My sad, sad overclocking attempts with my 965

G

guachi

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 7, 2010
Messages
132
Ironically, the computer locked up running Prime95 while I was attempting to log in to post...

I own a Phenom II X4 965. I love AMD as they are a great value. I've owned eight CPUs and seven of them have been AMD.

That being said, I got a really bad chip for overclocking. To refresh your memory, stock voltage and clock frequency on the chip are 1.4v and 3.4 GHz. I bought a Hyper 212+ HSF to, at a minimum, lower volume and hopefully overclock the chip more.

So far, the highest stable speed I've achieved is 3.78 GHz through upping the bus from 200 MHz to 210 and the multiplier from 17.0x to 18.0x. And the voltage has to be at least 1.4625v as it locked up at 1.45v running Prime95.

I've seen reports of people hitting 3.8 GHz on stock voltage, so why don't you guys give me some of your success stories and make me feel worse... :) Or commiserate with me and post your failures. :p
 
guachi said:
Ironically, the computer locked up running Prime95 while I was attempting to log in to post...

I own a Phenom II X4 965. I love AMD as they are a great value. I've owned eight CPUs and seven of them have been AMD.

That being said, I got a really bad chip for overclocking. To refresh your memory, stock voltage and clock frequency on the chip are 1.4v and 3.4 GHz. I bought a Hyper 212+ HSF to, at a minimum, lower volume and hopefully overclock the chip more.

So far, the highest stable speed I've achieved is 3.78 GHz through upping the bus from 200 MHz to 210 and the multiplier from 17.0x to 18.0x. And the voltage has to be at least 1.4625v as it locked up at 1.45v running Prime95.

I've seen reports of people hitting 3.8 GHz on stock voltage, so why don't you guys give me some of your success stories and make me feel worse... :) Or commiserate with me and post your failures. :p
Click to expand...


When you are overclocking, it is always the luck of the draw sometimes. The Core i7 930's are a good example as many overclock incredibly well, but some are duds. Folding1 is running at 3.46ghz, but seems to hit a wall at 3.67ghz as anything beyond that needed a massive increase in vcore that generated too much heat for my taste.

My PII 965 in my gaming rig will only hit 3.5ghz on stock voltage. It will hit 3.7 with just a very small increase in vcore, but I am still running the stock HSF and don't want to push it. I thought stock voltage on the 125 watt PII 965's was 1.35 volts? That is what it is set to in my bios.
 
that is nto the stock voltage for the 965.....its 1.3 or lower......


edit: as to help your overclocking, do multiplier overclocking, put it to 200x19 and you hvae your 3.8 .... you may need 1.45v set in bios to get that
 
W.Feather said:
that is nto the stock voltage for the 965.....its 1.3 or lower......


edit: as to help your overclocking, do multiplier overclocking, put it to 200x19 and you hvae your 3.8 .... you may need 1.45v set in bios to get that
Click to expand...

Hmmm.......

I didn't know that as I thought it was 1.35. I'll have to check into this next time I have a chance to fire the gaming rig up. Havn't had a chance to game on it in a while now. If stock voltage on the 965 is 1.3 or lower, then I should be hitting much better clocks than 3.5ghz at 1.35 vcore.
 
Before I posted, I looked all over for what the stock voltage was and I saw several answers. But I do know that when everything is on auto, my CPU says it's at 1.4v. I wish I could find something official to go on, though.
 
Remove the 212, clean, re-apply thermal paste, and re-seat. And throw a second fan on that 212!
Does your case have tidy cables and more then adequate air flow?
 
W.Feather said:
that is nto the stock voltage for the 965.....its 1.3 or lower......


edit: as to help your overclocking, do multiplier overclocking, put it to 200x19 and you hvae your 3.8 .... you may need 1.45v set in bios to get that
Click to expand...


stock voltage is 1.325v.. default safe voltage that most motherboards use is 1.35v but it all depends on the motherboard.. my 780G had a stock voltage of 1.25v luckly it was just enough for me to get into the bios screen to change the voltage then reboot.. some have it set at 1.35 some 1.4v but very few have it set correctly at 1.325v..


as far as the overclock your not pushing the voltage enough.. 1.46v is not enough voltage anything over 3.8ghz.. the x4's hit a wall at 3.8ghz where it needs a lot more voltage to exceed it.. you should be able to hit 3.8ghz @ 1.48-1.49v and above 3.8ghz at 1.51-1.55v.. safe maximum is 1.55v.. the x6's do not suffer from this same problem until you try to exceed 4ghz which is the voltage wall on those processors when using air cooling.. the cooler you can make a phenom II run the lower the voltage you can run for the same overclock.. which is why you see some hitting 4ghz on the 955 and 965 C3's well below 1.5v on water cooling.. heck even the x6 will do 4.5ghz below 1.4v on water cooling but wont do more then 4.2-4.3ghz at 1.55v on air..
 
That's probably it. I know that when I first had my gaming rig built and went into the bios for the first time, it read 1.35 volts for vcore. The most I could get was a measly overclock of 3.5ghz without having to raise the voltage. 3.6ghz booted and even ran Crysis fine, but it locked the computer up in Prime95 at stock voltage. I was going to get a really nice air cooler and do some overclocking, but it doesn't seem to make sense as the boost in performance just isn't that big. Might as well just put that money towards the Thuban I will undoubtably upgrade to at some point.

sirmonkey1985 said:
stock voltage is 1.325v.. default safe voltage that most motherboards use is 1.35v but it all depends on the motherboard.. my 780G had a stock voltage of 1.25v luckly it was just enough for me to get into the bios screen to change the voltage then reboot.. some have it set at 1.35 some 1.4v but very few have it set correctly at 1.325v..


as far as the overclock your not pushing the voltage enough.. 1.46v is not enough voltage anything over 3.8ghz.. the x4's hit a wall at 3.8ghz where it needs a lot more voltage to exceed it.. you should be able to hit 3.8ghz @ 1.48-1.49v and above 3.8ghz at 1.51-1.55v.. safe maximum is 1.55v.. the x6's do not suffer from this same problem until you try to exceed 4ghz which is the voltage wall on those processors when using air cooling.. the cooler you can make a phenom II run the lower the voltage you can run for the same overclock.. which is why you see some hitting 4ghz on the 955 and 965 C3's well below 1.5v on water cooling.. heck even the x6 will do 4.5ghz below 1.4v on water cooling but wont do more then 4.2-4.3ghz at 1.55v on air..
Click to expand...
 
There is always the alternative. My 965 seemed to hit a wall at just over 3.7 so I figured that it wasn't worth the heat and additional fan noise. I undervolted mine and it's happy at 3.4 with 1.225v. It's pulling just under 103w at full tilt.
 
at that 4.0 OC what voltage were you at? It looks like 1.4...

with that H50 you would be fine going to 1.5v on the CPU(my Tuban maxes at 46 with a H50 push/pull in a room at 87f...so you can go that far with a 965), and probably get up to 4.3 or so
 
Feather, just scared to push it. pretty much installed it, booted, turned it up, booted to windows and that was it. Stable under prime 1.5 days. i didnt think any added voltages were safe. lol

Care to shoot me a pm about 4.3 see if we can get it that far? Dont know if my memory is good enough.
 
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My 955 is at at 3.9ghz. 1.42v - though I think it would be fine at 1.4. 32-bit OS.

I tried a ton of voltage at first, but for the me the secret was raising the CPU NB VID voltage (the cpu's internal northbridge). Without doing this I couldn't run prime for even 10 minutes. I added .075 to that number. I am also at 2400 mhz NB. This also increased stability.

Had prime running for a little while tonight





You should read this guide

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596023

I would back off all FSB. Set your multiplier to 18. Voltage to stock or 1.4. Raise your CPU NB VID by .1 to start. Then run prime.

I am at 57-59 C under load in prime. I think you will find heat is an issue, but when I disabled my fans, going into the low 60s did not seem to make a difference.

sirmonkey1985 said:
as far as the overclock your not pushing the voltage enough.. 1.46v is not enough voltage anything over 3.8ghz.. the x4's hit a wall at 3.8ghz where it needs a lot more voltage to exceed it.. you should be able to hit 3.8ghz @ 1.48-1.49v and above 3.8ghz at 1.51-1.55v.. safe maximum is 1.55v.. the x6's do not suffer from this same problem until you try to exceed 4ghz which is the voltage wall on those processors when using air cooling.. the cooler you can make a phenom II run the lower the voltage you can run for the same overclock.. which is why you see some hitting 4ghz on the 955 and 965 C3's well below 1.5v on water cooling.. heck even the x6 will do 4.5ghz below 1.4v on water cooling but wont do more then 4.2-4.3ghz at 1.55v on air..
Click to expand...

Give what I said a shot....pretty interesting how well it works
 
Last edited:
W.Feather said:
at that 4.0 OC what voltage were you at? It looks like 1.4...

with that H50 you would be fine going to 1.5v on the CPU(my Tuban maxes at 46 with a H50 push/pull in a room at 87f...so you can go that far with a 965), and probably get up to 4.3 or so
Click to expand...


you cant compare the x6's to the x4's in any shape or form.. yes they use the same architecture.. yes the cores are designed the same but other then that everything is different.. they use higher grade metals and higher grade silicon.. thus they run cooler and use far less voltage..


QuiteSufficient said:
My 955 is at at 3.9ghz. 1.42v - though I think it would be fine at 1.4. 32-bit OS.

I tried a ton of voltage at first, but for the me the secret was raising the CPU NB VID voltage (the cpu's internal northbridge). Without doing this I couldn't run prime for even 10 minutes. I added .075 to that number. I am also at 2400 mhz NB. This also increased stability.

Had prime running for a little while tonight

You should read this guide

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596023

I would back off all FSB. Set your multiplier to 18. Voltage to stock or 1.4. Raise your CPU NB VID by .1 to start. Then run prime.

I am at 57-59 C under load in prime. I think you will find heat is an issue, but when I disabled my fans, going into the low 60s did not seem to make a difference.



Give what I said a shot....pretty interesting how well it works
Click to expand...

yeah makes sense with the NB at 2.4ghz..
 
all iw as saying is that the H50 can handle a 965 at more than 1.4v
 
For reference:

My Phenom 2 940 is fairly weak when it comes to overclocking. The best I've ever gotten into 32bit windows was 3859mhz. It was absolutely not benchmark stable at that setting. I could get it stable at 3.8ghz with 1.55 volts to the CPU. I'm running a watercooling loop and the temps never break 45C.

After switching to 64bit windows, 3.7ghz is the fastest I can get it to run. It is completely stable but requires the 1.55volts to do so. I've tried every voltage option this motherboard has to offer and nothing makes it stable beyond that.

If you are pulling the same speeds as me with MUCH less voltage, you are doing pretty well.
 
Ditch that 965 on ebay and pick up a 1055t. Mine is a great overclocker.
 
I'm in the same boat as Botreaper. I currently have 1.57 going into mine, and I cannot get it to clock any faster. Thought, I think my mosfets are getting too hot...
 
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