New motherboard, new adventure

[ozzy983]

Little pic of where I am at so far.

[Ratatat]

Little pic of where I am at so far.

Oz, your 3DMark score is what's most impressive about your overclock so far. Truthfully, improving it nearly 33% has got to count for something; amazingly enough, it's more than just your CPU score that increased, which is where you notice a real world gain.

Still not sure you're going to get much higher than that, but if I may make a few suggestions to try, they may help.

First off, try increasing the NB & HT to 2400...I know, you said 2400 doesn't work, but it should. Might not have worked originally because memory needs more voltage or the HTL was too low; keep them in sync and you should be better.

Try looking more at the NB and the interconnects between it and the CPU, in other words, the HTL. My best guess is that your processor can, in fact, do more, but the NB is starting to flake out. This is common, and unfortunately, not much can be done about it, but increasing the voltage.

Try using multiple tests, seems you are stuck with Linx, but give Occt & prime a good go, and see if there are any errors; depending on where Linx fails will depend on what component is likely the culprit.

Higher "sample" sizes would lead me to memory, mid-range would be either memory or NB, and small sizes mainly CPU. Try more than one voltage too, if one fixes the issue, make sure another one won't either. This happens with RAM alot; CPUNB or NB needs a boost, but increasing VDIMM fixes issue. Better to leave ram alone and increases the others.

If the memory passes extended Memtest, then it's likely not the memory as it will physically store info correctly.

Just a few things.

Good luck

[ozzy983]

Well, I honestly have no idea what I did, but it works at 3390 now. All I can remember doing different was increasing the HTL from 18xx to 20xx. I took my time though testing and with the increased HTL I needed even more voltage to the CPUNB to stabilize it; something I did not notice prior. Probably because the system only seem to freeze up when doing something associated with a device on the southbridge, i.e. listening to music (using onboard sound atm)

Once I got that straightened out, I actually managed to drop the Vcore a bit, by .025, so now it's running 1.525, but the CPUNB was increased to 1.475, NB 1.3V.

Going to do some tests tonight to ensure it's stable before moving on; but wow, talk about a shot in the dark. Already run 3dmark06 in a 3 pass loop, and working on some prime now.

[ozzy983]

Ok, well now i'm confused. I was getting a lot of freezes when running 3dmark for more than a few passes, and still my rig would freeze when listening to music. Obvious HTL issue there, more voltage seemed to fix the issue, but the amount required was ridiculous. So, I kept it at my reasonable setting, 1.45V for the CPUNB, 1.3V for the NB, and 1.525v for the CPU.

Dropped the HTL back to 1800 -- system runs 3dmark06 fine, and even runs some max memory linpack tests. Haven't given it much testing...and not really sure why it works now, but didn't work before.

I stopped recording changes because I was really just tweaking the system, and now I seemed to have opened another door. My only guess is one of two things:

1) I had set the settings in the BIOS -- possible ACC is changing the settings, since it works best at auto.

2) The CPU needed more voltage than I expected on the CPU NB. Previously it was ~1.4V, because that seemed to be what was needed to pass a full 10 hour prime when I tested at 3360. And, only since I listened to music and found the system freezing was i able to figure out that it needed more voltage on the CPU NB. Actually requires 1.4375, but can only set that through AMD overdrive, so in the BIOS it' set for 1.45.

3) System is odd and only works once in awhile. This i thought possible given the speed at which I'm asking the processor to run, but each time now i've tried to run 3dmark06 or vantage it works, so doesn't seem to be a shot in the dark. Also have changed settings here and there and went back, and it works.

So, if I wasn't confused before, i sure am now.

[Ratatat]

Ok, well now i'm confused. I was getting a lot of freezes when running 3dmark for more than a few passes, and still my rig would freeze when listening to music. Obvious HTL issue there, more voltage seemed to fix the issue, but the amount required was ridiculous. So, I kept it at my reasonable setting, 1.45V for the CPUNB, 1.3V for the NB, and 1.525v for the CPU.

Dropped the HTL back to 1800 -- system runs 3dmark06 fine, and even runs some max memory linpack tests. Haven't given it much testing...and not really sure why it works now, but didn't work before.

I stopped recording changes because I was really just tweaking the system, and now I seemed to have opened another door. My only guess is one of two things:

1) I had set the settings in the BIOS -- possible ACC is changing the settings, since it works best at auto.

2) The CPU needed more voltage than I expected on the CPU NB. Previously it was ~1.4V, because that seemed to be what was needed to pass a full 10 hour prime when I tested at 3360. And, only since I listened to music and found the system freezing was i able to figure out that it needed more voltage on the CPU NB. Actually requires 1.4375, but can only set that through AMD overdrive, so in the BIOS it' set for 1.45.

3) System is odd and only works once in awhile. This i thought possible given the speed at which I'm asking the processor to run, but each time now i've tried to run 3dmark06 or vantage it works, so doesn't seem to be a shot in the dark. Also have changed settings here and there and went back, and it works.

So, if I wasn't confused before, i sure am now.

You're not the only confused one. Not sure I'm making proper sense of your post here, Oz. Your saying that at the default NB/HT you need more voltage on the CPUNB to stabilize the overclock?

It's not uncommon, when you approach the limits of the CPU, to have to throw everything at it; but, I'm starting to think your trying in vain. You're already pushing 20+% on that processor, any overclocker would tell you that's great. I am not really sure much more can be or should be done.

You risk far more than you'll gain by pushing the system that far. Be happy with what you have.