Overclocking 101 with the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition processor
Breaking it down with Pete Hardman in our secret lab
Does your PC have overclock potential? Our new AMD PhenomTM II processors certainly do, and to showcase this I ventured over to our super secret lab buried deep inside the bowels of our Austin campus to prove the point!
Picture long hallways of unmarked doors, the hum of machinery, people milling about eyeing you up and down, wondering who you are and why you’re there. Now imagine a dream job for an enthusiast, one where you have almost limitless access to silicon, hardware and time to hone your craft. This is the life of Pete Hardman, one of AMD’s in-house overclocking gurus!
Pete comes into work every day, passes through the “MI6″ type security barriers, enters his lab and proceeds to break records the world may never ever know about (at least that’s what he tells us)! All in a day’s work I say!
You may have seen some of the insane things we’ve done with Dragon platform technology and liquid helium, both at CES and with our friends in Finland. But for this blog we’re going to keep it simple and break down a ‘tried and true’ method for getting more performance out of your AMD Phenom II processor.
Check out his classy nameplate
Pete's work desk – a little unorthodox to say the least
Pete and I took the new AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition processor and walked it through a proper overclocking methodology using AMD OverDriveTM software*. Here are the steps we went through in detail:
Overclocking 101
Step 1 – Figure out your goals, small increase or one shot big gain? Power efficiency, is it important? Going for a full system max overclcok? Find the limits?
Step 2 – Procure the right hardware and software.
Our test system:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition quad-core processor
ASUS M4879T Deluxe DDR3 Motherboard
4G Corsair DDR3 Memory
ATI RadeonTM HD4870 X2 GPU
Thermalrite Ultra 120 Extreme “TRUE”
2 – 120mm high volume fans
Software add-ons:
Step 3 – Prep system – thermal paste the CPU, mount your air cooling solution as per guidelines. Keep the thermal paste to a nice thin amount; this will be beneficial once the heatsink is applied and pressure is added.
Step 4 – Power on system and boot to the OS – Install AMD OverDrive software*
Step 5 – Change frequency; make small incremental changes to the systems multiplier.
Once you have made your frequency multiplier changes, run a benchmark like Cinebench or 3DMark® to check for stability. Adjust frequency using stock voltage first before increasing voltage.
Step 6 – Increase multiplier and redo step 5 until the benchmark does not complete.
Step 7 – Once you have established the ‘ceiling’ in terms of frequency at stock voltage, do a cold reset/reboot.
Step 8 – Now increase voltage; this should also be done incrementally. You need to know how the voltage scales with frequency. As you increase voltage, frequency should increase, but there is a limit where too much voltage will start to reduce frequency; this is the “Sweet Spot” – find it!
Step 9 – Make a small 50mv increase, now retry the benchmark at the same frequency you previously failed at.
Step 10 – Continue to increase frequency at the new voltage until you find a fail case (meaning your computer hangs or blue screens).
Step 11 – Once you have a fail case at the new frequency, increase the voltage another 50mv and redo Step 10
Step 12 – Once you have established a threshold on voltage and frequency, we now move to the Northbridge and we make those changes via BIOS
Step 13 – Restart and enter BIOS
Step 14 – Click on CPU/NB Frequency and make an increase; we went from 2G to 2.4G which is a large jump and ended up at 2.8Ghz.
Step 15 – Continue to make incremental increases until you have a fail.
Step 16 – Take the results from steps 5, 8 and 12 and put them all together into a total system overclock. CPU cores, Voltage and North Bridge frequency all overclocked to establish a high performing PC experience
Overclocking can be a lot of fun; I personally like to do a moderate overclock and leave my system at that performance level. Pete, on the other hand, is pushing the boundaries of silicon every day. Chances are you are wondering what frequency we ended at, well, the results may vary, and what Pete and I achieved may not be representative of what everyone can do. With that caveat clearly stated, our final frequency was 4.2G on air without overclocking the memory. Not bad considering we did not spend a lot of time tweaking, we simply followed the steps above that delivered a good 1 Ghz OC.
*And remember kids, AMD’s product warranty does not cover damage caused by overclocking, even when enabled via AMD OverDriveTM software.
Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton
Ian McNaughton is senior manager 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.
my AMD Phenom2 X3 720 is running @ 3.4ghz.
i put my old AMD s939 x2 4800+ stock cooler on it, because it’s a better design than the new one.
“i must say these chips run really cool, even under the sea level where i live! @ 25celcius 80% humidity it doesn’t go above 50 Celsius with the stock cool tin, in the summer it’s like living in a swamp GO HOLLAND!”
@mark`,
HI,
I have the same processor and I am trying to get to its most OC.
I use AMD Overdrive and have the multiplyer on 15.5, if I try 16 I get a blue screen and its restarts.
How are youre settings, what did you change to get to a 3.4 GHZ?
Thanks,
Ditch
Thank you for posting this! Just bought a 955, and I haven’t had an AMD in years, but the price/perf and hopefully the longevity of the AM3 socket swayed my buying decision. The only bad thing is I’ve gotten rusty in my AMD OC’ing, was having limited success and have been looking for some good basic walkthroughs to see what everyone else was doing. Again, thank you!
is also preparing for a Monday launch of its new platform built around the new Phenom processors and the 700 series chipsets. While we are hearing nice things about the flagship 790FX chipset that will also be launched next week, the expectations are all about the processors, especially because it will give current AM2 socket motherboard owners the possibility of swapping and upgrading to the new generation of CPUs without having to change additional components.
I have a question in regards to overclocking.
My question is I have AMD X4 920 on a Asus MB model #M3N78-EM. I want to OC it but have no idea where I should start. It’s Windows Vista Ultimate. I have OCZ 8 GB of DDR 2 on my board now. Using the onboard viedo card. Thanks for your help.
I am trying to overclock a 955 Black Phenom ii in an asus m4a785td-v evo. I also have ocz flex ii ddr2000, but do not know how to achieve max performance with the retail fan limits. Can someone please give me some tips..?
im gong to over clock my phenom II x4 955 3.2G. i have liquid cooling and six fans in my haf cool master full tower; how high do think i could over clock with out it getting too hot? i only need a rough estimate
Not sure I can answer that, my answer would be very subjective, but I would think you could hit 4G without any major isues, but again, it all depends on cooling, bios, multipliers and voltage…
Let us know how it works out for you…
Hi Ian and thanks for making an great guide witch is easy to follow … thou i have a little problem understanding one of the steps and i was hoping u could elaborate on it
Step 8 – Now increase voltage; this should also be done incrementally. You need to know how the voltage scales with frequency. As you increase voltage, frequency should increase, but there is a limit where too much voltage will start to reduce frequency; this is the “Sweet Spot” – find it!
i found my max FREQ to be 3.6 ghz(x18) at stock 1.35 voltage on vcore ( it fails at 18x but runs on 17.5x) now how do i detect the sweet spot … do i increse the voltage with 50 mv and run the bench test again and keep doing it until it doesnt fail ?
jepp im noobish at this but ill appriciate the help
Regards
Daniel fron denmark
sounds like you have found the voltage sweet spot… What is you multiplier at?
How about putting up a series on overclocking memory. I have OCZ DDR3 12800 and it says at 8-8-8-24 2T it should run at 1600. I never get AMD overdrive to report more than 800. Thoughts?
DDR = Double Data Rate. It can send 2X more data than SDRAM or older RAM.
So the RAM frequency must be multiplied by 2 in your head, to get his real value.
When the RAM work at 800 Mhz, in fact it is 1600, 800 * 2.
So your OCZ work as expected, at 1600.
Just read this article and want to give it a try. I have this exact processor on an Asus M4A78-E motherboard. Ran the overdrive program and bumped my frequency to 215 and multiplier to 17 (from 200 and 16 respectively). I’m nervous to go further. I have four fans in the case (two 120mm intake fans up front, one 120mm exhaust in back, one 140mm on top) along with a zerotherm f120z cpu cooler which is much bigger than stock fan. overdrive says my temps are 33 celcius. should i be able to go higher no problem? this is stock voltage.
33C is nothing to worry about at all. Temps can run as high as 50-60C but 65C is the danger zone. So you are fine to continue.
i have the phenomx4 965 processor and i have OC it to 3.82ghz i had to put the voltage up .50 because it crashed during cinibench benchmark.the only prob i am having is the temp reaches 64 degrees when its running the multiple cpu rendering(4 cores running 100%) on water cooling.when OC to 3.9ghz it reaches 72 degrees, is this still ok? because no game/program runs 4 cores at 100% for long durations,during games the temp is about 55 degrees