New to AMD

[Danzer]

Hey everyone,

 

I'm new to AMD and I recently build a rig with a phenom II X3 720 chip, ECS A885GM-A2 (V1.1) motherboard, and 8gigs DDR3 1600 memory. Attached is a snapshot of the bios and prime95 with cpuz:

 

As you can see my idle and full load temps are very low. I know there's room to overclock and possibly unlock the fourth core, which btw I have no idea how to. If you guys can send me in the right direction I would really appreciate the help. I've received tons of help in the past on builds, overclocking my E8500 and such.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Danzer]

So I tried changing the CPU frequency to x12 and now the computer will NOT boot... I took out the motherboard battery for about 15 seconds and it still won't boot properly. What can I do to reset it? Any suggestions?

 

Thanks

 

Edit - Got it to boot up again. I reset CMOS and it worked.

Edited December 3, 2011 by Danzer

[Alexandre]

Hi mate,

 

While I don't have an AMD chip I have heard good things about the following guide to overclocking Phenom II's. Hopefully that will give you a good place to start

 

As to unlocking the 4th core - I'll leave that to someone more knowledgeable.

[Guest_Jim_*]

To unlock the fourth core you need a motherboard that supports ACC and after looking through the manual for your board, I can't find it. It looks like you will not be able to unlock that fourth core.

Something I noticed in your CPUz image though is your RAM is not running at the speed you want. It says your DRAM frequency is only 533, but you want either 667 or 800. These values are multiplied by the bus speed or CPU/HT Reference Clock, to give you the speed you will normally see on RAM; 1066, 1333, and 1600. With the frequency at 533 you're getting the slowest 1066. To change this I think you want to change MemClock Value off of auto and and select which it is you want. (It is possible the only options for MemClock Value will be Auto and Manual. Setting it to Manual should cause another options to appear, and based on the manual I believe it will be named Memory CLK. This should list a numerical value and will be what you want to change.) At 800 the RAM will be running at its specs but it does represent an overclock, as the CPU is only meant to handle up to 667. I only say this because if you set it to 800 and have issues, you can put it at 667 which should be fine, and faster than it currently is.

As far as overclocking the CPU more, I can recommend the link Alexandre gives above.

Here's the page for the motherboard, for anyone else that wants to look at the manual, and for myself if I want to find it again: ECS A885GM-A2.

[VaporX]

<BR>So I tried changing the CPU frequency to x12 and now the computer will NOT boot... I took out the motherboard battery for about 15 seconds and it still won't boot properly. What can I do to reset it? Any suggestions?<BR><BR>Thanks<BR><BR>Edit - Got it to boot up again. I reset CMOS and it worked.<BR>

<BR><BR><BR>Quick tip, if you take out the battery make sure the system is unplugged. I know a lot of people do this and then wonder why the BIOS did not reset. A lot of motherboards are now using the battery as a backup and using the trickly from the power line to keep the BIOS settings. <BR><BR>I would start with first overclocking the multiplier and moving up one step at a time. BTW moving to 12 makes no sense since that is down, the default should be 14. I would bump it that single step without changing the voltage and if it boots then run Prime 95 for about 2 hours. If you get no errors then bump again. When you get errors drop back to the last stable and you are set.<BR><BR>The reason I suggest the no voltage bump is because the motherboard you are using is not really tricked oput to handle a heavy overclock push. I would get the highest the multipliers can take me to on stock voltage and that should set you up okay.<BR><BR>Jim is correct on the Memory speeds but until you get your overclock speed I would likely stay with stock on the memory.

[SpikeSoprano]

Is this a be cpu, which means you can change the multy, to unlock the 4th core the mb must support it and in the specs I didn't notice that function, although threw a bios update you may get it.

Don't worry to much about the memory for now until you find out if it has an unlocked multy , if not you will have to oc threw the fsb which will oc the memory at the same time. Once you get the cpu oc'ed then you can check and raise your memory to desired specs. First thing I would do is get the latest bios and go from there.

 

 

[Danzer]

Thanks for all the info guys. I started doing some overclocking after I read that thread, but my system didn't start up so I had to reset the CMOS.

 

I just set the memory to 667 and here's what it looks like now:

 

Also, the CPU is a Black Edition so the multiplier is unlocked. I hope if I just change the CPU frequency to x15, it should work without touching anything else. I'll post back if anything happens.

 

And again, thanks for all the info and help! I guess this motherboard isn't meant for overclocking...

[Alexandre]

As always, a pleasure for us to be of help!