AMD Phenom II 955 BE @ 3.8Ghz

[Safearus]

Well, I've O/C'd my CPU now. Needa re-O/C my GPU, hopefully they stay stable together...

• Bus: 238
• Multi: x16
• Voltage: 1.475

CPUID Validator

Think I can push it to 4Ghz?
And running Prime95 now.

[geokilla]

Very, very nice. Why don't you overclock using the Multi though? Isn't it easier?

What's your temps? And how long have you been stable? I'd say anything below 65C is good, and in terms of stability, how long has it been Prime 95ing? I say run 4 hours OCCT, and if it's good, then you're good to go.

[Safearus]

Well, I know it runs @ 43C when not under load. Hoping temps aren't going through the roof. Was saving the multi for pushing to/past the 4Ghz mark. Will end up using it if need be though. I'll check temps while running Prime95 in a moment and edit the post for ya.

EDIT: Well temps aren't bad at all. Warm in here and only 54C 100% loaded. The downside... 20 mins into Prime95 BSOD followed by a reboot... didn't even have time to mark down the STOP hex value.... damnnit... back to the drawing board.

[Safearus]

So... tried pushing a lil more voltage in... and well... let's say nothing liked it. POST screen reboot cycle... I'm in love with this CMOS reset button on my motherboard now...

[Cowboy]

From my experience, temperature scales much better than voltage with these chips. Also, if your shooting for 3.8 ghz stable, try to mess around with your NB settings so that it is running @ 2.4ghz effective. Also, believe it or not, but looser timings on your ram help stability... but that impacts performance.

[Silvgearx]

what about your north bridge volts? HT link?

i am interested cause i want to overclock my AMD too

[Cowboy]

Originally Posted by 5ILVgeARX

what about your north bridge volts? HT link?

i am interested cause i want to overclock my AMD too

I've never had to go above 1.4v on the NB... even when running my cpu @4.5ghz

As for the HT link, I have no idea how it works exactly... I do know that it ALWAYS has to be a less than or equal to the NB clock, never higher. I've heard some people saying that reducing the HT link on purpose increases stability, but again... the HT link is the speed of the connection between the ram and the cpu and things like that, so reducing the clock reduces performance.

[raxen]

As Cowboy says, if you're trying to shoot for 4.0ghz, you should have the CPU-NB at 2.6ghz or higher.

PhenomII's hate heat. Unfortunately, I believe you're heating the "heat wall" at 54C. Have you tried backing down on the Vcore and increasing CPU-NB frequencies instead to stabilize?

HTlink is actually the bus speed between your CPU and your southbridge. In other words, theoretically, reducing HTlink speeds has a negative effect on your graphics performance only. On the other hand, IIRC, Tony at OCZ actually concluded overclocking the HTlink led to lower 3dmark scores. The sweet spot is 2000-2200mhz. Nothing more.

[Safearus]

NM voltage was matching CPU. I do think I'll be trying a few lower voltage settings mind you. Maybe not having CPU/NB in sync voltage wise.
@Cowboy: I had pushed my HT to 2400Mhz and nothing came of it.
I have an odd feeling this may have a lot to do with temps... possibly time to speed up my CPU fan beyond 50%, or add another 120MM Fan, considering I'm only running a Push config on my CM Hyper 212+

Thanks for the information and ideas guys. I'll hit this thread again if I hit above 3.6Ghz stable again... at least I have that with 24hrs Prime95 and 6hrs OCCT.

[geokilla]

Hmm, are you running a 64 bit OS? It seems that Phenom II have a problem with going over 4Ghz when running a 64 bit OS.

6 hours OCCT stable is good enough for me. Run Memtest and see if it passes or not.