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Some OCing help
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05-09-2010 9:56pm#1Hi guys.
Having built my first system just the other day, I was considering overclocking it. What I need are some basic tips on how to go about doing it. I have a Phenom II 925 @ 2.8GHz and I replaced the stock fan with another I bought (CPU Cooler HYPER 212 Plus). When the computer starts up, (in the BIOS) the CPU is at about 27degrees. (Obviously not under much load in the BIOS).
I tweaked the FSB frequency a bit and the adjusted CPU speed was 3.3GHZ. Now when I booted up, Windows didn't recognize this speed change (it still said 2.8GHz in Computer properties) yet when I re-ran the Windows Experience Index, my CPU score went from its previous score of 7.2 to 7.3, so obviously my tweaking did a bit.
I intend to reset my CPU to its previous speed and start again properly, although I have a few questions:
How can I monitor my CPU and System temperatures while running a Prime 95 stress-test?
Should Windows recognize a CPU overclock in Computer properties?
How far should I go? (ie What temps do I not want to be hitting in the stress-test?)
Is it alright to only tweak my FSB frequency?
I hope you can follow what I said
Thanks a lot in advance.
P.S Could you please address any relevant questions that I may have left out, thanks.0
Comments
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How can I monitor my CPU and System temperatures while running a Prime 95 stress-test?
Everyone has their favourites... I prefer CoreTemp and SpeedFan, but find the much-vaunted HWMonitor to be buggy with my hardware. CPU-Z can also come in handy for monitoring "real" CPU speed and voltage, as the BIOS can't account for Vdroop!
Should Windows recognize a CPU overclock in Computer properties?
No. Windows doesn't know squat about what you're doing with your CPU; the speed in CP is derived from Windows looking at the CPU's PartID and regurgitating some (static) info it knows about it.How far should I go? (ie What temps do I not want to be hitting in the stress-test?)
It depends on several things. Broadly speaking, if your rig doesn't have tons of overhead on its 12V rails or your mobo doesn't have any heatsinks on its VRMs then while you can OC all you want you have to be conservative about OVing (overvolting) the CPU to maintain stability, which can cap high-level OCing but then again often high-level OCing gets through more hassle and electricity than the hassle it saves
Regardless of whether these issues affect you or not heat is the great leveller; you really don't want your main CPU temperature going much past 60°C and you don't want to exceed 70°C; seperate core die temperatures will usually run 10-15° higher than the primary CPU IHS temp regardless.Is it alright to only tweak my FSB frequency?
Nope. You need to also tweak Hypertransport and memory dividers to keep the HT link around 2GHz and the memory below its rated speed; OCing your memory is a task for another day and you don't want to do it by mistake while OCing the CPU! 0 -
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I'd also like to know what PSU you have and if your mobo has a load of heatsinks around the edge of the board between the CPU socket and the rear I/O panel because I can't remember your build off-hand
Hopefully you'll be able to hit more than 3.3GHz without too much overvolting, cross your fingers
I can't remember much of the arcanery of OCing nVidia cards, mostly because I'm lazy and just use CCC for my AMD cards 0 -
I'm guessing the heatsinks are on the mobo are those small, cylindrical pieces, right? I could tell how much are on my mobo, but I'd have to take my comp apart.... I can tell you that it's an MSI 770-G45, AM3. (If you that's not enough I will take it apart and count 'em for yaI'd also like to know what PSU you have and if your mobo has a load of heatsinks around the edge of the board between the CPU socket and the rear I/O panel because I can't remember your build off-hand
Hopefully you'll be able to hit more than 3.3GHz without too much overvolting, cross your fingers
I can't remember much of the arcanery of OCing nVidia cards, mostly because I'm lazy and just use CCC for my AMD cards ) My PSU is a Super-Flower Amazon 650W I believe.
Thanks.0 -
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Ergh. Like most sub-€100 mobos the G45 lacks VRM heatsinks, although I know the existing VRMs are good for at least 150W on that mobo uncooled
The Amazon has loads of overhead though, so no constraints OCing the GTX460!
So you're fine for OCing in the purest sense but need to stay just a little conservative when upping CPU voltage Tell me when you're ready to fiddle with that beast 
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Ergh. Like most sub-€100 mobos the G45 lacks VRM heatsinks, although I know the existing VRMs are good for at least 150W on that mobo uncooled The Amazon has loads of overhead though, so no constraints OCing the GTX460!
So you're fine for OCing in the purest sense but need to stay just a little conservative when upping CPU voltage Tell me when you're ready to fiddle with that beast
Cool thanks. I guess if a game supports multi core processors, the quad-core 2.8 wouldn't be the bottle neck (more likely it'd be the GTX 460 768mb am I right?) I'm not about ocing RAM at the mo, it'd hardly be a bottleneck would it (4GB DDR3 @ 1333Mhz)?
This is an excellent guide I just found:
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=384756
Only question I have is how I "scale my clock frequency higher in small steps"? Do I use a program?? And what you're saying is I slowly up the voltage "in par" (relatively) with the frequency of the CPU (Mhz) (how do I do this btw?). Any other program i need to use to monitor mobo while testing for stability (apart from Prime95 and CoreTemp). My understanding now is that higher voltage allows greater "support" for a higher frequency speed, but too high a voltage can lead to hardware death, therefore when oving & ocing I should what kind of program to monitor temps? CoreTemp? Another one?
I also read that AMD CPU temp readings had an estimated offset of 10-15 degrees, is this true?
Also sorry for the incoherency of my first paragraph btw
I intend to OC as soon as I get a few hours free, ie next weekend
Anyway, thanks alot for all your help. 0 -
That's the tricky part - you have to make any changes to bus speed and voltage in the BIOS, then go back to Windows and see if stability testing throws up errors (instability) or heat issues. Constant to-and-fro-ing between BIOS tweakery and live testing makes it a time-consuming process
To gradually increase CPU speed you increase the FSB a little, making sure the memory divider is low enough to avoid accidentally OCing it, then stress test, then restart, go back into BIOS and adjust again. You can be more aggressive (bigger steps) early on - say, two steps of +20MHz, then +10MHz steps until you hit a snag, then overvolt a little and +5MHz from there. Bear in mind a 5MHz step in bus speed is another 70MHz CPU speed!
Personally I wouldn't overvolt too much; budget yourself a maximum speed and/or a voltage and work your way up slowly until one or the other imposes the limit. 3.5GHz may be a good target seeing as its a nice round number for a CPU with a x14 multi (so you'd need a bus speed of 250MHz - 250*14 = 3.5GHz). If you make it there with no voltage or heat issues (unlikely but you could be lucky) you could take it a little further or even stay there and undervolt the CPU to cut down on heat/noise/electricity :cool:0 -
That's the tricky part - you have to make any changes to bus speed and voltage in the BIOS, then go back to Windows and see if stability testing throws up errors (instability) or heat issues. Constant to-and-fro-ing between BIOS tweakery and live testing makes it a time-consuming process
To gradually increase CPU speed you increase the FSB a little, making sure the memory divider is low enough to avoid accidentally OCing it, then stress test, then restart, go back into BIOS and adjust again. You can be more aggressive (bigger steps) early on - say, two steps of +20MHz, then +10MHz steps until you hit a snag, then overvolt a little and +5MHz from there. Bear in mind a 5MHz step in bus speed is another 70MHz CPU speed!
Personally I wouldn't overvolt too much; budget yourself a maximum speed and/or a voltage and work your way up slowly until one or the other imposes the limit. 3.5GHz may be a good target seeing as its a nice round number for a CPU with a x14 multi (so you'd need a bus speed of 250MHz - 250*14 = 3.5GHz). If you make it there with no voltage or heat issues (unlikely but you could be lucky) you could take it a little further or even stay there and undervolt the CPU to cut down on heat/noise/electricity :cool:
OK great. Doesn't sound too bad now. Let me see if I have this right: I adjust the FSB speed in small increments, testing each time in windows for stability. This includes running a stress-test and watching CPU temps. If I get to a point where the system crashes a min or so into a stress-test (or even if the OS fails to boot altogether) I increase the voltage a bit., and re-run the stress-test using previously failed CPU OC settings. Then I rinse and repeat.
Sound good? I won't worry about overclocking above 3.5Ghz for now, so OCing should be safe, and I'll probably only have to worry about boosting the voltage a tiny bit, right? Would boosting the voltage in 0.025v increments be safe?
Just to confirm, I should be altering the CPU voltage only and the FSB frequency only? Unfortunately the CPU voltage is unselectable in my BIOS I'll havta to figure out how to "unlock" it so that it's selectable.....Would you have any idea what it could be?
Thanks a lot.0 -
Do you mean the voltage number is grayed out? Lots of people have had that - just put the cursor over it and use +/- keys to change the value
Past that you're gonna have to post pics because I'm not familiar with its BIOS and there don't seem to be any big reviews of the mobo, so no info on BIOS navigation for it on the web 0 -
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Do you mean the voltage number is grayed out? Lots of people have had that - just put the cursor over it and use +/- keys to change the value
Past that you're gonna have to post pics because I'm not familiar with its BIOS and there don't seem to be any big reviews of the mobo, so no info on BIOS navigation for it on the web
That's it exactly I ahd seen that but didn't bother to investigate as greyed out usually means inaccessible and I also didn't wanna mess with any settings just yet:) So can you confirm that the steps I posted previously are the ones to follow?
Thanks, you've been a great help. 0 -
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AFAIK grey seems to mean Auto on that mobo for some mad reason...
:p
It does....It says something along the lines of "+/- & shift to change voltage" to the right, although it stays at auto. I'll try and tackle it at the weekend. Can you confirm the steps that I outlined in my previous post as clarification?
Thanks a lot, you've been a great help. 0
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