[mxthunder]

Hey guys, been lurking here the last couple weeks. some of you may know me from ocforums.com but there seems to be a lot of info here about the 720 so I figured it would be a good place to be.

anyways I have a Phenom II 720 BE 0851 stepping. I have had decent luck with it so far. 3.7 was my highest stable clock, but would fail prime after about 1HR, regardless of voltage etc.
Biostar ta790gx a2+ mobo with sinked mosfets
xfx 9800GT with a zalman vf1000 cooler overclocked to 710core 1050 memory
4gigs of gskill ddr2800
1TB hitachi hard drive
quad booting windows xp 32, 64, vista 32, 64

Last night I started playing around with enabling the 4th core. To my surpise, it did not affect my stability at 3.6Ghz so I let it run prime, it passed for over an hour. The settings were 200x18 for 3600 MHz, 1.5125V core 1600 HT link (the highest my mobo will let me go) and a 2000Mhz NB at 1.3 volts. Today I upped the NB to 2400 and it failed prime after 1 hour.
I am debating on what to do next. Should I lower my NB back to 2000 and be happy with the stability? Try for 2200? I heard a rumor that there was a strange peformance hit around the 2200 NB speed mark. Not sure why.
Couple annoying things... core temp no longer works. Either reads 0 or a really low number, however this hardware monitor program seems to still be able to read the temperature, im not sure how accurate it is, but it seems to be about 4C higher than what core temp read with 3 cores enabled, so im guessing its spot on with core temp. I may consider getting some beefier cooling if this 4th core proves to be worthy.

Here is a screenshot of my results. Any input is appreciated!

 

[Kuntz]

You get much a better oc with a bump to your FSB and ACC turned to Auto. The sweet spot for Phenom I/II OC's is a FSB between 215MHz-230MHz usually. For my Phenom, I need 0.05v less to be stable at 3.1GHz with a 230x13.5 than if I just up the Multi, even with ACC still set to Auto.

 

[Bose Einstein Condensate]

Why tax your chipset at all with FSB overclocking? Just crank the multi and optimize everything else as much as possible. ive got 3.8ghz right now with every other setting tightened as much as possible.3.6ghz is fine as your not gonna notice a much of a difference going up unless you hit 4ghz+

 

[Kuntz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bose Einstein Condensate Why tax your chipset at all with FSB overclocking?

Because it uses less energy and lets you OC higher..

 

[mxthunder]

I dont think it uses more or less energy, wattage is wattage. ACC IS turned to auto thats how you enable the 4th core..

 

[elito]

also, pure fsb is surely more harder and advanced than just upp'ing the multi

thus a great learning experience. sad these chips cant do 300+fsb anymore, like good ol opty 165's. now imagine if they'll remake these opty's and only 45nm..

OMG?

 

[suphiceto]

I am new to OCing as well but I have the same chip and I have been playing with it since last week. From what I have read so far, nobody has similar temps on this chip, for that reason I am assuming that the temp sensors are faulty in most of these chips. For example my chip has never gone above 45 in all three cores and if it comes close to this value I would have BSOD or auto shut down. I have also noticed this, before I put my board in my case, all three cores were under 42C on heavy load and I was able to perform prime torture and OCCT for hours. But when I put the board in my case my temps went up to 44C+ and I lost the stability. I had to lower multi by .5 to 18 to regain the stability. It didnt matter if I increased the vcore or anything else. I belive if I want to OC more, I need to cool it more. For that reason, I have invested in few Yate Loons and Ultra KAze for my system. I am also considering to lap my Xigmatek and 720BE. I belive if I can lover my temps 3-5C, I am going to be able to increase my multipliyer to 19 or may be more. So you might wanna cool your system a little to see if it makes any differance. Good luck

Ohh by the way, which software is that on top right corner? I am trying to find a good monitoring software, I dont like everest, speedfan and AOD monitorings.

 

[mxthunder]

That is interesting. That may be whats causing my restart after the 2 hr mark in prime95. The temps hoover right around 50C so that would confirm your theory.
I would be pretty mad if these chips had bad sensors. I just upgraded from a brisbane with a bad sensor and I was really looking forward to having a legit one so I could actually watch my temps.

The program that is shown is called HW monitor. It came with my biostar motherboard. Its nice cause it works with just about everything, unlike core temp and speedfan which can be flaky. I will look for a link for you on the web, if not I can send it to you in a zip file.
Tonight I am going to run prime95 changing nothing, except without the 4th core enabled. Who knows it could be failing because of some other setting I have. Im still trying to find the magic numbers with the NB

 

[Kuntz]

If you're randomly restarting, try dropping your HT Link down (keep it under 1600MHz if possible), that seems to always fix it.

 

[suphiceto]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mxthunder That is interesting. That may be whats causing my restart after the 2 hr mark in prime95. The temps hoover right around 50C so that would confirm your theory. I would be pretty mad if these chips had bad sensors. I just upgraded from a brisbane with a bad sensor and I was really looking forward to having a legit one so I could actually watch my temps. The program that is shown is called HW monitor. It came with my biostar motherboard. Its nice cause it works with just about everything, unlike core temp and speedfan which can be flaky. I will look for a link for you on the web, if not I can send it to you in a zip file. Tonight I am going to run prime95 changing nothing, except without the 4th core enabled. Who knows it could be failing because of some other setting I have. Im still trying to find the magic numbers with the NB

I still belive it is a great chip especially for the money, and I belive it is a great transition chip to quads for ones who is into gaming and OCing. The temp monitoring is an issue but you can always find a way to find a treshold for your chip and system. Try to lower your temps in your system by just creating more ventilation and see if it helps to stabilize.

That would be great, I have googled it but couldnt find anything.

 

[mxthunder]

PM me your email I will send it to you

Im starting to think my instability issues is due to my power supply. I can hear it moaning for mercy after about 20 minutes of prime with 4 cores. The Vcore dropps from 1.525 to 1.504 instantly when I start prime. Is that a big drop?