3.77Ghz "stable" but not Prime95?

It's a tough call and up to you, if you could run that setup 24/7 with no issues on anything but Prime 95, then yes, it is stable on your terms, but Prime 95 is a great stress testing tool and should not be overlooked. It may be premonition of what is to come in the future. Though you may not be experiencing any stability issues with that setup now, it could very likely happen in the near future...

Now, that being said, what tests are you running on Prime 95? Small, large or blended?

i used to run it small and now once it starts up (default=finding prime numbers) my system crashes

i have the same issue. runs everest for days amd no problem.but 30 minutes of prime 95 and bammmo!! i will say that even though i thought i was "stable" i did freeze up when restarting....

3770 mhz.................260x14.5

somewhat more stable.....is 260 as an fsb good?

It's your call if you want to use your CPU on the edge. Personally, I wouldn't do it and back off a little with the OC. Prime95 is a good indicator of what to expect from your system during extreme stress situations. You never know if a similar application is going to put the system under similar strain sometime in the future.



Might be the result of providing too little voltage to the CPU.

You need to determine how important whatever levels of of stability you reach are to you.

I stress test with Prime95 for 24 hours.

An unstable system will cause data corruption and loss eventually. If you care about your data, you'll make sure your system is fully stable, including Prime95.

Just one testing program is not enough. I had my I7 920 at 4.0G and rock stable in Prime 95 for any duration but if I ran Seti it would BSOD. I dropped it down to 3.8G and everything is stable everywhere now. I had no heat issues either to contend with.

Is your 955 a C2 or C3? C3 versions have only come out in the last month or two, but they run much higher core clocks and RAM clocks, not to mention lowers temps and voltages.

I can run my 955(C2) up to 3.8ghz stable for Prime 95, but once it's anywhere in the 3.9-4.1ghz range I get BSODs in Prime95 within the first few seconds-minutes. However, I can still use 3.9-4.1ghz for normal applications like browsers and some games. It's probably best to run an EDOC (everyday overclock) in Prime95 stable clocks and if you want to benchmark, I would use those "half-stable" clocks, provided your system doesn't crash while you're running a benchmark.

Also, how high do you run your Northbridge and HT-Link? Most people go for a minimum of 2400-2600mhz on the NB and some try to go as high as 3000ghz. HT-link should be kept at as close to the stock speed of 2000mhz as possible.

I use:

Phenom II 955 C2
Scythe Mugen 2 (stock fan)
MSI 790FX-GD70
4GB Muskin RAM DDR3 1600 (7-7-7-20-27-1T)
Sapphire 4890 Toxic
Antec TruePower New 750W

hi kokin nice board lol i have the same board first u r right about the northbridge freg running mine at 2600 and running stable at 4.2 ghz with prime 95 for 6 hours anything over that is just over kill to cpu voltage should be 1.5 to 1.525 to get anything over 4.0 ghz to set your cpu northbridge voltage to 1.2 to 1.3 and make sure u set your northbridge voltage the same as your cpu northbridge voltage setting your dram voltage or ddr2 voltage on some bios to 1.8 to 1.9 helps keeps your ram stable at tight settings hope this helps o and to if u r running the 140watt 955 u may not be able to get to 4.0 ghz but never say never lol

I agree with jsc. The degree of stability is up to you.

For my case 3 hours of prime95 is enough for me because I have no application that will run such similar stressful situation for my PC at all. I only game with my PC and even crysis does not load my CPU more than 30% although I notice that if I run at 3.4Ghz the game stutters during game saving and checkpoints reached so I upped to 3.6Ghz which made the game play smoother... thanks to overclocking otherwise my 2.8Ghz stock may not bring up the best in gaming...

just to reply on what randomkid wrote u r right i think running 95prime for longer then 3 to six hours is nuts to for those that run them for 24 hours u r shortting the life of your cpu there is nothing in the real world that is going to throtle your cpu to the floor so a few hours of 95 prime to check your heat and to see if it runs stable is all u need no need to kill the cpu before u even get to have fun with it lol

Some run 24hours prime because they do folding or things that stress their PC more than we do ours. Surely they are aware about shortening the life of the CPU when running their CPUs at very long stress period but I guess they are the ones who will be getting next generation CPU long before their overclocked CPU dies anyway.

randomkid u r right there r some that do alot more folding and stress there cpu more then most peps but when someone is trying to overclock there cpu for the first time and does not know as much as they should peps telling those people to run 95prime for 24 hours or so is not a good idea because these people may not know that running 95prime for 24 hours or longer could shorting there cpu life just letting the newbies know just incase they dont know but randomkid keep sending post your info has been very helpful

Thanks!

i run prime 95 for 18+ hours i can run 3-6 all day long but then it was crashing at 13-15 hour range but to reply to the author what is your voltage at? you need at least 1.45 to be stable at those speeds just to achieve 3.6 on the 945 i was running 1.44