Hi Istoryans,
I just found this on the web minutes ago. Might as well share it to fellow AMD users out there.
AMD Black Edition Overclock Guide (Raising Multiplier) - AMD - Overclocking
Enjoy reading this helpful guide! Hope this helps!
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Warning & Note: Overclocking is something you do at your own risk, neither I, 4ryan6, or Toms hardware Guide, or the owner Best of Media, take any responsibility for your actions overclocking your own hardware, however you use and apply this information is totally your responsibility. Note: Do yourself a favor and read this guide all the way through first, don't just pick what you want out of it, looking for a quick fix, and disregard the rest of the information available here or you may miss something vital in achieving a long term stable overclock.
I'll save you the trouble right now!
If you are a Throw Caution to the Wind Overclocker, this is not the guide for you!
There are no pictures in this guide, it was specifically designed so that if you possess the ability to read, comprehend, and apply what you learn, you will be able to achieve an overclock with virtually no prior overclocking experience.
You will be manually setting and saving BIOS settings, and It is your responsibility to research, and discover all the hardware specifications, your specific hardware requires.
This overclock process is a simple route to a goal, but is still going to require work and effort on your part, and patience and diligence in the booting and testing phase.
Your overclocking success, also depends on will the components you chose for your build actually get you where you want to be, or is there weak links in the hardware you've chosen.
What exactly is an AMD, Black Edition CPU?
It is a CPU that has an unlocked multiplier, meaning you can either raise or lower the multiplier, you have that choice. There are different routes and approaches to overclocking an unlocked multiplier CPU, this guide is totally dedicated to raising the multiplier route, to achieve a higher than default CPU clock output. The critical aspect of raising an AMD CPU multiplier is to keep everything else within specifications!
Why?
Because anything set outside specifications that is border lining on instability, increases its instability as the multiplier increases!
Some of you have probably already hit upon the perfect Multiplier/Vcore combination for an excellent overclock, but the other settings that were set outside of specifications caused unrecoverable crashes.
All motherboards have different BIOS and CMOS setting terminology so to be specific as to what your motherboard labels a particular function is up to you to discover through your motherboard manual, since you will be manually setting the BIOS settings, familiarize yourself with the procedure for Clearing the CMOS, which is needed when your settings get too aggressive and the motherboard refuses to boot, requiring clearing the CMOS and starting over. Some of the motherboard BIOS features allow storing a profile of settings previously used, which is great to have as a standby to select loading those settings in a crash situation, so you don't have to actually reset all the BIOS settings from scratch. I also recommend you Google various BIOS settings you may have, to get a full understanding of what adjusting them does, as some M/B manuals don't go too in depth, in certain areas and some motherboard BIOS have more than one voltage setting regarding Vcore, with no M/B manual direct explanations.
Its absolutely imperative you have good cooling, you'll only get so far with stock cooling, you need a good after market cooling solution, and good airflow through your case to get the best 24/7/365 overclock you can get. With this overclock you will be raising voltage which increases heat, that heat has to be dissipated through a good cooling solution.
See Cooling Note Below:
First, You need to manually set your memory speed See Memory Speed Note :, and CAS timings, and the required memory slot voltage, to your memory manufacturers exact requirements, and regarding the 1T, 2T, setting, for AMD in my experience the 2T setting is more stable, (I suggest 2T to attain your overclock then after you're sure its stable you can set it to 1T and see if your memory will stay stable at that setting), if you do not manually set these parameters, you may as well quit right now.See Memory Note Below:
Memory Speed Note :Overclocking motherboard BIOS settings have either built in dividers or manually set dividers, which usually allow your memory to run at it's rated advertised speed, even though the bus speed is set lower, say for example your memory is DDR3 1600mhz, my motherboard has a built in divider setting which allows my memory to run it's rated speed by setting the divider setting to 1:4 = 1600mhz.
All your specification speeds like Hyper Transport, or North Bridge, etc. need to all be set to their default [If you know the default setting] or left on auto settings, all voltages on Auto except for the Memory which you've already manually set and your CPU's Vcore voltage, that you will be manipulating later.
Now CPU wise your part is knowing your CPUs voltage operating range, you have to know that information so when the time comes to set it manually, you don't set a voltage way past its capabilities that will fry your CPU. You will also need to know your CPUs thermal limit, because exceeding that limit will cause a shutdown, indicating either your cooling is insufficient or you've reached your CPUs overclock limits.
You can acquire this information from the AMD website.
If your CPU overheats it will shutdown to protect itself, but if you apply too much voltage you can kill it instantly!
Second, Any automatic overclocking features your motherboard has need to be disabled, additionally any AMD CPU specific features like Cool and Quiet, and any other AMD features that will inhibit your particular AMD CPU from performing 100% of what you require of it need also to be disabled, you can play with these things later on, if you feel you need them after you accomplish discovering your overclock capability.
To begin, leave the CPU voltage on auto and increase your stock multiplier by .5, and see if you can boot into the OP/SYS, if you can, go into the BIOS look at your health and see if your M/B reports the voltage its using for that increase and record it.
You can also use CPU-Z out in the operating system to monitor output voltage and operating frequency.
Then increase another .5 multiplier and do the same process recording the voltage changes as the multiplier increases, this is helpful in learning how much voltage change it takes to increase the multiplier a step at a time, however this is only if your M/B reports this voltage, unfortunately some do not.
Continue this process until it refuses to boot, now you have come to the point that you'll have to manually set the CPUs Vcore voltage to continue, it helps as a starting point if you were able to learn the voltages your M/B had automatically set, because you could use that information as a Vcore starting point and increase each boot attempt by 1 voltage increase until you successfully boot into the OP/SYS.
Once you successfully boot into the OP/SYS doesn't mean you're stable, run 3DM06 [3DMARK06] as a test for stability, each time 3DM06 crashes, increase your Vcore another step and reboot and try running 3DM06 again, continue the voltage increment increase and rebooting until you can successfully run 3DM06 to completion and get a final score, at that point you are pretty much stable for that particular multiplier level.
I always record my progress as I go, so I know exactly the progress I'm making, this takes time and patience, don't rush this as you don't need to run anymore voltage than you have to to run a certain multiplier. Remember as you go if your BIOS has the save Profile Feature, and you discover a 100% stable overclock on your way to your goal, save those settings in a profile to fall back to, if you need to.
At this point depending on where you are voltage wise and how much headroom you have left you can continue raising the multiplier and Vcore to shoot for a higher clock, if you're after a 24/7/365 daily use OC you need to be conservative as to how much voltage you're willing to run long term.
For example if your CPUs high VID is 1.40v I would use 1.45v as my max, keeping an eye on my temperatures as the voltage levels increase, by using a program like Core Temp to monitor the temperature levels.
3DMARK06 Suggestion:
I use 3DM06 Advanced Edition.
To use 3DM06 as a CPU stress tester,
under (Tests) select the 2 CPU tests to run only.
Under (Settings) select your Maximum Resolution,
under Anti-Aliasing select 8 Sample AA,
Anti-Aliasing Quality, select 3,
under Texture Filtering select Anistropic,
Anistropic level to 16,
under Repeat + Loop, Select Repeat each test 3 times.
These settings will seriously stress your CPU, and shorten the total testing time involved using 3DM06.
Unfortunately if you are using the free version of 3DM06 your options are limited.
KEEP IN MIND YOU HAVE PURPOSELY PRESET EVERYTHING WITHIN OPERATING SPECIFICATIONS, you raised the multiplier, and you increased the Vcore voltage to compensate for the raised multiplier, so as long as you've set those settings and timings accurately, there is no need for any long term stress testing, if you're not stable you won't even complete 3DM06.
This will bring you to a daily stable machine capable of gaming and such as that, however if you desire to run further short term "STRESS TESTING" a program like Prime95 that runs all your available CPU cores at 100%, will more than likely require additional Vcore adjusting.
You more than likely will not be running any daily applications that will use 100% of all your CPU cores that would even require passing Prime 95, and if you're not experiencing any system crashes while gaming, which usually an additional Vcore bump will resolve, then further stress testing is totally up to you.
Prime95s blend test will be your best bet as it alternately stresses CPU and Memory together, if you drop a core in blend test it could relate to either memory settings (Recheck Them), or CPU voltage, try CPU voltage adjusting, it could simply resolve with a + or even sometimes a - Vcore voltage bump.
Keep in mind you don't want to have to run anymore voltage than you absolutely have to, so if you discover you're stable in Prime95 but crashing in a game, go back to your stable 3DM06 settings as Prime95 does not include your graphics load in its testing.
Sometimes Prime95 is a false assumption of stability, I've seen long term runs claiming Prime95 stability, crash in a game.
I'm only covering prime95 here because so many at THGF, think it's the cure all of stability.
Some brand motherboards seriously fluctuate output voltages in the operating system itself, if you do experience an unexplained crash while in the operating system, double check your BIOS setting against the actual operating system voltage, and note the difference, you may have to tweak the BIOS voltage setting to get the desired operating system voltage in the desired voltage output window you're after.
If you still have a crash after checking the output voltage, increase the CPU Vcore voltage by one more setting, reboot and see what happens from that point, you may have simply reached the level your particular Black Edition CPU is capable of, or you may need to increase your North Bridge voltage, and see it that stabilizes it.
Once you've reached a stable overclock, there is more fine tuning you can do, as far as tightening memory timings, or raising Hyper Transport speed, or voltages to other areas like the North Bridge or Hyper Transport, but discover your stable overclock first then tweak from there, and if it doesn't work for your particular setup, you can fall back to what does work for you. We have plenty of forum members that will be glad to advise you in those areas, just post your direct questions out in the forum.
Cooling Note:
Factors in cooling are, ambient room temperature, case airflow, and the selected cooling solution method either air or water, since this guide does not cover extreme overclocking, extreme solutions are not necessary, after market CPU air cooling solutions today are very efficient and cooling performance wise fall just short of some of the loop water cooling solutions, and are a lot less trouble setting up and maintaining, the end choice is yours.
Ambient Room Temperature is a very important factor, if its too high, it will seriously affect the cooling of the absolutely best CPU cooling solutions on the market, so it needs to be taken into consideration and will affect your overall overclock outcome. If your ambient room temperature can be controlled to a consistent setting, it will be most advantageous to your end results.
If ambient temperature will not feasibly be comfortably maintained, it becomes a purchasing factor on the type cooling solution that will be best for your situation and circumstances.
Case Airflow is very critical, and needs to be a priority way back when you are assembling your new toy, keeping in mind wire routing is essential to good airflow, you'll never get good case airflow through a rat nest of wiring.
Cooling fans are extremely important even if you're water cooling you still need airflow over the motherboard itself, to keep the voltage regulators cool.
Some cases are poor airflow performers from the beginning and may require a little case modding effort on your part, by possibly cutting in and installing another cooling fan if your airflow is just not doing the job.
Don't be stuck thinking you cannot add a cooling fan to even the crappiest cooling case, think outside the box, if there is no room for a cooling fan inside the case mount it outside the case, with a nice fan grill it will still look good, and actually improve your exhaust airflow.
CPU Air Cooling Solutions, there are some really efficient after market air cooling solutions, that can actually out perform some of the lower to mid range water cooling solutions, so factors in selecting them are, does it fit your motherboard?, and will it fit inside your case?
Some of these Air Cooling Solutions are massive beasts, and will not fit every case and motherboard situation, so these obviously need to be your main considerations when deciding on which air cooling heat sink you plan to get, researching those considerations, and price and performance is totally in your department, Frosty Tech is a great source of information.
CPU Water Cooling Solutions, the biggest caution of going this route is being absolutely positive you have no leaks, being prepared with a maintenance wise mindset to inspect your system daily, and pre-educating yourself on all that is required to set up a water cooling solution in the first place.
Having hose routing holes in the case if the radiator is mounted outside the case, is also an important consideration are they pre-existing in the case you chose, or do they have to be manually added.
There are so many water cooling solutions today, from simple closed CPU loops, to massive external radiator and reservoir setups, and the decision as to the system you go with, is yours.
Memory Note:
System memory modules are critical in pulling off a stable raised multiplier overclock, they should be matched module sets, because you don't want inconsistencies between the memory modules or you'll never get a stable overclock, until you resolve those issues. Can the issues be resolved? Of course they can, by Timing adjustments and voltage changes, but you are at a serious disadvantage from the beginning, and even if the modules cooperate together at default settings, if they're not matched sets, there is no guarantee they'll overclock together, it is almost the luck of the draw.
Matched memory modules have been pretested to run together at their rated speeds, timings, and voltages, giving you firm input numbers to set in your BIOS. They've also been pretested for certain platforms, if you purchased memory guaranteed to run at a certain cas latency on Intel, they may not run those same timings on AMD. So you're at a disadvantage from the beginning at achieving your stable overclock and you're back to juggling timings in search of memory stability. It should have been taken into consideration when you were purchasing your hardware, to buy memory tested for the AMD platform.
My memory recommendations for this type of overclock are either a matched set of 2G = 2 x 1G, or 4G = 2 x 2G, 8G module setups are much harder to successfully overclock, they're not impossible to overclock just harder, however some motherboards just flat don't overclock well with all the available memory slots occupied, you need to be aware of any motherboard peculiarities from the beginning, there in falls your research responsibility, because that information is usually clearly stated in your motherboard manual.
If your overclocking motherboard allows loading up all 4 modules, you'd definitely need an 8G matched set, so pretested speed, timings and voltage requirements are already solid numbers that you can input in the BIOS.
Dual Booting Various Operating Systems Note:
Specifically Regarding 32bit and 64bit Operating Systems;
A 32bit Operating System will overclock higher than a 64bit Operating System will, even on the same hardware platform.
I have been dual booting between WinXP Pro 32bit and WinVista Home Premium 64bit, I do all my overclocking using WinXP, simply because it is a more forgiving operating system overclock wise, and easier to Repair, if it all goes South. The reason for this note, is to reveal my discoveries between the 32bit and 64bit operating systems, relating to the shared hardware overclock. The 64bit operating system requires more supplied Vcore than the 32bit operating system does to reach stability at the same clock, so set your Vcore to what the 64bit system requires as the 32bit system will still run fine on that same voltage, this will only become apparent to you, if you also dual boot between a 32bit and 64bit operating system. This is a compromise however since the 32bit operating system will stably run a higher clock than the 64bit system will, for convenience you'll be forced to run the overclock the 64bit system will allow in your dual booting setup.
Correction Note; Since the initial writing of this guide, I have changed my dual boot setup, and I am presently dual booting WinXP 32bit and WinVista 32bit, so I could keep my overclock the same across both operating systems.
SLI or Crossfire Note:
If you are running an SLI or Crossfire setup you need to discover your initial stable overclock and established Vcore voltage running a single GPU, then after discovering your stable overclock Record your settings! Then install the 2nd GPU in the system and enable the SLI or Crossfire capability in the operating system, you'll discover you will probably be back to crashing in 3Dmark06 and will need to continue to bump up the Vcore until you find the stability of running multiple cards. Once you find the stable overclock settings for dual cards record those settings for your reference.
Hopefully this guide will help some of you that are struggling to overclock your Black Edition CPUs, and cannot seem to be getting anywhere!
One important final note to share with you regarding overclocking is learning when to quit, and be satisfied with your results, if you don't learn that, you will repeat your mistakes over and over, and overclocking will end up costing you substantial amounts of money.
If you learn to exercise caution, you can reap serious gains over your stock configuration, and run those increases for a long time, probably all the way to your next hardware upgrade.
STRESS TESTING WARNING
I feel the need to throw in some caution about using "Pedal to the Metal" stressing programs that are used for stress testing your overclock like Prime95, OCCT, Intelburn, Etc..
First of all there are different routes to go with various CPUs to successfully overclock them, if you're the owner of a CPU with an unlocked multiplier and your path to overclock is simply raising the CPU multiplier and Vcore voltage and not taking your FSB out of spec at all, once you find the proper Vcore to run the raised multiplier, serious long term stress testing is flat out not necessary.
If your raised multiplier and Vcore voltage aren't in the pocket then you won't even complete 3DM06, however your FSB settings are default settings so there is no instability there, since they are default settings, the only instability is before discovering the exact Vcore voltage to match the multiplier you are attempting to run and that's done by trial and error rebooting and testing, as instructed above, until you discover the sweet spot relation between multiplier and Vcore, and you're there.
When you're overclocking a locked multiplier CPU, its a lot more complicated juggling voltages, FSB speed, PLL, VTT, GTL Etc., so stress testing is definitely necessary in those situations, because you're changing and manipulating the set specifications of the hardware communication, and the new settings you use have to be tested to ensure they're stable.
However and here is the Caution; I seriously question the need for all this 24hr testing going on your brand new CPU, I see numerous cases here at THGF of guys bragging about their 24hr stress testing, or saying someones overclock is not stable because they haven't benched for 24 hrs.
A stress test is running all of your CPU cores flat out for however long you run the test, unless of course a core drops out because your overclock is unstable, I see the need for short term testing say an hour or maybe 2, because it won't take that long for an unstable overclock to show itself, but 24hrs in my opinion is not necessary.
There is not a thing on this planet designed to last forever, your precious CPU included when companies like Intel and AMD, guarantee their CPUs for 3 yr warranty time period, they're confident their CPUs will actually go past that time period, however that calculation is based on 3 yrs and beyond of normal use.
They know their CPUs are capable of lasting under normal spec'd use longer than the 3 yrs or they would not warranty them that long.
Now the cold hard fact is that overclocking your CPU will shorten its lifespan, but we accept that for the additional speed we gain, most of us will replace that cpu with an upgrade before is life expectancy arrives anyway, so taking it out of specifications is acceptable.
However that's with normal day to day use, surfing the web, audio and video editing and converting, gaming, office documentation Etc, and though serious bench stress testing is necessary to achieve a stable overclock, what damage does stress testing over a 24 hr time period and beyond, actually do to shorten the lifespan of your new CPU.
For example if you stress test your new quad core CPU for 24hrs, and all 4 cores are running at 100% for 24 hrs, how much normal daily processing is lost, because no daily application uses all 4 cores at 100% for 24hrs, so at least think about that when you overclock your CPU, and use at least some kind of wisdom in your stress testing.
Because if you don't think you're adding to shortening the life of your CPU, you're wrong!
Good Hardware Overclocking Luck, To Everyone Reading This!
Ryan
AMD Black Edition Overclock Guide (Raising Multiplier)
Originally Posted by Kenshiro
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