Windows 7 - Amd phenom ii 955 be c3 overclock

Been sharing some results on here with my Athlon X4 ii 630 which i managed to get stable at 3.5Ghz at 1.5v, but lo that chip is now on ebay, not cause its broke, it works great!
Just got tempted by another, the L3 cache and the attractive price of £92 just made me want the 955 BE!

Anyway after just one night of fiddling, here are my results with the new processor, I am happy at this, have run intel burn test 15 times on high setting, it seems solid.

FSB : 250
CPU : 4Ghz (4000mMhz) @ 1.5v 126W
HT : 2000Mhz
NB : 2500Mhz @ 1.325V probably would stabilise lower
DRAM : 833Mhz 10GB DDR2 at 6-5-5-15-20 2T

Here are the stat sheets:

Seems to be able to keep about with a i7 2600k
Is there a noticeable price difference in the two?

Hi, the price of the AMD in the UK is £92.

The Intel I5 2600K ia around £164 for one unlocked to 3.4Ghz, there seems to be some extreme versions around that are claiming to be unlocked to 5.3Ghz which sounds like hyper threading to me?? and these are around £340 so there is quite a difference overall in price terms.

Hi, despite running Intel burn test without fault, i seemed to be getting random crashes, internet explorer and then media centre, changed the HT link to 2250Mhz and all is stable once more, running everything great.

GFLOP comparison:

AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8 Ghz (3.5 Ghz) : 39 Gflops
AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE 3.2 Ghz (4.0 Ghz) : 49 Gflops

When running FSX I have about 15-20 more frames with the new processor, but its more that it runs consistently higher frame rates, the Athlon was more prone to drop to low frame rates than this one is when complexity arose in the scenery.

Overall its been a worthwhile switch i feel, my GTX 470 appreciates the new processor i feel.

Using the same cooler however this 955 seems to run 4-5 C hotter than the Athlon, but i guess the chip and thermal compound havent settled yet, I use MX-2 thermal compound and when i installed this new cooler on the Athlon it seemed to drop 4-5 C on idle and load after a few days.

Cheers guys.

Just to clear a couple of things up on this , the i5 is actually the 2500k which you are correct on price , these can be clocked to over 5ghz if you get a goodun.

The i7 is the 2600k , these are £240 ish and again can be clocked to over 5ghz if you get a goodun.

I have not heard of any extreme versions.

Best of luck with your overclocking.

Unfortunaly I don't have any experience of AMD chips so can't help.

Regards

Paul.

Hi, thanks for the info, am no expert on Intel as I have never bothered with them, i just like to back the underdog i think.

It sounds like the new Intels are the best of the best, especially the i7's.

I just had a quick look around ebay for the above figures, the extreme versions are listed on Ebay.

My idle temps have started to drop now, 42 C idle, down from 48 C, I did reapply thermal paste and really tighten up the fan however also.

the Arctic Cooling Pro 7 that i have has two seperate holes for mounting the attachments for the mounting bracket on the motherboard, I have changed to using both the inner ones now, it was a pig to get on but the fit is much tighter and I assume that better contact is being made.

The random crashes returned, and it seems the source was EPU, an asus program for power management, this was available when i first got this PC as a download for Windows 7 but it now states that it only supports Vista, I guess there was some conflict between it and the Windows 7 inbuilt power management which is basically doing the same job, anyway back to the origional overclock now with HT at 2000 and she runs intel burn test 20 times on very high settings without issue, my maximum temps while doing that were 61 C, a little high but that was before this recent temp drop from refitting and reapplying the paste.

I honestly have equal respect for intel and AMD both, I own both and I'm happy with both. At any rate how do you expect to offer anyone fair comparisons or advice if you don't at least give them both a chance.
About the only thing I've given up on with Intel is the fact that I now accept that they will never make a functional GPU.

I had a quick look at these "extreme" versions on ebay lol , Not real , there is not an extreme version. The sellers are just blagging it.

Go to any reputable site and you will not find them as they do not exist.

I had my 2600k up to 5.1ghz stable and Jeepman off here had his upto 5.5ghz iirc , I think nearly all will hit 4.8ghz with a decent mobo.

Sorry for the off topic , just thought its fair to warn people about these fake products on ebay.

No worries at all, as i say am no expert on Intel. Does seem they are top dog again however....

Back on topic ....

After some more fiddling this CPU AMD 955 X4 phenom is now fully stable at :

FSB: 248
CPU: 4.2Ghz 4200mhz @1.5125V
NB: 2480Mhz @1.325V
HT: 1980Mhz @ stock
Dram: 827 6-5-5-15-20-2t

Tried a few alternatives like dropping the FSB down and raising the multiplier but the CPU seems relatively happy whatever i do to it!

Load temps are now 54C with idle at 47C or 45C when cool and quiet enabled.

Someone mentioned on a site that having a high NB is beneficial but i can say that is only if your memory needs it, rasing the NB to 2660 and HT to 2180 while dropping the ram back to 800Mhz and tightening the timing so the cas was 5 rather than 6, maintaining the 4.2Ghz CPU yielded just the same results, it required a raising of the CPU-NB voltage to 1.35V and so went back down to this.

Question is do i see what more i can get out of this chip, temperatures are ok, I am wondering if it would like 4.32 at the same voltage??

The payoff here is if it doesnt require voltage then no real heat is added.

The CPU is at 127W when fully loaded.

It just doesnt seem phased at the moment with the 4.2Ghz.

In the real world, a good graphics card yields you better things, especially if you can overclock that as well, certainly in terms of frame rates, a fast hard disk helps you along also.

My frame rates in FSX with this set up are more than doubled, was getting like 12fps on the Athlon when on the ground, now achieving more like 35fps.

Its hard to say how much quicker this CPU is over its stock and therefore how valuable the overclock was because i wasnt patient enough to test it at stock, but 3.2Ghz to 4.2Ghz sounds pretty good, even if it is outshone considerably by the I7, having seem some stats on that, it really does seem to offer a very swift experience.

Cheers

I'm not really saying the I7 is in some league of it's own. I was just using it as intel's best current example of an overclock chip, and stacking what you had against it. Seems damn close to be honest.