General help with first OC

[goose27]

Hi,

Been fiddling around with my first over clock on a somewhat dated system, just would like some general help if im on the right track.

 

Motherboard is a ECS 8200A black series

CPU is a AMD athlon x2 7750+ black edition

 

Here is a couple of CPU-Z screen shots that I have a few queries about:

CPU:

http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/584/cpuu.png

Memory:

http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/1007/memoryd.png

 

I just generally want to know if these overclocks look ok as a starting point?

All I did to overclock the CPU was changing the bus speed from 200 to 226 and HT link from 1800 to 1600

 

As for the memory, ive been reading that the FSB:DRAM ratio should be 1:1, and mine is 1:2...

However I wasnt sure how to fix this... from what I gathered this is what I "think" i should do, just need some clarification:

-Set bus speed from 200 to 400 but unlock the multiplier on CPU and reduce it

-And also set the RAM frequency limit from 400 to 200, would this fix the ratio?

 

Or should I just leave it as is, what is the major advantage of the 1:2 ratio.

 

Sorry for my lacking technical language, any help appreciated

[bobby898]

First things first, forget raising the bus speed at this stage, the whole point in owning a black edition processor is so you dont have to raise the base clock, first you raise the multiplier on the cpu. The reason black editiion processors have multipliers is so you dont have to raise the base clock so you can get a higher overclock, you can only raise the base clock so high until other components such as the ram become disturbed as raising the base clock also raises the ram frequency and on an outdated system such as yours im guessing the ram frequency wont be able to overclock very high. Oh and BTW you will be damn lucky if you managed to get the base clock up to 400 on an amd processor.

Therefore first thing you should do is raise the cpu multiplier, do this at x0.5 each time until the cpu becomes unstable, at this stage you dont have to fiddle around with ram speeds or hypertransport speeds as these will remain the same.

Then once the cpu becomes unstable try raising the cpu voltages little at a time with the multiplier and the cpu should carry on going for a while longer, remember though the higher you overclock the more voltage will be required.

However you cannot just keep on raising the voltages because obviously the chip will blow, therefore the limit on your cpu (not sure on this one BTW just an estimate) is around 1.7V on a 65nm chip, however i will leave you to research the maximum.

Therefore once the cpu becomes unstable again at around 1.7V (or the maximum you have found due to research), backtrack to the previously stable multiplier settings and begin to raise the base clock until.... you guessed it.

Finally you really dont need to adjust the ram or the hypertransport setting, 1:2 is fine in order to get 1:1 you would either have to slow your ram or fsb right down or vice versa which would probably effect performance negatively. remember the ram will always be faster than the fsb anyway it just means you have 400mhz ram as opposed to the fsb being 200mhz this doesnt effect performance at all. Oh and final thing to remember, when you change the bios settings each time make sure you test it under prime95 in order to test stability. Hope this helps.

[goose27]

Thanks for the reply!

When i set bus speed back to 200 and HT link back to 1800 and unlock the cpu for overclocking, I can change the multiplier from around 13.5 = 2700mhhz (stock), to 15 = 3000mhz easily,

But there is another option in that menu called NB frequency, and by default it is set to x4.0 = 800mhz, struggling to figure out what this option does and what I should set it to, if you could shed some light on this in plain english would be great

Thanks

[sack_patrol]

Thanks for the reply!

When i set bus speed back to 200 and HT link back to 1800 and unlock the cpu for overclocking, I can change the multiplier from around 13.5 = 2700mhhz (stock), to 15 = 3000mhz easily,

But there is another option in that menu called NB frequency, and by default it is set to x4.0 = 800mhz, struggling to figure out what this option does and what I should set it to, if you could shed some light on this in plain english would be great

Thanks

Hmm...this seems very low for the NB freq. Can u post a screen shot of CPU-Z opened up in the Memory tab.

 

The NB or Northbridge frequency is basically what makes the memory and CPU, mobo and chipset "communicate" with each other. The higher u go with the CPU overclock, you'll need to overclock this too in order to stabilize it. If it's not overclocked correctly, the CPU will create a bottleneck and you'll get errors.

 

Also, I'm not quite sure why your voltage is bumped up to 1.5V. That's way way way too much voltage for that clock. You need 1.2-1.3V max for this.

Edited October 28, 2010 by sack_patrol

[goose27]

Hi,

So my computer kept restarting over and over with NB freq at 4.0x and 800mhz so I doubled it to 8.0x = 1600mhz, and cpu staying at 2700mhz and booted fine, so i guess this memory screenshot resembles it: http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/7091/memory2.png

What should NB freq actually be set to?

As for the Vcore at 1.5 i believe ive read this is an issue with my motherboard even though i have the latest BIOS update, even if i manually set it to 1.2 or 1.3, both cpu-z and speedfan record it as 1.5+

Under PC health status in BIOS it reports as 1.3 ish... so its an issue once booted into the operating system.

However with cool n quiet on my processor only ideals at 20 degrees C, approximately

Thanks

[bobby898]

The NB frequency should go up to x10, if i am correct the nb frequency shouldnt change unless you raise the base clock so x10 would be fine resulting in 2000mhz hypertransport. I have also done some research and have found that people have managed to get this cpu up to 3.4ghz just by adjusting the multiplier to x17, this is without even messing with the base clock, maybe you could go higher or maybe that is around the voltage limit for that chip. At least you now know your target or a value that you can aim for. Hope this helps