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.
I’ve found the frequency at stock voltage where when doing the benchmark i dont hang. Now when i go to increase voltage there is no increase to the frequency? Am i missing something?
You have to adjust the CPU Freq for Increase in CPU speed.
i think i was reading the core temps,my cpu processor only hits 50 but core hits about 65-70???what is the go??which one is the real temp??
Wow. I love AMD.
Intel: “Oh noes! You’re warranty is gone! It’s illegal! Nooo! You can’t go there, can’t do that!
AMD: (Too awesome to be written)
Just one of the reasons I’m getting a…
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb
*Feels happy*
Great article really helps.
I have a situation, not sure whom to contact, I have the 955 BE 125W TDP version RB-C3
I just went through two boards, the first board, had a bad ram slot, so, I went and bought Asus m4A785T-M board, this particular board the voltage for the CPU VDD would drop from 1.34 to 1.31 on load. I could not maintain a stable OC above 3.6GHz using Cinebench which really grinds the system.
Right now I have the MSI 785GM-E65, and the voltage does not drop on load. Using AOD for the stability test to gauge the cores on full 100% and watching the Temps also.
However, this CPU or the board one or the other, I do not know what to do in this case. This is what’s happening: I set the Voltage in BIOS to 1.3500, boot into windows run AOD 3.1Rv run CPUID 1.53Rv, AOD shows the registered BIOS setting of 1.3500v for the CPU VID. CPUID shows 1.334v.
In AOD the System Monitor tab there’s three, CPU, GPU and SYS. CPU registers 1.350v. SYS registers 1.34v. Is this a CPU issue or Motherboard?
I’m really not sure. I had to RMA the Asus board. I really like that board. uATX boards. Not looking to set world records or have OC for long duration. Just every so often, crank up the roadster for Sunday Drive.
Who would I contact over in AMD about the CPU issue to test the CPU to make sure it is not buggy?
Thanks
Stu
Good stuff. I liked the article. I actually used it in accordance with my first overclocking attempts the other day. After everything, I’ve decided to not overclock since I’d have to invest in an aftermarket cooler, and risk the off-chance of instability over the years I’ll be using my computer.
But I’m very curious as to what voltage you guys set your CPU at to reach 4.20GHz. I found at 1.55v I could hit 4.10GHz, but it was unstable after about 2 minutes. So I figure to hit 4.20GHz you’d be at something like 1.6v or 1.615v?
Personally I think for this chip, 3.80GHz is the sweet-spot for stability. At 1.5v or 1.515v. Just from what I’ve been searching.
Also, my chip for some reason is set at 1.4v on the Asus 790x motherboard. No idea why though. A c3 edition of the 955. So by following your guide, I was a little confused since other people claim lower stock voltages (so I was going to higher multipliers on stock since my stock voltage was higher). Kinda confused me.
Ah, they were using the New Asus M4890 board with the New AMD 890 chipset and looks like they were using a phase PSU and LN2
For aircooling you would need a really good one to maintain, 4GHz and a bit. Also, a light system as in not too much hardware. The more hardware you have, the more your system is cluttered with clocking. Clocking.
How are the OC’ers able to get High OC’s?
You have to look at their entire setup.
1 Monitor
1 Hardrive
1 or two slots of RAM
1 DVD drive which gets disconnected,
All others not connected.
1 Windows XP
Stock voltage for C3 965 and 955 BE’s are 1.35v
NB and HT depends on AMD Chipsets, i.e., 785, 790, 890 so forth.