Trying to OC a Phenom 9650 cpu

you can take this safely all the way up to 3ghz

you need to read some guides, we can't just tell you settings. it doesn't work that way.

you need to know what you are doing, and increase in increments. be warned though, the phenoms don't OC far, and they run very hot.

as for a new CPU, you can use AM3 cpus on that board, so an athlon II x4 would be a nice upgrade.

Since there are more motherboards than processors, or 'reference' graphic card designs, it is somewhat of a courtousy to link to your motherboard, including Rev, when posting about Overclocking --- or at least it used to be...

Gigabyte MA770-UD3 Rev 2.0
http://www.gigabyte.com.au/products/product-page.aspx?p...
(There is also a Rev 2.1, and this is not my board)

It goes without saying, you're more likely to get quality advice & what not this way.


If you go gradually you won't damage the hardware you'll just hit a point where code and/or data goes corrupt. (Just avoid defragmentation while overclocked).

Generally everything can handle a +/-5% voltage difference too.

It takes real effort to destroy hardware, even the heatsink detaching from the CPU while running 16 instantances of Prime95 won't kill a processor there days. - They've all got overheat protection that kicks in very quickly.

'Hot' for a CPU is over 75 Celcius.
(On some processors and GPU's it is over 85 Celcius).

Normally when a system screws out it is because the SATA clock is sync'ed or run at a ratio to the system clock, if it is too far from 100 MHz it'll go screwy and corrupt data. (ie: You could copy from a optical disc to the HDD and the data won't match, it's just a matter of isolating the part, or parts, that didn't keep stable).


What is running at the core voltage of 1.184 though?


It's not like the old days when you had to use graphite to modify an AMD processor and they lacked overheat protection, etc



Once people know the chipset(s) on your motherboard they can relate better, as different vendors will use the chipset on their designs, the BIOS might differ significantly, but the features are usually all in there.


PS: [Ctrl]+[F1] at the Main Menu of the Gigabyte BIOS will unlock additional hidden features in some of the submenus.

Even if you do not understand them, yet, it helps to know that they exist and document them all the same as they might change in relation to something else. It's part of the learning process.

 

pencil overclocking, ah the memories  

Thanks guys for all the insight, I do apologize for not setting up my questions in the correct format. Currently I am at 2.6 and running at 29c. So from what I have been reading not bad but gonna go higher if I can. If I need any further assistance I will post back later.

Yes, thanks to path of least resistance (cough, carpenters pencil) I was able to take a Duron 600 to 850 MHz on a more Athlon like voltage of 1.85. (Not that I'd want a modern 65nm or smaller CPU running at that).

- Going from 200 FSB to 266 FSB was easy enough, without the unlocked multiplier.
- Best AUD$65 ever spent on a CPU.

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Get Prime95 from here: http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/

Run one instance of that per core/thread and it'll stress your CPU.

The benefits are that Prime95 can also check for the correctness of the calculations.

Various configurations can also bring more and more physical RAM into the mix. (versus just hamming the CPU, registers, L1 cache, L2 cache, L3 cache - if any), and so on.

72 hours of Prime95, MemTest86, MemTest86+, and SiSoft SANDRA (the less recent versions), and 3DMark 200#.


I suspect times have changed slightly, as 3DMark ---> Futuremark (used to be Onion something I think) kinda killed their position.


Still, Far Cry 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and any modern game should stress test the CPU, and GPU, and RAM (although it won't tell you if a bit flipped in physical memory, etc).


If it all goes to hell, hold [Insert] while performing a cold boot.

According to AMD the Phenom 9650 is only rated to 70 Celcius max.
http://products.amd.com/en-us/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?id=...

Unless anyone else knows of any other OPN Tray / PIB numbers for the AMD Phenom 9650 that are rated differently?

That kinda sux, although if it hits a ceiling every +x% in clock speed will require +x²% more voltage.

I don't see you hitting that kind of ceiling on this processor, although you never know. Modern heatsinks are quite amazing.

They really can take quite a beating.

Phenom overclocking primer:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-overclock-at...