24/7 Overclocking Advice

[Firesauce]

Good Morning, All

I have recently built a new rig and thanks hivizman's quick and helpful input i resolved a small yet embarrassing issue about a month ago, to only be met with a new issue. While i took a great deal of time choosing my parts i hastily choose 2 GTX 580s and bought a processor that cant seem to handle cards as well as i hoped. I am currently running the following

AMD Phenom II X4 980 Blackbox edition @ 3.7GHz " currently running Stock"
Crosshair V motherboard
EVGA GTX 580x2 SLI config
Corsair H100 Water cooler With Arctic Silver 5 Compound
Corsair Force Series 90GB SSD P/n CSSD-F90GBGT-BK
Western Digital 500gig Caviar Blue for storage
Corsair Professional series 1200 watt PSU
Corsair Vengeance 16 gig 1600 DDR3 Duel Channel Kit ( Down to 8 gig for a more stable OC )
Antec 1100 Case all 120mm Fan slots occupied

I haven't had the need to Overclock for quite some time and would like to request some aid in creating a stable 24/7 to lessen the rather large bottleneck my processor is causing in most of my games i play.
I had some free time last night and was met with some solid success with the following Settings

CPU 3845Mhz
Vcore 1.45
Ram @ 1600 with 8-8-8-24 Timings
Dram Voltage 1.6
CPU/NB @ 2600
CPU/NB voltage 1.30
CPU multiplier @ 19
Bus @ 202

A quick 30 min Prime95 before bed and ended with

CPU @ 30c idle and 51c at full load

I apologize for the lack of pictures but i'm currently on break at work. I should be able to have some up around 6pm USA EST time tonight. Thank you all for your time.

[Firesauce]

Had some success this evening with the following settings


CPU 3800
Vcore 1.475
Bus 200
CPU/NB 2400 @ 1.25v
HT 2000
Ram @ 1600 running 8-8-8-24 1.575v

Good clean boot and a 30 min prime95 to check for ram stability

Sisoftware Bandwidth benchmark 12.5 GB/s stock to 15 GB/s
Heaven 3.0 with Ultra settings 84 FPS
99% GPU core usage on both cards

Temps
CPU 29c-31c idle, 54c - 57c Full load
Case temp 32c
NB 41c
GPU 1 39c idle 72c Full load
GPU 2 35c idle 73c Full load

I'm working 3rd shift today so i will have time today to put up Screenshots. On a side note when ever i OC the system with the Bus multiplier i have some really odd shutdown behavior. The system will shutdown as normal but all the system fans still run at full blast... its really odd. If i use the CPU multiplier it doesn't seem to do it.

Update 5-16

Currently Running Stable with the following

CPU 4000Mhz
Vcore 1.4562
CPU/NB 2400
CPU/NB 1.25v
Dram running 1600 with 8-8-8-24 timings @ 1.6v

15 Min Prime95 for Voltage check

Vcore 1.475v under load

CPU/NB 1.30v Under load

Dram 1.61v Under load

Wprime 1024k for a temp check and ended with 33c idle 57c full load

2 cycles of Memtest86 0 errors

Sisoftware Bandwidth Benchmark 12.23 GB/s Stock -15GB/s with OC

Heaven 3.0 On Ultra settings with normal tessellation
83 FPS no Vsync 59.8 avg with Vsync
GPU 1 39c idle 72c Full load
GPU 2 35c idle 73c Full load

99% Core use on both cards and about 6 hours of World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, COD MM3 and Left For dead. I have most definitively achieved what i had set out to do and i hope this will help someone else. Thx again HiVizMan for your time.

[Firesauce]

"Bump" to show updated edit

[HiVizMan]

I like the incremental way that you are constantly improving and tightening up on things Firesauce. Please do keep updating us here. 🙂

[Claviger]

On that CPU you will likely hit a massive voltage wall around 4.2 ghz, which is where I would stop since going higher makes a lot of heat and is very hard to keep under 62 at 100% load.

Keep in mind, OCing much more won't alleviate the bottleneck significantly more than you already have.

[Firesauce]

@ Claviger

I agree, to keep CPU core frequency and the ram paired up with CPU/NB at that speed would require far to much voltage. While i would enjoy min/maxing my current setup its not worth it do to the risk at that level of heat. I'm slowly gathering cheap parts for a rig for that purpose and in time should be able to. I have however made an adjustment once again to my current 24/7 setup. By setting my core frequency to 4.0 i was getting instability. I have since jumped the CPU/NB clock to 2600 and have 0 issues. i picked up another gig of memory bandwidth and some rather incredible response from my system. I'm very pleased with my progress and hope to continue to push a bit farther with the new test rig in the works.

[Claviger]

I managed to get my 960T to stabilize at 4475mhz on my Crosshair V Formula, incredible little chips. There are a few odd tweaks out there that most people skip over to assist in stabilizing at very high frequency. The guide Raja posted in the Crosshair section has a lot of data that applies to ALL boards when overclocking Phenom IIs, you should read it.

The problem I was running into was that around 4400, my chip would not crash or bsod, however I could not get P95 to pass, no matter what voltage was tried (I tried all the way up to 1.765 :O) . I read that thread and tweaked some settings and ended up stable at 4475 @ 1.6vcore. The solution was the adjustment mentioned here by Raja, he has a nice little graph to explain it 🙂

"DRAM VREF CA on CPU: Adjusting this reference voltage can help increase stability during stress tests - if rounding errors are reported above or below the expected numerical value (Prime95, Super Pi). If the rounding error shows a value higher than expected was returned from DRAM, then increase the Vref to 50.5% and see if it helps. The same principal can be used to lower Vref if the value returned is lower than the expected value. "

Crosshair V Formula Overclocking guide. -Raja@ASUS

[Firesauce]

Good Evening Everyone,

It has been some time since my previous post; however, I have some updates as well as a new inquiry as well. I have been obsessively working as of late and less time to continue working on my overclock. I am still running the following:

CPU 4000Mhz
Vcore 1.4562
CPU/NB 2400
CPU/NB 1.25v
Dram running 1600 with 8-8-8-24 timings @ 1.6v

I have also upgraded my case to the Obsidian 800d and I am very pleased. " Will get some pictures up asap" I am also welcoming a new FX 8150 to arrive soon and am in the market for a new monitor. With the introduction of the new 8150, would a 120hz monitor be a wise investment? I have a sneaking suspicion I am further limiting my GPU setup due to my current display of only 60hz.


Thanks again for your time.

[HiVizMan]

There should be no negative impact on your graphic solution based on your current system.