attain for you. Worst case the board could fail and take out other components.
 
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We had just about 'weeded' those boards out 2 years ago. ASRock 970 Extreme3 in many threads around the net just doesn't have the beans to pull an FX 8 core and hammer too much with a 6 core and it will give up also.

RGone...
 
S_B that Tiger link is to an FX-4300. That was not an FX-8 core was it?

Honesly in my mind some of these boards are just too weak to run FX-8cores but if the cpu is LEFT to run and upclock and downclock as AMD designed them to do...things might be a little better for the not so robust mobo user that had no clue what the heck he was getting into when he said hot shett let me get 8 cores of overclockable goodness. They are really g00d and HOT and power hungry for real.

Maybe something along these lines if available.

FX-8300 > 3.3Ghz Turbo Max 4.2Ghz 95Watt TDP
FX-8310 > 3.4Ghz Turbo Max 4.3Ghz 95Watt TDP
FX-8320E > 3.2Ghz Turbo Max 4.0Ghz 95watt TDP

Seen a few finding and even overclocking the PEE out of the FX-8300/8310 and I know NewEgg has the FX-8320E cpus for sale. Just an FYI.
RGone...
 
Haha yea, that was a link to 4300..... please disregard!

Or perhaps isn't a bad choice for AsRock 970?
 
Probably better for the board and clocks then any 8 core would be.
 
Thanks for the input everyone. When I originally bought the board, it had gotten User's Choice 2 months in a row on Newegg. I'm trying to avoid buying a mobo or cpu right now, as my next major system upgrade is planned for later this year. I'll be swapping out the 8120 for the 6100, and removing 2 sticks of RAM. I'm still having some driver issues, since the Windows reinstall, that I'm trying to sort through as well.
 
Just because it's relevant to this thread - has anyone tried disabling one core per module on the fx-8 series and seeing what difference that makes in terms of power draw and heat?
Would it be better for sketchy to run the 8120 on 4 core 4 module vs 6 core 3 module in the 6100? I'm not sure if that board has that capability, but I'd be interested to see results of overclocking a 4C/4M vs overclocking 6C/3M.
 
rescuetoaster judging from the reading in this thread so far, I think it a little far reaching currently to ask SketchyD to be testing different setups for us.

I will say though that I can give you to the formula for the outcome of most of what you asked about. FX-8120 (believe it was that long ago) 8C/4M Cinebench 11.5 CPU Performance scored like this. Not the exact numbers but the relationship was the same time after time after time. Did the same on an FX-6300 and it had the same type of reduction of performance relationship. 8core = 8 points. 6 of 8 cores = 6 points and 4 of 8 cores = 4 points. I think I tested that older FX-8120 from 4.0Ghz to 4.6Ghz dropping two cores each time from 8 to 6 to 4 and no matter the cpu speed, the drop in registered cpu performance in Cinbench 11.5 at the time was always followed that relationship, within about 2 or 3% and not worth talking about.

So if SketchyD slaps that FX-6xxx cpu in, I would expect a pure cpu performance test in like Cinebench to show up half of what it would be with an 8 Core processor. But that is not the exact pictue seen when gaming by any means since many other factors are involved and most games do not fully utilize all cores anyway. I doubt realistically in March of 2015 that SketchyD will notice any real drop in performance in gaming moving from a problematic FX-8xxx to an FX-6xxx and most surely his marginal board should do better with less heat to deal with from 2 less cores.

RGone...
 
^that was more or less my feeling when I read that. I'm not really sure what that means, and I'm still new at this.

However, I bought an NZXT H440, and have swapped out the CPUs and removed the two smaller sticks of RAM. Overall, it seems to be running better this week performing basic tasks. I've yet to have an extended amount of time to try messing with the settings and stress testing, but hopefully tomorrow or early next week.
 
SketchyD...

...for just about a good answer to any question about these FX setups, we need to see at each step up in speed the things outlined below. At some place you have to determine a bottom line or baseline. A place where stability is NOT in question but is a "known" thing. If you put the FX-6xxx cpu in then I would begin at a multiplier of 19.5 and stock voltages and ram set manually by speed and timings. Then run P95 Blend for at least 20 mins and then make post with the 4 outlined images as shown below.

RGone...

This is what we need to see for sure and a real good starting point.

Normally during setup and testing we disable C1/E, C6, Cool N Quiet, APM, TurboCore and in windows performance manager itself we set to "performance" mode. ALSO if you have HPC in bios you would ENABLE it. That way there are not "other" settings messing with the overclocking process. Some of those settings are not available on all models of cpu but where in evidence we disable for setup of overclock process.

CPU Tab in CPUz from CPUID com
attachment.php


Memory Tab in CPUz from CPUID com
attachment.php


SPD Tab in CPUz from CPUID com
attachment.php


And this is screen capture of HWMonitor (free version) from CPUID com
HWMonitor has been scrolled enough and large enough to show Min/Max of Voltages and includes the CPU CORE TEMPS / "package" temps fully visible. Latest versions of HWMonitor show the CPU Core Temp as " a Package Temp" and is only shown as a single temp since there were never multple, individual core temp sensors anyway.


This capture is made of HWMonitor after it has been open and running on the desktop logging Min/Max temps and voltages while Prime 95 was running Blend Mode test on all cores for at least 20 mins and then the capture of HWMonitor was made and it shows the Min/Max temps and voltages before P95 Blend was started and while running P95 Blend mode and gives much greater insight into how the system is performing without guessing.

attachment.php


In order to attach screenshots of INDIVIDUAL images as suggested, first crop and capture the images with Snipping Tool found in Windows Accessories or equivalent. Then click on Go Advanced, a button at the bottom of every new post window. Then click on the little paperclip tool at the top of the Advanced post window when it opens. Clicking on the paperclip tool brings up the file browser/upload tool and the rest is fairly obvious.
 
ran a stress test today with some BIOS settings I had set up the other day. mainly a default Turbo mode. any settings I didn't know about, or was unsure about, stayed default/unchanged. they are as follows:

CPU Freq: 200MHz
PCIE Freq: 100MHz
Spread Spectrum - Disabled
Active Core Control - ALL Cores
AMD Turbo Core - disabled
AMD APM - disabled
Frequency Multiplier - x20.0 4000Mhz
CPU Voltage - 1.45v
NB Frequency - x10.0 2000MHz
CPU NB Voltage - 1.25v
DRAM Frequency - DDR3-1600 (I set this)
DRAM Timing Control - Default/unchanged
Cool'N'Quiet - disabled
C1E - Enabled (pretty sure this was default, didn't know to turn it off)
Virtual Machine - disabled
C6 Mode - disabled
Thermal Throttle - disabled


Grabbed these right before I stopped Prime95, which reported 27 minutes 0 errors

Prime95_zpsn1lyp33w.jpg
Capture_zpsrngxxwqd.jpg
memory_zpsguvefmmh.jpg
Speed_zpsfqgkicm6.jpg
HWMonitor_zpsxkmxsv5w.jpg

CPU minTemp is not an accurate idle temp, I had started Prime95 and forgotten to clear min/max, so it had run for a minute or so before that minTemp reading.
Oh, and no changes in Windows.
 
Not too bad looking. Does that board have CPU_LLC or CPU voltage LLC or some bios setting like CPU VID Load Line Calibration? Those are all possible names or descriptions of the 'same' thing. Keeps Vcore from having to be set to 1.45V but drops greatly to 1.392V when in use.

RGone...
 
So R_G you're saying he could lower Cpu v-core and up the LLC to ultra high and keep a stable 1.4150v then? Perhaps a little more OC can be had!
 
S_B am not...

...not fully sure what I am thinking. I made a statement back probably 2 years ago that I did not like FX-6300s because they seemed to use more Vcore than my FX-8350s and I had 4 o 5 FX-6300s to look at. But I did a comparison chart of Vcore of FX-6300 to my FX-8350 and here is the chart.
Only 1.37Vcore and 1.38Vcore from 4.0 to 4.5Ghz. Now he has 1.45Vcore set in bios he says and I assume that 1.392Vcore is under load in that last screenie we saw. Well Cpu Temp of 61c and Package/Core temp of only 48c so get the real voltage to cpu down and not jumping around and he might, yes, have some more oomph in the system.

That link was done using an Asrock Fatal1ty 990FX PRO mobo that I returned and then bought later and am typing on right now. Cpu speed is 3939Mhz since I have the OEM tiny air cooler doing the cooling with that small 70mm fan blowing down and my Vcore is only 1.392V with an 8 core FX-8120.

If his board does not have CPU_LLC and set it to 25% like I am using now...then he is never going to hit the big numbers. No matter the cooling or much of anything I guess. Oh and lest I forget, I have 1.4Vcore set in bios and under load it is only going down to 1.392V and I can live with that for sure, since that is a variance of only 0.008Volts.

And sadly unless an FX-6 core processor runs at least 4.6Ghz it is just a patsy for an i3 Intel cpu. So yes S_B I guess what I am thinking is to see Vcore that is less jumpy so we can see if he can get by with less Vcore for more cpu speed. Think I got it said similar to what you were thinking.

RGone...
 
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