A10-7860k Overclock with Firestrike

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Nihilus1

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2015
Messages
441
I recently picked up a 7860k for my everyday computer. I had an 860k before this, but wanted an APU again since they make my o/c Tahiti more stable when GPU folding.

System Specs:
A10-7860k @1.54 volts (all other volts were stock)
A88XM MB from MSI
2133 Mhz Ares Ram from G.skill

I used 3dmark firestrike to guage my performance.
At stock clocks I get a score of 1520 cpu / 1694 gpu
Guru3d scores are 1468 / 1592 - they used 1600 mhz Ram which is a joke.
a stock 7870k gets 1611 / 1750
an I7 Broadwell gets 1659 / 1776
My Final Score was 1910 / 2087

I played with the CPU, GPU, FSB, and Ram speed. Ram has a HUGE impact on performance. FSB speed had little to no affect on performance, at least beyond 1900 mhz.

It is a bit difficult to isolate performance on the components since changing one value affects the others.
After lots of tweaking to the Multipliers my best overclock was 4.57 GHz CPU, 1044 MHz GPU, 2440 Mhz Ram, and 1928 Mhz FSB.

In the end, I ended up about 30% better than Guru3d's score, 25% better than my stock scores, and OVER 15% faster than Broadwell, the "fastest iGPU available".

I highly recomend the A10-7860k. It is available for around $115 and seems to overclock every bit as good as the 7870k and as maybe as good as the 7890k, at least the GPU speed.

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I am just going to assume my photobucket URL did not work above. Just take my word for it.
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Ah, nevermind - i didn't have to do that URL crap. :)
 
It is impressive what modern day APU's can achieve....I wonder what we get when the new Zen hits....Could be double? Could make for badass cheap gaming laptops in the next year
 
Zen will be awesome, especially with DDR4. I was able to achieve stability with blk 102 by adding .02v to the NB. It helped stability a lot. It adds voltage to the CPU, as Cpu-z showed 1.6v now. I could probably back down the voltage some. The GPU is capped around 1050 mhz, no matter what I do, so BLK 103 is a no go.
Not bad for $115 though.

fs 5.PNG
 
Nihilus1 said:
Zen will be awesome, especially with DDR4. I was able to achieve stability with blk 102 by adding .02v to the NB. It helped stability a lot. It adds voltage to the CPU, as Cpu-z showed 1.6v now. I could probably back down the voltage some. The GPU is capped around 1050 mhz, no matter what I do, so BLK 103 is a no go.
Not bad for $115 though.

View attachment 3522
Click to expand...
Not all all when you think of the gaming this thing can do even without a video card.....its light years from the old days. Last gameing laptop i bought a few years back (MSI GX60) had a 7970 and apparently it scores around 3700 Firestrike. Shit at one time it was considered the most powerful Mobil gpu out. That thing does almost 2000 on the cpu alone lol. The number of modern games it can handle without a card is impressive:)
 
Ah last ones I promise. I got BLK 103 working.
I used + .04v NB. This first pic was x18 NB speed.
CPU speed is at it's theshhold. Using +.06v CPU causes a crash in Firestike. Using +.08v CPU causes Windows Crash. I passed Firestike with +.07v CPU.
fs 8.PNG

During the Physics test, I drew up to 179 watts. Anything over 180 watts and it is crashing.
I tried x19 on the NB. It crashed during the Physics test. I needed to "free up" some power draw on the motherboard.
Using .03v NB is a no go. Then I tried lowering the Ram from 1.65v to 1.63v. - Failed to boot.
Finally I tried 1.64v.... My last shot :)
fs 9.PNG


This was the first time I saw the FSB speed increase make a real difference on Fire strike. Increasing to BLK 104 would need much more FSB volts, which is a voltage I don't like to monkey with.
Dropping to BLK 100, I would need to get over 1100 GPU speed. Not gonna happen. Not to mention Ram speed drops to 2400 MHZ max.

Very happy with CPU, MSI gaming motherboard, and Ram (G.skill 2133 Mhz running almost 2500 mhz at 1.64 V!)

So, Final Score is about 20% greater than Broadwell, and 33% greater than Guru3d gave. Hell yeah.
 
Promise broken. I decided to give another shot a BLK 100 in order to get the higher iGPU clocks. I started off going easy on the cpu (x45 with .02 v or so over) and x18 on the FSB, but .09v over on the FSB.
I was surprised with the results.
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1979! Maybe 2000 is within reach! It looks like I did not take a big hit lowering the memory to 2400 Mhz. Perhaps that is where it planes off and the iGPU/CPU speed are what matter most now.
Ok, lets go for it all - x46 CPU speed at .07v over with the FSB still at .09v over:

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1982 ... Hmm, not as big as I had hoped. I am now at 1.60v. I don't want to monkey with the volts anymore and I am certain x47 will not be stable.
Not gonna burn out this new processor for a number. Besides, I was already at 177 watts at the physics portion. It pretty much crashes at 180 watts. Let's try raising the FSB to x19. Worth a shot.

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1986. About what I expected. It is not looking good. Well what the hell, I will give x20 a shot on the FSB.
Sometimes the stars just line up right.......
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That will do pig. Over 35% higher than Guru3ds score. This A10-7860k is simply a A10-7890k in disguise. It took a lot of work, but it was fun. Not only does it overclock amazing, but it under volts awesome as well:
AMD A10-7890K, 7860K und Athlon X4 880K im Test (Seite 8)
Hope you enjoyed the show.
 
Alright, Encore. Might as well see if x21 on the FSB works. This time my kill-a-watt maxed out at 181 watts on the physics test. I just BARELY squeezed it in there.

fs A.PNG

I actually got 2014 the first time, so a 2011 average. I was so close to my threshold, I wanted to see if I could lower the FSB volts at all. A notch down, and they would crash.
My last option was to lower my timing. I read somewhere that timing does not affect the scores here, so before going nuclear on my RAM to tighten timings, I decided to see if looser timings DECREASED performance.
I tried 12,14,14,38 and it actually crashed the first time as it hit 182 watts on the physics test. I lowered to x19 FSB compared the results to a previous test:
fb e.PNG vs fs eb.PNG

Nothing. For some reason, the looser timings actually gave a better physics score (maybe why it crashed the 1st time) No point it messing with the timings.
Well, with everything warmed up, I ran the previous settings with Auto timing once more:

fs AA.PNG



Sweet. Knowing that timing doesn't affect performance, it is a shame this MB or cpu doesn't allow 2600+ memory with loose timings. I stressed that this setup was Windows 7. Windows 10 is supposed to get a 60-70 point boost in 3dmark.
The flip side is that it is said to be less stable, at least after 4.7 GHZ core. Either way, a score a 2100 is within reach for this CPU. In any case, it was fun and I couldn't be happier with the results.
 
Nice log of your results, here! Its fun when your components just keep on giving.

And Babe references are fun, too. >_>
 
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