Need some 965BE overclocking advice

[Poochie]

I got a new case a few days ago, an Antec 902 v3. Also bought a Corsair H50 for my Phenom 965BE. Motherboard is an Asus M4A78L-M and memory is 4GB of G.Skill DDR2-800.

So far the limited overclocking I've done has all been in software, with AMD OverDrive. Auto Clock got me to an HT clock of 203MHz, 18.5 multiplier, yielding 3755.5MHz with no voltage increases.

Since then, I've been running with the multiplier at 18x (3.6GHz). Haven't run Prime95 or anything yet but after all kinds of gaming my temps are still sub-40c.

Ideally I'd like to get this thing stable at 3.8GHz, I think that's my goal. I have a few questions about how I should do this, mainly relating to voltage changes.

Rather arbitrarily, I'm thinking I'll end up with an HT clock of 205MHz with an 18.5x multiplier, putting me just below 3.8GHz. Current voltages are 1.40V on the CPU, 1.10V on the NB, and 1.89V on the DDR2-800 memory (rated for 1.80-1.90V).

The part I'm not sure about is whether people generally bump up all three of those voltages as you increase your overclock. From what I understand, increasing your multiplier doesn't put as much strain on your motherboard and memory, but you don't get the RAM speed increase. So I assume if I'm raising my multiplier by 1.5 and my HT clock by only 5MHz, most of the extra voltage should go to the CPU.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

why even set the HT ref clock to 205mhz, just set the multiplier to 19x and that will give you 3.8Ghz. but while you are at it why not try and hit 4Ghz.

because its a black edition processor the only 2 things you need to touch are the cpu multiplier and cpu voltage, everything else you can leave on auto/stock settings. raising the HT ref clock 5 mhz won't do anything performance wise except make the cpu clocks look all weird.

run 5 passes in intel burn test with your current settings and make sure its actually stable before trying to overclock it more, prime95 is outdated and is no longer useful as a stress test in my opinion.

my guess is you should be able to get 3.8Ghz with a slight voltage bump some where around 1.36-1.38v and 4Ghz some where around 1.42-1.45v. if you can actually get 4Ghz stable at those voltage you might even be able to hit 4.1-4.2Ghz before you hit the 1.55v mark(which is the highest you safely want to go).

 

[Poochie]

why even set the HT ref clock to 205mhz, just set the multiplier to 19x and that will give you 3.8Ghz. but while you are at it why not try and hit 4Ghz.

because its a black edition processor the only 2 things you need to touch are the cpu multiplier and cpu voltage, everything else you can leave on auto/stock settings. raising the HT ref clock 5 mhz won't do anything performance wise except make the cpu clocks look all weird.

run 5 passes in intel burn test with your current settings and make sure its actually stable before trying to overclock it more, prime95 is outdated and is no longer useful as a stress test in my opinion.

my guess is you should be able to get 3.8Ghz with a slight voltage bump some where around 1.36-1.38v and 4Ghz some where around 1.42-1.45v. if you can actually get 4Ghz stable at those voltage you might even be able to hit 4.1-4.2Ghz before you hit the 1.55v mark(which is the highest you safely want to go).

Thanks. I'm running a stress test right now at a 19x multiplier, CPU at 1.425V. Temps are in the high 40's but I think I can live with that if it's stable. Might also have some curing time left with my AS5.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

there isn't much if any curing time and even then its only 1-2C difference at the absolute most.

you still have plenty of room temp wise.. if you have the C3 965 they are rated up to 70C(even though the max is much higher then that AMD's way conservative on their numbers).