Posts tagged with Overdrive
More Than Doubling the AMD Phenom X4 Processor Overclock Capabilities in About Nine Months
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 4:09 AM
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
Loading ...As I discussed in earlier posts, when building, specifying, or buying a computer, it is important to have a balanced platform. It is vital to have that balance of processor, graphics, and chipset to help get the very best experience. In this blog, though, I will drill down on the CPU and specifically on CPU overclocking (1), and share with you the details of more than doubling the headroom in about nine months.
While historically the exclusive realm of technology enthusiasts, CPU overclocking has opened up to a much wider audience. This has been driven by huge improvements in the overclocking tools from motherboard makers and component manufacturers like AMD. As an example, a few weeks ago we launched a new utility called AMD Fusion for Gaming and last year AMD OverDrive™ which when combined together provides simple, one-click CPU (and even GPU) overclocking.
In addition to simple and effective overclocking software, you obviously need a good CPU and chipset. I have been very happy with the progress we have made in the nine months with the AMD Phenom X4 processor and I wanted to share this with you. So last weekend I started building and testing a few rigs to document how far we have come, having more than doubled the overclock. So onto the data I generated…
|
Processor |
Stock Frequency (Mhz.) |
Over-clocked Frequency (Mhz.) |
Improvement(Mhz.) |
HT Reference Clock (Mhz.) |
Over-clocked |
CPU |
|
Phenom X4 9500 |
2,200 |
2,508 |
308 |
228 |
1.29 |
November 2007 |
|
Phenom X4 9600 BE |
2,300 |
2,800 |
500 |
200 |
1.45 |
December 2007 |
|
Phenom X4 9750 |
2,400 |
2,940 |
540 |
245 |
1.3 |
March 2008 |
|
Phenom X4 9850 BE |
2,500 |
3,200 |
700 |
200 |
1.45 |
March 2008 |
I wanted to point out that I used all stock components I bought from the internet or from my local Fry’s store. As important, I used the same AMD heat-sink and paste that comes with our processors, not a special one that could have delivered even better raw results. I used an AMD 790FX-SB600 motherboard for the AMD Phenom X4 9500/9600BE processors to coincide with what was sold at launch and a 790GX-SB750 (2) motherboard for the AMD Phenom X4 9750/9850 processors which are primarily sold today. I am certain I am getting a bump from the SB750’s Advanced Clock Calibration (thank you chipset, BIOS teams, and mobo partners). I only had to go into BIOS once ( for the AMD Phenom X4 9500) and changed all other settings through AMD OverDrive. Like reviewers, I used a bench-set to save time versus screwing all the components into a case. Finally, to test stability, I successfully ran the AMD OverDrive benchmark and the stability test. I want put an exclamation out there that your results will vary, sometimes higher, sometimes lower.
So as you can see, according to my experiences, we have more than doubled the raw overclock of the AMD Phenom X4 processor, going from 300 Mhz. in November, 2007 to 700 Mhz. in August, 2008 when the SB750 became available. Given some of the comments and questions I still receive from some folks on the AMD Phenom X4 processor, I hope they find this interesting. I would love to hear their recent experiences.
Configurations: Stock AMD heatsink and thermal paste, Foxconn A7DA-S motherboard (BIOS 81BF1P03) for AMD Phenom 9750/9850 BE, MSI K9A2 Platinum (BIOS V 1.5) for AMD Phenom X4 9500/9600 BE, 4GB Corsair dominator CM2X2048-8500C5D RAM Ver 1.1, Seagate Barracuda 7200 1TB hard drive, 900 watt PSU, AMD Overdrive 2.1.4.
1) ***WARNING*** AMD and ATI processors are intended to be operated only within their associated specifications and factory settings. Operating your AMD or ATI processor outside of specification or in excess of factory settings, including but not limited to overclocking, may damage your processor and/or lead to other problems, including but not limited to, damage to your system components (including your motherboard and components thereon (e.g. memory)), system instabilities (e.g. data loss and corrupted images), shortened processor, system component and/or system life and in extreme cases, total system failure. AMD does not provide support or service for issues or damages related to use of an AMD or ATI processor outside of processor specifications or in excess of factory settings. You may also not receive support or service from your system manufacturer.
DAMAGES CAUSED BY USE OF YOUR AMD OR ATI PROCESSOR OUTSIDE OF SPECIFICATION OR IN EXCESS OF FACTORY SETTINGS ARE NOT COVERED UNDER YOUR AMD PRODUCT WARRANTY AND MAY NOT BE COVERED BY YOUR SYSTEM MANUFACTURER’S WARRANTY.
2) AMD 790GX chipset with SB750 announced August 6, 2008.
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
First Weekend with the Fusion for Gaming Utility
Posted by Patrick Moorhead in 3:36 PM
In Nigel’s latest blog, he gives the big picture of what the new AMD Fusion campaign means to our customers and business partners. Being the new tech lover that I am, I decided to explore the new AMD Fusion for Gaming utility. I‘ll start broad, then get to the juicy details, but first a teaser from my personal numbers: I saw a best-case gaming experience frames-per-second improvement of over 100% using the new utility.
First, as I have covered in previous blogs here and here, for PCs, AMD innovates around usage models. Whether it’s productivity, home media, or playing games, we work with customers, channels, and end users to better understand their pain and pleasure points, apply the right integrated technologies to meet those needs, and then help deliver the complete experience through our customers and channels.
Console and PC Gaming are very important usage models to AMD, and we apply many hardware and software innovations for both “hard-core gamers” and “consumers who like to play games.” Hardware innovations include our ATI Radeon™ HD graphics, AMD Phenom™ and AMD Turion™ processors, and the chipset platforms. On the software side, we deliver drivers and the award-winning ATI Catalyst™ Control Center that lets you tweak almost every aspect of your graphics card with respect to 3D, video, color, power management, multi-GPUs, and display connectivity. Also, AMD Overdrive™ allows you to tune the performance of your CPU, memory, and chipset.
When the AMD Fusion for Gaming development team asked me to try out their newest software creation last weekend, I jumped ALL over it and wanted to share my experiences.
Hard core gamers know that to have the best experience possible, they need a bad-ass graphics card like the ATI Radeon™ HD 4870, a beefy CPU like the Phenom™ 9850 processor, a great performance chipset like the AMD 790GX, software tools like AMD Overdrive and ATI Overdrive™, and as few applications and tasks as possible running in the foreground and background. Historically, even for knowledgeable enthusiasts, this would be a time-consuming process. For the mainstream user who likes to play games, this type of performance optimization was completely out of reach. To solve these pain points, we created the AMD Fusion for Gaming utility.
The AMD Fusion for Gaming utility was designed to optimize your AMD-based PC for smoother, more responsive game play in the latest PC games with the touch of a button; the utility helps achieve the performance previously only available to highly technical enthusiasts. It works by temporarily shutting down background processes and intensifying processor performance with AMD Boost. That means you can keep all the features, tasks, and applications running on your Microsoft® Windows Vista® PC ready when you need them, but turn them off when you are ready to get down to serious gaming.¹
”Simplicity” was the design principle for the utility, but we still let you peek behind the curtains into the advanced interface to change how the utility works. You can customize with user selectable profiles to individually optimize your PC for gaming. Also, you can easily build your own profile and choose exactly what you want disabled for a leaner footprint. If you want to squeeze every bit of performance from your system, engage our most advanced acceleration technologies such as AMD Overdrive, Auto-Tuning and Hard Drive Acceleration.²
So with that long-winded intro, let me tell you what I personally experienced…
Desktop Gaming
I saw a big improvement in my desktop gaming experience using Fusion for Gaming. This was not surprising given I used Expert Profile that initiates AMD Boost, Hard Drive Acceleration, AMD OverDrive and ATI Overdrive in addition to shutting down unneeded services and third-party applications. Playing games just felt “better”. I know that doesn’t sound like science, but real gamers know what I mean. On Call of Duty 4 and Crysis, my system felt more responsive and snappier. I did a few rudimentary benchmarks on these two games using FRAPS, and saw about a 23-29% improvement in frame rates. Using some canned benchmarks, I saw the following:
- 3D Mark: 15% overall score improvement in 3DMark
- World In Conflict: Based on the setting, improvements in frame rates were 55% for the “average” setting, 157% for the “minimum” setting and 116% for the “maximum” setting
- Lost Planet: 5.8% “Snow” and 24% “Cave” scene frame rate improvement
Very impressive, but again, not surprising, given I was overclocking the CPU, GPU, hard drive, and shutting many Windows services, foreground and background apps. I am not a professional benchmarker like Kyle Bennett or Marco Chiappetta, but these numbers make sense given the “feel” of the game. And remember – these are my results achieved on the platforms indicated below – your experience may differ.
Notebook Gaming
One of the things I love to do with my 6 year old son is play PC games. We place a notebook on the coffee table in the living room, plug in two controllers, and go to town. We play games like Lego Star Wars II, Lego Indiana Jones, and IronMan… age appropriate stuff.I would consider this usage model to be about “people who like to play games”, NOT the “hard core gamer”. Surprisingly, I saw some of the largest boosts here. I didn’t expect it because I didn’t initiate AMD OverDrive or ATI Overdrive, just AMD Boost, Hard Drive Acceleration, and turned off unneeded tasks and applications. My hunch is that because it was a 2GB integrated graphics system where graphics shares memory and I run a lot of background tasks, shutting those down really helped. Again, the experience of Lego Star Wars II just “felt better.”
Like the desktop system, I ran some rudimentary benchmarks on the notebook:
- 3D Mark:8.9% improvement in 3DMark
- World In Conflict: Based on the setting, improvements in frame rates were 140% for the “average” setting, 600% for the “minimum” setting and 53% for the “maximum” setting
- Lost Planet: No improvement in frame rates
I didn’t expect to see any improvement, honestly, so I was surprised to see the World in Conflict numbers. Again, my hunch is that it is the memory impact and all the tasks and the applications that were shut down plus the fact that I used a 2GB integrated graphics system. And again – these are my results, yours may differ.
All in all, I was impressed at the simplicity AMD Fusion for Gaming utility brought to my desktop and the improvement to the gameplay. And on the notebook side, I was very surprised at how much it improved my gaming experience and framerates. While not perfect without some glitches as the utility is in beta, I think the AMD for Fusion for Gaming utility pulls together the strength of AMD’s CPU, GPU and chipset franchises better than ever, and pays off on the promises AMD has made to its customers, channels, and end users on the “fused” value of the three components.
You can download the Fusion utility here and AMD Overdrive 2.14 here, and I would love to hear about your experiences.
¹ THIS UTILITY MAY DISABLE SECURITY / ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE, OR ADVERSELY AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM. REVIEW ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION CAREFULLY BEFORE INSTALLING.
² AMD’S PRODUCT WARRANTY DOES NOT COVER DAMAGES CAUSED BY OVERCLOCKING, EVEN WHEN ENABLED VIA AMD SOFTWARE.
Desktop configuration: AMD Phenom X4 9850 processor, ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics, Foxconn A7DA-S motherboard (BIOS 81BF1P03) with 790GX chipset and SB 750, 1GB Seagate hard drive (7200 RPM), 2GB Corsair XMS2 RAM, ATI Catalyst Control Center 8.8, AMD OverDrive 2.1.4.
Notebook configuration: Toshiba L305D-S5873, AMD Turion X2 RM-70 processor, ATI Radeon 3100 graphics, 2GB RAM, 160GB (5400RPM) hard drive, ATI Catalyst Control Center 8.8.
Applications: GooglePack, Digsby, Tweetdeck, Picasa 2 media detector, Windows Defender, Orb, Internet Explorer 8.0, Windows Home Server Connect, AT&T Communications Manager, CD/DVD Acoustic Silencer and Config Free (On Toshiba)
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD.His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
(4.18 out of 5)