Phenom II 720BE difficulties overclocking

S

SYN ACK

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 11, 2004
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im having difficulty pushing my 720BE past 3.1ghz
ive added a new heatsink fan and prime95 stress tests at 3.1 dont push past 40c and idle is 29c

i had the same issues with the stock hsf --- with the new hsf temps are loads better, but still cant break past 3.2 stable.

4JyEE.jpg

ARbj0.jpg



now, i hope you can tell me im doing this backwards.
i've been increasing the 'CPU Voltage Control' in the first pic ... is that what I need to adjust to increase the voltage to the CPU? or should i be using 'CPU NB VID Control' ?

ive pushed the voltage as high as +0.075 and that still didnt help getting me past 3.2gh (would lockup loading windows or if i could boot into windows i wouldnt be able to do prime95 stable).

edit: ive even pushed my ddr3 back to stock settings and that still doesn't help / make any difference...

thank you,
 
If that's a Gigabyte motherboard, hit "CTRL-F1" for more OC options. Take a screen shot of that.

Also note that the max voltage of the X3 720 CPU is 1.425. So you still got still extra room to play with.
 
i hit ctrl+f1 in the main bios and it refreshed the screen, but that's all.
i could already access the menu, here is a photo:

XEEgX.jpg

nIjOn.jpg


bios F2 - older version
 
try setting your memory clock to x6 for now, I think I remembered AMD motherboards had some issues with 1600MHz ram
 
tried that (manually setting to x6.66 = 1333) and also setting it to auto (1333)...same issues.

im also using super-pi and i get 'NOT CONVERGENT IN SQR' error quite quickly
using regular prime95 blend/fft testing it generally doesnt fail right away...so not sure if it's stable or not

either way, even at +0.075 i cant get much past 3.2ghz , even tho temps are very low
 
quick question too - i dont really play any games that really need me to take advantage of raw cpu (mostly play older games/sims)....so would it it be worth it to go back towards stock voltage and turn cool and quiet back on to save some power (especially when im mostly idle at my pc anyways?)
 
yeah, I would set everything back to default, why bother overclocking if you don't need it. BTW, you may want to run memtest for at least 24 hours just to see if your ram is ok.
 
You can still go for max vCore if you're not maxing out your heat limit(62c by AMD, but you can go til the CPU throttles down on it's own)...But then every CPU has it's limits in OC'ing, so don't expect to get what other's have gotten.
 
what's the CPU NB VID Control and when would i increase that?


also, what's strange is i was at 3.1 and even pushed CPU Voltage Control to +0.1 (so should have been 1.425v) and in window's AMD tool it still reports 1.325v
vVoaO.jpg


yet when i go back into bios it is reporting under PC Health Status, VCore = 1.425

im just wondering if the voltage increases arent actually taking? or im configuring the wrong thing...which would explain why im crashing as i overclock???
 
well that's strange - when i boost the CPU Voltage Control in bios, it doesnt seem to reflect in amd's software but in CPU-Z it does show the increase in vcore

this must just really be a horrible chip??
 
What power supply do you have?

If your voltage increase does not show up in Windows, then there is something wrong (not the chip itself).

Try 17x multiplier and 1.425 VCORE, and 12x north bridge multiplier, and 1.2v on the north bridge

I've worked on/set up 3 720/740s, all of them did 3.5 with ease.

Also, btw, that version of your BIOS does not even support the Phenom IIs yet lol. You may want to flash that first

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3096&dl=1#bios
 
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I doubt the CPU itself is the problem here when it comes to voltage display (because that wouldn't make much sense). I'm running the latest AOD and using the original ASUS M4A79T (the one without USB 3.0) and I don't have any voltage reading issues like that.

Also, my chip is the same stepping and everything. You can't blame it for being a poor overclocker since its beyond the factory's initial spec, but I've run mine up to 3.88GhZ on air so you can probably squeeze at least 3.4 out of it. I keep it down to 3.2 for normal operation, though. I've also used 1333 and 1600 DDR3 with no issues.

I'll take a screen of my AOD when I get home.
 
This is my running config (and the config that is set in the BIOS for boot time):

booting_config.jpg


The overclock I use when I want to benchmark a game or something is generally 3.6, which is 17x212 and I don't think I've ever put the voltage beyond 1.4v to do that. When I was trying to hit 3.9 I shoved the voltage up to 1.48 or so, but it was never completely stable. Stable enough to run 3DMark Vantage, but not stable enough to keep running at that speed for more than about half an hour at a time before I'd get hypertransport flood errors.
 
Danny Bui said:
If that's a Gigabyte motherboard, hit "CTRL-F1" for more OC options. Take a screen shot of that.

Also note that the max voltage of the X3 720 CPU is 1.425. So you still got still extra room to play with.
Click to expand...


I think the max voltage is 1.55 volts.At least that is what i am reading from other sites.Ran mine for a year at 1.45volts(motherboard limit) and never hurt the chip.
 
I'm running mine at 3.6GHz @ 1.4v with the fourth core unlocked... I'm using a asus m88td-m motherboard and it's rock solid at that config. I can do the stock voltage at 3.4GHz easy but wanted a BIT more cause I'm greedy :)
 
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