AMD Phenom X4 9750 2.4GHz Overclocking
- Thread starter kYuKi
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You should OC in the Bios of the motherboard (I wouldnt recommend OC'n your cpu using software). I can help you..... how much info do you need (should i go through the entire OC/stability test process or is there specific areas you need help with).
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OC'ing with software (unless it changes your BIOS, and I mean permanently, not just for that session of Windows) causes some interesting results.
I can also help you with OC'ing your processor. I'd just need to know your motherboard, too. And a picture of your BIOS would be nice.
I can also help you with OC'ing your processor. I'd just need to know your motherboard, too. And a picture of your BIOS would be nice.
I've tried manually going into the bios but some areas are grayed out, including setting a master password for the bios as well. I'll post back with pictures of my motherboard and bios.
My Bios: http://img683.imageshack.us/i/mybios.jpg/
My Motherboard: http://img217.imageshack.us/i/mymotherboard.jpg/
My Bios: http://img683.imageshack.us/i/mybios.jpg/
My Motherboard: http://img217.imageshack.us/i/mymotherboard.jpg/
Last edited:
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- Aug 7, 2010
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- 618
Heres a good guide I found that will hopefully help you out. there is a lot of info here but hopefully it will help you in achieving a good overclock. If you have questions or run into any issues, let me know and ill do what i can to assist.
Reference clock overclocking:
We'll start with the old school way of OC'in, as this is the one that most people struggle with. Start out by raising the reference clock a few MHz at a time (try 5 or so to begin with). The overall clock speed is based on the reference clock and the CPU multiplier, so by changing this, you will be raising this by 60-100MHz per step. We do it a little bit at a time, because when instabilities surface, it is infinitely easier to find out what is the cause, when you only have one or two things that should be causing it. After each increase in speed, you need to check for stability.
Now, to be considered fully stable, you need to run a program like Orthos, OCCT or prime95 for at least 6-12 hours, but while working with your OC, you don't need to run it near that long. You're just trying to find out if its even close to being stable at the speed it is at right now. In general, if I pass one of the above tests for more than 5 minutes, I'll reboot and continue pushing the OC. Run the longer tests when you think you're where you want to end up, and if it fails before those 6-12 hours, then lower the OC, and try running it again. Otherwise, you're risking running an unstable system for every day, 24/7 usage. Trust me, you do not want to do that, its not worth what it costs for those few additional MHz.
*(primarily you risk corrupting your operating system, as a system that will run your OS, but not pass a stability test will start to perpetuate small errors, and those will eventually be saved to the HDD. That translates into one day your computer runs just fine, the next it wont boot, and there is really nothing you can do to salvage the OS other than to try and save your data, and then reinstall).
Following this pattern, you should likely get the reference clock to about 220-235 before you run into any problems (not a guarantee, but that is based on my experiences here). So now we have a system that is unstable. I will tell you right now, that about 85-90% of the time when you become unstable at this point, its because of the ram being overclocked. Because you have been OC'in with the reference clock, you have also been raising the speed of the ram, because like I said earlier, it is tied to pretty much everything. You can check if it is the ram by running memtest (tests 5 and 8 are the most rigorous, so we usually recommend you run those about 30 minutes each). You should know pretty quick if the ram is your problem.
What to do when you encounter ram instability:
To get you past system instability in this case, all you need to do is lower the ram speed setting in the BIOS to the next lowest setting. (If you're running your ram at DDR1333 in the BIOS, then change the setting to DDR1066 for example). The ram speed setting is what we like to call a “divider”. In 'normal speak' this means that the speed of the ram is based on a simple formula. When you change the speed setting to a lower value, you are really just dividing by a larger number, so the speed of the ram goes down.
North Bridge, Hypertransport and IMC:
So now you have likely overcome your first instability, and are just cruising right along. The next issue you are likely to have when doing this, is either the NB (NorthBridge) or HT (HyperTransport). The NB effects the speed that the ram communicates with the CPU, while the HT deals with how fast the CPU communicates with the rest of the components on the motherboard (it essential replaced the FSB for those of you intel (or pre socket 754 AMD) owners out there). The NB and HT are related, and in fact, you can't set the NB speed any higher than the HT speed. Overclocking the HT speed has been shown to provide only marginal improvements in performance (perhaps in cases when multiple high end GPU's are being used). In fact, most of the time people find that there is almost negligible difference in performance between overclocked and underclocked HT's. This is primarily because the HT has such a large bandwidth, that it is rarely saturated with information, so an increase or decrease in speed often is hard to notice.
*The HT is really more important for multi-socket Servers, as the communications between CPU's and components becomes much more important.
The NB is where things can get quite confusing for people. The NB is between the CPU and the IMC, and the IMC is the Integrated Memory Controller. So you can see that having this go faster will make the memory faster. So obviously the NB speed can be very beneficial to increase. The memory access times and read/writes often go down quite a bit when the NB is OC'd. In fact, this is part of why the memory speeds of the PhII's are so much faster than the original phenoms. From tests and reviews that I have seen, you can expect that most AM3 chips will hit 2.4-2.8GHz on the NB, although that will likely require some additional CPU/NB voltage and/or cooling to ensure stability.
Right now we're still on our quest for more clock speed, so if you encounter instability right now, try lowering the NB and HT multipliers, so that their speeds are closer to the stock values. You should be fine if the values are within a few hundred MHz or so (obviously lower speeds would work as well).
If the OC is still unstable:
If you do that and the OC is still unstable, the chances are just that you need more voltage (usually marked as the Vcore in the BIOS). While what increasing the voltage does is actually quite technical, its effects are essentially to help stabilize an unstable processor, but it does this at the price of increased heat, and higher power consumption. In general, there is a point of diminishing return for increasing voltage for higher clock speed. You should be able to notice this as it will take much larger increases in voltage for the same increase in clock speed. Regardless, increase the voltage a little (I generally do one increment at a time, as you don't want to increase the voltage more than necessary) and press on. Keep in mind that you should keep an eye on the temps, and that we usually strive to stay under about 55c for the loaded temps (the temps while you're doing the stress testing).
*Note: Check AMD for the max voltage for you chip. It is also recommended that for a 24/7 overclock, you decrease that voltage by .05 to .1 volt.
Continue to do this until you have reached a point where no matter what you do, you cant seem to get any farther with the OC, no matter what you try to adjust at least one thing will hold you back. Sometimes it will be voltage, for others it will be temps, and even for others it will be the processor has hit its maximum performance.
Once you get your max clock speed, try changing some of the settings, and see if you can't squeak a little more performance out of it, by raising the ram, HT and NB speed settings one at a time (one at a time is important, otherwise figuring out what caused what is almost impossible). You can try increasing the voltage to each of those if they are borderline stable, and that can often give you that little bit that you needed to get the OC stabilized. I will say that generally raising the NB voltage has more of an effect than the others, especially at higher reference clock values.
Once you're set on your OC, don't forget to run a stability test for at least 6-12hrs.
**Credit for the guide goes to Logan at OCN. I dont have the time to type somthing this extensive up. lol
Reference clock overclocking:
We'll start with the old school way of OC'in, as this is the one that most people struggle with. Start out by raising the reference clock a few MHz at a time (try 5 or so to begin with). The overall clock speed is based on the reference clock and the CPU multiplier, so by changing this, you will be raising this by 60-100MHz per step. We do it a little bit at a time, because when instabilities surface, it is infinitely easier to find out what is the cause, when you only have one or two things that should be causing it. After each increase in speed, you need to check for stability.
Now, to be considered fully stable, you need to run a program like Orthos, OCCT or prime95 for at least 6-12 hours, but while working with your OC, you don't need to run it near that long. You're just trying to find out if its even close to being stable at the speed it is at right now. In general, if I pass one of the above tests for more than 5 minutes, I'll reboot and continue pushing the OC. Run the longer tests when you think you're where you want to end up, and if it fails before those 6-12 hours, then lower the OC, and try running it again. Otherwise, you're risking running an unstable system for every day, 24/7 usage. Trust me, you do not want to do that, its not worth what it costs for those few additional MHz.
*(primarily you risk corrupting your operating system, as a system that will run your OS, but not pass a stability test will start to perpetuate small errors, and those will eventually be saved to the HDD. That translates into one day your computer runs just fine, the next it wont boot, and there is really nothing you can do to salvage the OS other than to try and save your data, and then reinstall).
Following this pattern, you should likely get the reference clock to about 220-235 before you run into any problems (not a guarantee, but that is based on my experiences here). So now we have a system that is unstable. I will tell you right now, that about 85-90% of the time when you become unstable at this point, its because of the ram being overclocked. Because you have been OC'in with the reference clock, you have also been raising the speed of the ram, because like I said earlier, it is tied to pretty much everything. You can check if it is the ram by running memtest (tests 5 and 8 are the most rigorous, so we usually recommend you run those about 30 minutes each). You should know pretty quick if the ram is your problem.
What to do when you encounter ram instability:
To get you past system instability in this case, all you need to do is lower the ram speed setting in the BIOS to the next lowest setting. (If you're running your ram at DDR1333 in the BIOS, then change the setting to DDR1066 for example). The ram speed setting is what we like to call a “divider”. In 'normal speak' this means that the speed of the ram is based on a simple formula. When you change the speed setting to a lower value, you are really just dividing by a larger number, so the speed of the ram goes down.
North Bridge, Hypertransport and IMC:
So now you have likely overcome your first instability, and are just cruising right along. The next issue you are likely to have when doing this, is either the NB (NorthBridge) or HT (HyperTransport). The NB effects the speed that the ram communicates with the CPU, while the HT deals with how fast the CPU communicates with the rest of the components on the motherboard (it essential replaced the FSB for those of you intel (or pre socket 754 AMD) owners out there). The NB and HT are related, and in fact, you can't set the NB speed any higher than the HT speed. Overclocking the HT speed has been shown to provide only marginal improvements in performance (perhaps in cases when multiple high end GPU's are being used). In fact, most of the time people find that there is almost negligible difference in performance between overclocked and underclocked HT's. This is primarily because the HT has such a large bandwidth, that it is rarely saturated with information, so an increase or decrease in speed often is hard to notice.
*The HT is really more important for multi-socket Servers, as the communications between CPU's and components becomes much more important.
The NB is where things can get quite confusing for people. The NB is between the CPU and the IMC, and the IMC is the Integrated Memory Controller. So you can see that having this go faster will make the memory faster. So obviously the NB speed can be very beneficial to increase. The memory access times and read/writes often go down quite a bit when the NB is OC'd. In fact, this is part of why the memory speeds of the PhII's are so much faster than the original phenoms. From tests and reviews that I have seen, you can expect that most AM3 chips will hit 2.4-2.8GHz on the NB, although that will likely require some additional CPU/NB voltage and/or cooling to ensure stability.
Right now we're still on our quest for more clock speed, so if you encounter instability right now, try lowering the NB and HT multipliers, so that their speeds are closer to the stock values. You should be fine if the values are within a few hundred MHz or so (obviously lower speeds would work as well).
If the OC is still unstable:
If you do that and the OC is still unstable, the chances are just that you need more voltage (usually marked as the Vcore in the BIOS). While what increasing the voltage does is actually quite technical, its effects are essentially to help stabilize an unstable processor, but it does this at the price of increased heat, and higher power consumption. In general, there is a point of diminishing return for increasing voltage for higher clock speed. You should be able to notice this as it will take much larger increases in voltage for the same increase in clock speed. Regardless, increase the voltage a little (I generally do one increment at a time, as you don't want to increase the voltage more than necessary) and press on. Keep in mind that you should keep an eye on the temps, and that we usually strive to stay under about 55c for the loaded temps (the temps while you're doing the stress testing).
*Note: Check AMD for the max voltage for you chip. It is also recommended that for a 24/7 overclock, you decrease that voltage by .05 to .1 volt.
Continue to do this until you have reached a point where no matter what you do, you cant seem to get any farther with the OC, no matter what you try to adjust at least one thing will hold you back. Sometimes it will be voltage, for others it will be temps, and even for others it will be the processor has hit its maximum performance.
Once you get your max clock speed, try changing some of the settings, and see if you can't squeak a little more performance out of it, by raising the ram, HT and NB speed settings one at a time (one at a time is important, otherwise figuring out what caused what is almost impossible). You can try increasing the voltage to each of those if they are borderline stable, and that can often give you that little bit that you needed to get the OC stabilized. I will say that generally raising the NB voltage has more of an effect than the others, especially at higher reference clock values.
Once you're set on your OC, don't forget to run a stability test for at least 6-12hrs.
**Credit for the guide goes to Logan at OCN. I dont have the time to type somthing this extensive up. lol
Last edited:
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Wait, before you even try. Are you using a aftermarket cooler or just stock?
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Also very true. Before attemping any OC, you must make sure that you have ample cooling (usually aftermarket cooling is a must, but a stock cooler can afford you maybe 200-300 mhz) and a good enough PSU.
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Aftermarket cooling is usually required, yes, but I could almost get 1GHz out of my stock cooler for my Athlon II. The AMD stock coolers aren't half bad, actually. Intel stock cooler blows, though. And not in the good way. >.<
