960T unlock Sabertooth 990FX

S

Solomutt

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 15, 2011
Messages
200
Last night I successfully unlocked a new 960T to 6 cores @ 3.2 Ghz, on air, using a stock AMD cooler from a P2-965 I had laying around. Temps are decent, but some of the options in the board are too new for me. I ended up at 1.35 volts core, with a NB of 2400 and 1.18V. I got a lot of locks, program faults, and even a blue screen, trying to run 3.6, and 3.4 on 6 cores @1.36V. From altering the NB clock between 2000 and 2800, it looks like the CPU could do 6 cores at 3.4, but the volts and heat go up a bit, so the NB would have to be stock or lower to prevent temps from going out of control. It's 43 deg celsius at idle, in bios, after a reboot currently. I may just need to learn more power management on this board.

I'd be interested to hear solid suggestions for how to get a nice strong NB clock, on at least the stock 3Ghz. The application it will be used for is gaming, but with a good bit of background stuff running. It's my daughter's box, so it can't be on the edge of stability.

Depending upon how things go this week and next she may have to use an m4a79t-deluxe, and eventually get my RMA'ed M4A89T-usb3.0 board instead of the 990FX.

Currently:

Asus Sabertooth 990FX/M4A79t-deluxe
Corsair DDR3 - 1600 , 7-8-7-20
960T unlocked 6 cores, 1.35/1.18 3.2 Ghz/2.2Ghz
Sapphire HD6950 Dirt3 ed, unlocked, 1536 shaders, 840 core, stock mem
Seagate 7200.12 1.5TB 7200
Antech 300 case
Antech 850 Quattro PSU

Win 7 x64 Ult, SP1

I don't know if trying to get more NB or core clocks should be a better goal. She typically runs Games, hamachi, skype, and between 1 and 3 miscellaneous apps (usually just Firefox) while gaming.
 
NB by stock isnt 3.0 GHz ...... i think its around ~2000 not 3000.....all you should have to do is adjust the NB speed in the bios to what you want, and auto on voltage should be fine

may want to pick up a Hyper 212+, quieter and better than the stock cooler.
 
I been out of the unlocking scene for a long time.

Last time I check unlocking cores would make temperature sensors useless.

Has things change?
 
Mine work fine. Also, I knew that the -stock- NB is 2Ghz. It is a question here of will a NB OC gain more than core OC, and at what point does it become irrelevant.
 
the NB will hit 2800 easily, w/o affecting the CPU OC, so its not going to hurt to put it there, you will see a performance difference.
 
Thx, i'll give it a shot. I had read somewhere that the NB was often the fail point when unlocking. Since this is a 960T unlocking to six cores, I anticipated that the NB might need more voltage than I am comfortable with to hit >2400
 
Solomutt said:
Thx, i'll give it a shot. I had read somewhere that the NB was often the fail point when unlocking. Since this is a 960T unlocking to six cores, I anticipated that the NB might need more voltage than I am comfortable with to hit >2400
Click to expand...

it will more then likely need more voltage to exceed 2400mhz, but the NB can handle the same 1.55v the cpu can handle, so theres tons of headroom. to hit 2800-3000mhz i'd say 1.35-1.4v should be more then enough for the NB, but the heat output at those voltages may exceed the cooling of the stock heatsink. just remember the 70C limit is total bs for the x6's its actually around 85C.

get yourself a 26 dollar hyper 212+ and go ape shit with the processor and see what you can do with it at 1.55v on the cpu.

and like wfeather said, there is a considerable performance gain overclocking the NB, you will see that gain even more with synthetic benchmarks but it should also effect load times and high data usage applications that are constantly moving ram data back and forth.
 
curious... where did u get the 960T?

i haven't seen them on ebay in a while
 
Newegg. It seems like a solid value. Got 2. Both unlock to 6 cores. I am guessing that it would oc pretty high as a 4 core part. The larger die area to dissipate heat. The extra cache would make it a strong quad also.
 
Waiting for mine to arrive from newegg. Should be fun to play around with both the unlocked multi and trying to unlock cores. Gives you lots of knobs and dials to turn while trying to overclock
 
hmm.. think the cpu wil get cheaper? at 130 + tax/shipping still seems a bit pricey IMHO.
 
How much does your Temps go up after the unlocking?

I know when I unlock my X3->X4 Temps rise 20 degrees overall. Hopefully your CPU doesn't increase temps by that much unlocked. I would like to know. TIA.
 
teletran8 said:
How much does your Temps go up after the unlocking?

I know when I unlock my X3->X4 Temps rise 20 degrees overall. Hopefully your CPU doesn't increase temps by that much unlocked. I would like to know. TIA.
Click to expand...

My temp didn't go over 5 degrees more when I unlocked my 740BE. I was wondering the same about the CPU too myself though. If I get one, I would just underclock and volt to get it down to 95w
 
i honestly didn't even look at my temps when i unlocked my x3. All i know is that i got the same OC speed with it locked and unlocked because i don't like seeing my CPU temp go above 55. Obviously, decided to keep it unlocked but during IBT i top out at 55. From memory, i remember it being only 1 or 2 degrees cooler with the extra core unlocked when i was running prime.

this CPU though has me seriously wanting to tweak some more though.. UGHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
 
the 960T is unlocked at 3435 Mhz, with NB at 2.5Ghz, and HT at 2147. The bus is 214. Memory is set to 1333+ bus addin, at 7-8-7-20 1T command rate.

Temp are about 3 c higher on six cores. CPU-Z says it's a 160W 1600T stepping 0

Core voltage is reported as 1.284 in CPU-Z, despite having been set to 1.34 in BIOS.
 
How/where did you unlock the cores in the BIOS? I just picked this board up too. On my previous board Asus MA479XTD-EVO I was able to unlocked the extra cores and run at 4.2ghz @1.45v's.

Now with this new BIOS I can't find where to unlock the cores.
I tried to set the core unlocker to enabled but the PC won't boot then I power down and up again and says Unlock failed.
 
Would the 95watt 960T be a better cpu than my current 125watt P2 965?
 
960T overclocks higher than PII 965.

Unlock is in the advanced area, where the northbridge, CPU, and etc are. It's a subcategory. I tripped over it while checking out all different submenu options.

Odd feeling BIOS to get used to. Once you do, it makes sense. Not at the PC right now, so either refer to manual or do like I did and just roam all options in every area....
 
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