Help Pushing AMD 955 Black Edition

[Surfer_2099]

Hey! Thanks for the ideas. I'll give the extra voltages a try either tomorrow night or Saturday night.

Cheers!
Willing_To_Push_It_Canuck :)

1.475 might not be enough... goto 1.6 and slowly bring it down. These processors will do 1.9 volts stable with super cooling heh.

[Surfer_2099]

Update:

I managed to boot into windows with some pretty extreme settings. I pushed the CPU Voltage to 1.55 and the NB Voltage to 1.3. I then left the HT multiplier alone and changed the RAM ratio to keep it near 1333. I then cranked up the FSB to 220 and set the multiplier to 18.5. I booted into Windows 7 and checked my CPUID and it was reading 4072 Mhz.

Impressed as heck, I fired up 3dMark06 and tried to run a session however, it crashed into the Firefly demo. Unfortunately, I was unable to boot into Windows anymore at that setting. I wish I had taken my screen shot before trying to run the benchmark, but ah well. So... I started clocking it down again to something that I consider "solidly stable" (ie Prime 95 Blended and FurBench simultaneously) for at least a few hours. I went to bed having set things to STOCK again to try something new today.

As it stands now, I am at home (daughter was home from school - no NOT H1N1) and so between working at home on my laptop, I've been running stability tests on my PC. It just seems that I can't get any real stability above 3800 Mhz, so I have decided to accept that and try to get the best and most stable clock I can in the 3700 range while using the least voltage increases necessary across the board.

As it stands now, I am testing 220x17 (3740 MHz) at 1.42 Volts. I have clocked down the RAM ratio (keep it near 1333 or under seems to work best atm), and upped the NB voltage a "tad" to 1.2 volts. Since the bus is at 220, I did not touch the HT multiplier.

As we speak, I am currently running a 3 instance session of blended Prime95 (that's about 75% across the 4 processors) only before running all 4 cores 100%. I honestly am not convinced that I will not get a BSOD when I run all four in a bit, but we'll have to just wait and see.

Cheers!
Preparing_To_Double_Post_Canuck :)

[Surfer_2099]

Double Post:

Here is a currently what seems to be a stable OC I have managed to put together using reasonably safe measures.

It's a bit small so -- CPU (18x210) = 3789 MHz ; GPU 875 / 1150 ; 3DMark06 = 20564

Cheers!
Happy_Canuck :)

[gingerbee]

nice what's the temps like

[Surfer_2099]

I just ran another 3DMark06 with CUPIDHWMonitor running in the background and this is what was logged.

Cheers!
Decent_Temps_Canuck :)

Very nice dude... is your system air cooled or water cooled I forgot to check your other posts.

[Surfer_2099]

Thanksf for the kind words. This is she ... http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/gallery/24620-cm-690-am3-955-build.html . Lots of airflow and a Corsair H50 CPU cooler.

As for performance, I ran FarCry2 Small Ranch just a while ago before finally finishing HL2- Episode 2 and this is my result with the Current OC (CPU & GPU). All in all, I am very satisfied with the results. I got 60fps minimum on Very High settings which is nice IMO. I think I am going to leave it like this for a bit and see how things run for a while. Obviously, my goal will be to get the CPU to 3.8 or higher, but that will wait for a bit. For now, I am going to run some benches and see how things stack up.

Cheers!
HL2_Canuck :)

and all these intel fanboys eh... welcome back amd i say!

[Surfer_2099]

Hey all!

I know I said I'd leave things alone for a bit, but I was so close to the next tier, that I could not help myself. I've gotten my CPU to 3.8 Ghz with what seems to be decent stability and without having to change any other settings significantly.

My question is this however... Ever since I have been above 3.65 Ghz, I can run other stress tests successfully, however 4 instances of Prime95 at once plant one of my cores pretty quickly. However, I have been playing games, using my PC and pretty much running benches and whatnot for the past two days pretty much non-stop and I have not crashed or frozen.

I ran Everest Stress, and AMD Overdrive Stress for hours at a time and no issues. Granted, at 3.65 Ghz, I could run 4 instances of Prime95 for 12 hours without issue but is that really a realistic Stress test? Is it like testing pipes that are rated for 150psi by blowing 1200psi worth of water through them even though you know they will never even see 100psi?

As it stands, with the 3807 OC and my Radeon 5850 OCd to 850 / 1150, I can run any benchmark and game I have in my stable without issue. But am I just looking to make myself feel better about where I am at in so far as stability, or am I really just fooling myself?

Finally, how would you rate this Stress test?

Three instances of Prime95 Blended with FurMark running at the same time for x hours? Would that be a more realistic "Real World" Stress test or no?

I look forward to hearing some opinions on this.

Cheers!
Uncertain_Canuck :)