I have an AMD Phenom II 550BE which has the extra two cores unlocked and a Gelid Tranquillo mounted on a MSI 790GX-G65 with 4GB of G Skill DDR3 1333MHz Ram. I have overclocked the CPU by using 225 clock speed and 16.5 multiplier giving 3.71MHz on all 4 cores. At these settings the memory speed is 1500MHz but if adjust the Dram ratio to the next lower setting of 1:2.66 I only get a speed of 1200MHz. So far there has been no ill effects running at the higher frequency but I don't want to do long term damage. The system does benchmark better at the higher setting. In the Bios there is a reference: 'Advance Clock Calibration' (all cores) and underneath it defaults to: 'Value All Cores (-2% ) Could someone explain what this means and what happens if the value is adjusted either up or further down. Also the voltages in the bios are: CPU VDD Voltage (which I have adjusted to 1.4) CPU-NB VDD Voltage (Auto) CPU Voltage (Auto) CPU-NB Voltage (Auto) Dram Voltage (Auto) NB Voltage (Auto) HT Link Voltage (Auto) SB Voltage (Auto) What this relates to in AMD Overdrive is: CPU VID 1.4 NB VID 1.15 Memory VDDQ 1.5 CPU VDDC 1.432 NB Core Volt 1.1 CPU HT Volt 1.2 I have run Prime 95 without any fails and all temperatures are good. Should I adjust any of these values either in the Bios or via AMD Overdrive for long term reliability? Sorry to be long winded but any advice would be appreciated.
well done on unlocking. can you manually set your ram to 1333? if so leave youre fsb to 200 and just adjust your multiplier. if your running stable at that speed with just 1.4v you should have no problem upping that to 3.8/3.9 with a bit more voltage. like ive said in other posts had these chips up to 1.7v and over 4.2.
Running 1.4 on an AMD rig is just fine and the Gskill overclocks seriously well. I can push my trident well past 180Mhz with out any probs at all. The 550BE is a really good overclocker you should be able to get 4Ghz or pretty close to it no trouble. I've used the AMD overdrive for overclocking in the past and it tends to err on the side of caution, you can do much better yourself from the bios.
You won't do long term damage, if it works faster then you bought and is stable, that's great! Just leave it auto. ACC was more critical with the first generation of 65nm Phenoms, not the more recent 45nm Phenom IIs. Auto will be fine. Both do the same thing: BIOS or Overdrive. Is that memory VDDO the stock voltage? All those voltages are fine - keep it if temps are good If you push for more HT clock then obviously adding CPU HT Volt helps, as well, but if you've unlocked 4 cores at 3.71 that's good going!
Thanks guys, your comments reassured me to experiment a bit more and these are the figures I have so far achieved. I ran Prime 95 for two and a half hours and Mem Test for an hour with no fails or faults. I am dead chuffed as 18 months ago I knew nothing about building a PC never mind the possibility's of actually getting something for nothing by overclocking. Just goes to show, even though I am well into my 50's, you're never too old to learn.
Well that threw me. I guessed from the way you were asking questions that you were pretty young and this was your first venture into tuning up a PC. Nice one fella have some rep.
Nice work there! Makes feel ashamed to be sticking with stock voltage at 3.6ghz on my x4 955. What are your temps like with the gelid?
I have 2 front and 1 side intake fans and the Gelid fan connected to a Sythe Kaze Server (really good fan controller providing your case isn't at floor level) and the top and rear standard fit Antec exhaust fans set to medium and my temps are very low with the CPU rarely above 40 and the GPU (also o/c'ed with the help of Afterburner) peaking at about 50/55 degrees. The whole system is also very quiet, especially the Gelid. As I type this the Sythe is reading no temp above 36 (GPU) and no fan above 570 rpm.
