Overclocking

[STLYoungblood]

So I decided to tinker around and try overclocking the processor today. It's a Phenom II X4 970 with a stock speed of 3.5ghz. I took it up to 4 and ran a couple of tests. I do have the Hyper 212 Evo for a cooler.

Prime 95 for 1hr - Max Temp Hit was 49C.
Intel Burn 10 cycles - 55C Max temp on two cores, 54C on other two.

I've read that nothing is going to beat up your CPU like IntelBurn, but I'm not sure. I plan to run them both for longer tomorrow to see how it holds up over time, but based on initial impressions, I think it's stable. Thoughts?

[Vnzuelan Dude]

Even if I knew what you were talking about, I am too mentally burnt to make a coherent thought.

Bubbles.

[STLYoungblood]

LOL.

Trying to learn how to safely do it was overwhelming and kind of scary until I realized I had a black edition chip and really only involved upping the multiplier and monitoring temps while stress testing. Some guys on Toms Hardware said it looks solid based on initial impressions and testing, but as expected, recommend a several hour test to confirm.

[FunkY]

LOL.

Trying to learn how to safely do it was overwhelming and kind of scary until I realized I had a black edition chip and really only involved upping the multiplier and monitoring temps while stress testing. Some guys on Toms Hardware said it looks solid based on initial impressions and testing, but as expected, recommend a several hour test to confirm.

Sounds like a basic overclock I'd do on my rig. Bump the multiplier, add a touch more voltage and test... If you can get it stable that easily (which is quite easy to do on the AMDs up to around 4Ghz), then jobs a good un. A true real world test though believe it or not would be BF3. The synthetic tests are good, but your apparently stable system might still fall over when running BF3, which seems to have some issues with overclocked rigs (it's the game at fault, not your OC).

If you start experiencing any crashes (or more than usual in the case of BF3) or BSODs, try bumping the CPU voltage up 0.025/0.05V and monitor temps again. If that doesn't work put the voltage back down and reduce the OC slightly (reduce the multiplier by 0.5/1).

Once you've got it perfectly stable, and you're a bit more confident with what you're doing, you can start making changes to the FSB as well as the multiplier which could well give you a bit more of a boost. Using the multiplier alone I can't get past 3.8Ghz stable on my 965BE (3.4 @ stock), while using 256 FSB and 16x multiplier with an extra 0.075V I can get around 4GHz that's prime stable overnight (BF3 crashes constantly with this though). The more variables you throw into the mix, the more complicated it will become, but when you get into something like this it can actually be quite a lot of fun.

Personally I wouldn't recommend running it overclocked all the time (not yet anyway), but I do recommend anyone that's interested in doing so, has decent cooling and a decent PSU should give it a go

Baby steps though, you want to fine tune, not crank it up... You don't want to fry anything, so do a bit of research to see what sort of speeds other people get with similar setups. Also remember, just because it works for someone else, doesn't necessarily mean it will work for you. Every chip is different, and other components also play a factor; for instance motherboard and RAM will affect the OCability of your CPU.

Then there's the dark side of overclocking. Known as suicide runs. Stability isn't a factor, these are about pure speed. Get it as fast as you can so that it boots long enough for the OS to detect the processor speed and make a note of it. If the system lives afterwards it's a bonus. The AMD 975 has hit 7GHz under LN2 (and promptly melted the graphics card lol) in one article I read http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/20...om-hits-7ghz/1 - DO NOT ATTEMPT those sort of numbers unless you are willing to replace the whole system

[STLYoungblood]

LOL, definitely not interested in frying my system!

It's funny you mentioned BF3, because I realized last night that it was a CPU heavy game and gave it a shot. At 4.0, it ran awesome for about 2 min and then crashed. Tried to pull up chrome to look for OC Failure Symptoms and it crashed too. Dropped to 3.9 and it's working like a charm. I didn't touch the voltage at all, so I'm thinking I was slightly underpowered for that speed. The temps never got above 49C, so I think I'm on the right track. Agree?

[FunkY]

Definitley. Sounds like my chip whit will go the 0.4 without extra voltage (though I like to give it a little extra just to make sure it stays stable. Either a touch more V for the 4Ghz, or just run it at 3.9 (you're not going to notice any worthwhile difference between the two to be honest).

Temps are good and leave you with some headroom to be honest. I can't remember for sure off the top of my head, but I think the thermal limit on the AMDs is 65ºC

[STLYoungblood]

The limit is 62C, but everyone suggests (that I've read at least) to try to keep it 55C or below as the magic number to account for anything that might cause it to spike.

I think I'm going to leave as is for now. I can tell a difference from the extra .4 in BF3 as it runs smoother on high and maintains an over 60 FPS, even while recording, which previously I was unable to do. I figure I can play more later, but not a bad first run

[STLYoungblood]

Ok, I was interested so I kept going. Put it back to 4.0ghz and upped the voltage by .05 and it was stable, running at 54-55C. I dropped the volts to +.025 to see if I could do with less, and it started to hiccup and act up. I think 4.0GHz at 1.400V is the sweet spot if I want to crank it up.

All that being said, .1GHz less at stock voltage and 5-6C less temp, I think I'll stick with that for now. Good to know I can push it if I want to though.