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actionstan

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About actionstan

  • Birthday 07/18/1989

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    kentucky

OCC

  • Computer Specs
    Visiontek Radeon 5870
    Phenom II 955 Black Edition Quad Core 3.2ghz
    Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler
    8gb Gskill DDR3 1600mhz Ram (4x2)
    M4A79XTD EVO MotherBoard
    x2 640gb 7200 rpm Harddrives
    750 Watt Corsair Power Supply
    HAF 932 Case

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  1. Hello All, I think I just need some clarification about the steps to take, and also have a few questions. I am currently running the PC in my signature, I have never had much luck getting this CPU to overclock. I know I wont get amazing results as its a stepping 2, but.. I think with my cooler I should be able to get a stable 3.7/3.8 ghz and a decent OC on the cpu-nb. So far it seems I was able to get a 3.6 ghz over clock stable at 1.38 voltage, strictly using the multiplier, I also had the cpu-nb at 2400 with I believe 1.2 v (bear with me I am working from memory.. its all back at stock as I updated the bios). I run the HT link at stock as well as the ram, it seems like oc'ing the HT link really only helps with benchmarks, and I am not too worried about going any better with the ram, I am just looking to make some headroom for a video card upgrade. My first question is.. Should I start out only overclocking the CPU, get it stable, and then move onto the cpu-northbridge, or vice versa cpu-nb first, then cpu? Or should I be trying to do both of these at the same time? The guides I have read don't seem to mention this, unless I overlooked it... I figure getting a stable 2400-2600 cpu-nb is about all I need.. Another question/thing I have noticed, If I set the voltage to 1.4v for example.. in the Bios.. I will get into windows launch cpuz and it will report a voltage of.. 1.38ish.. and fluctuates a bit, then under load it drops even more.. Is this normal, or is there any way to stabilize this? The last thing: Is there a faster way to test overclock settings that running prime95 for hours on end? As far as synthetic stress test, prime95 typically seems to find issues better than intel burn test, but it takes much longer. I don't really like the idea of using all that power for 12+ hours to verify a stable overclock.. EDIT: I just realized my specs were not completely accurate at the time I posted this, so for reference my build is as follows: Visiontek Radeon 5870 Phenom II 955 Black Edition Quad Core 3.2ghz Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler 8gb Gskill DDR3 1600mhz Ram (4x2) M4A79XTD EVO MotherBoard x2 640gb 7200 rpm Harddrives 750 Watt Corsair Power Supply HAF 932 Case Thanks for your help, and any more input is welcome!
  2. No, I shouldn't be, I will double check ASAP, but I typical disable/leave disabled in all games.
  3. No but I can and report back, last time I tried to set it to ultra for "lols" bf4 kept crashing, but I will try again. The BF4 numbers don't add up at ALL in my experience. Take a look at this. An older AMD quad can nearly keep up with the big boys when feeding the R9 290...the 5870 should be easy. Based on how my 6950 ran BF4 though my guess is the card is the issue. Source games are a tougher animal to figure out for me. I've had wildly variable numbers across many systems, but if it's running over 60 (and that should be reasonably easy with L4D2) I just don't worry about it anymore. Wow, thats interesting.. the Phenom II 980 is the closet model compared to mine, and I can probably get mine overclocked to 3.7 to basically be the same. I wonder if this goes back to the different/higher resolutions that IVIYTH0S mentioned earlier in the thread. I play at 1600x900 (wish I didn't) that benchmark is 1920x1200 considerably higher than mine. This does lead me to believe I shouldn't rule out my CPU just yet... I will need to do more testing, and do like IVIYTH0S said and bump BF4 up to a higher setting. And your right, with Source games I don't really care my system runs those at high without issue, I was just doing it for comparison sake.
  4. Alright, so.. I used MSI Afterburner and played a few games last night. I tried BattleField 4, and also Left4Dead 2. It does appear the CPU is my biggest bottle neck right now, and that my GPU isn't being all that taxed.. In BF4 I was seeing CPU utilization of 90%+ even when overclocked to 3.6ghz. GPU usage was ranging between 60%-70%. (Medium settings in graphics) In L4D2 it was a similar experience, CPU utilization was approximately 80%ish.. and GPU usage was 40-50%. (Max graphical settings. I am assuming this means my CPU will be the biggest culprit going forward.. I am actually a little surprised by this. I think at this point its time to start saving my pennies for a partially new build(CPU/MOBO/VID Card). With my current board I think my CPU upgrade path is a little limited. That being said.. it will probably be better for me to wait until I have the extra cash, or actually run into a game that is unplayable even on low settings.. As mentioned above, I will be upgrading to a 23 inch 1080p monitor so I will definitely recheck these numbers once this happens. Thanks for your help guys!
  5. I am not sure about GPU usage, can you recommend a good way to monitor this in game I will test it out. Thats a good thing, and you had asked about overclocking earlier, this weekend I fiddled around with it, and got it to 3.6 so far it seems to be perfectly stable. I have a little room to go higher heat wise, its pretty finicky, but I will see if I can get higher.
  6. Right now I am playing at 1600x900, I may be upgrading to a 1080p monitor soon though. I have tried a lot to overclock my CPU, even with proper cooling I have had issues keeping it stable, I have a Noctua NH-D14 cooler currently.
  7. Hello All, I currently am running the system in my sig: Visiontek Radeon 5870 Phenom II Black Edition Quad Core 3.2ghz 4gb Gskill DDR3 1600mhz Ram (2x2) Asus 790x MotherBoard x2 640gb 7200 rpm Harddrives 750 Watt Corsair Power Supply I was thinking of dropping the PowerColor 5870 and picking up a card in the 150-200 dollar range, maybe a R9 270x/R9 280/R9 280x/R9 285 with at least 3-4gb ddr5 ram. I just wonder if it will be to much of a bottle neck coming from my processor? It seems like Battlefield 4 pretty much keeps it running at 90% when I watch it.. If you don't think it will be to much of a bottle neck, can you recommend the best video card for 150-200? Thanks all!
  8. No, some other reason, I have a HTC EVO 4G better and less restricted than any insanely expensive iPhone and its not on a insanely expensive slow network(lolatt). The day of the iPhone has come and passed imo. You can only do the same thing so many times
  9. yea id think so.. because it uses the explosion from the powder to push the bullet out... if there was no bullet and just powder id think it would have much less recoil unless they calculate for that difference and put more powder in a blank round lol
  10. i c, you probly have a better overclocker than me, lucky lol
  11. ive got my phenom ii overclocked as high as i think it currently can go, its at 3.7 ghz 1.45 voltage, is it just me or does that voltage seem excessive for a phenom ii 955 3.7 ghz, ive tinkered with everything i think i just have a bad overclocker (its a "c2" i think)
  12. thanks, sounds like i dont need to increase the nb though because im not goin above 4.0ghz lol
  13. lol both intel core i7 and Phenom ii are "Rated" for 1333mhz... but they can still run higher than that... so why would companies make and manufacture anything higher than 1333 mhz if it was gonna damage the processor.. it sounds like a load of bull crap to me he probly burned it out with improper cooling or not knowing what he was doing. i believe the "internal memory controller" runs in conjunction with the cpu-nb frequency... which is manually controller.. but i could be wrong on that part. if your really worried about it just use 1333mhz the difference between 1333 and 1600.. and probably higher is barley notable.. and its not noticeable on product reviews read them with a grain of salt because some people are just really really stupid, and also people are more likely to review something if something bad happened or if it didn't work, vs someone who is more content with a product.
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