Can't OC Athlon II x2 250 past 3.2Ghz

[BobCharlie]

Hello. I'm wanting to OC my Athlon II x2 250 chip from 3 ghz to 3.6- 4 Ghz. I'm using a Biostar A780L3L board with an AMI bios program. I have liquid cooling (Antec Kuhler 620) and 3 120mm fans (2 are for the radiator 1 push 1 pull) 600 watt Thermaltake psu, Thermaltake case, 4gig DDR3, GTX 550ti video card, 250 GB and 500 GB HD's. Idle temps are 27c and loaded under Orthos is 33c max. Originally with the factory heatsink they were 33c idle and 48c loaded.

I've read sites are getting 4 ghz with proper setups. Highset stable OC I can get is 3.2. Anything higher I get errors after post. Some errors are "Cannot find Windows Configuration file, or the blue screen stating a shutdown occurred to protect the system". Also, after reading other links with similar issues, people are using different boards and BIOS with different names for the adjustments being used. It seems most of my adjustments for OC are under the "Performance" tab in my BIOS. Some issues are the Core volts max out at 1.4000 volts and interestingly are the default volt setting. The way I got 3.2 Ghz is from changing the factory 200Mhz to 215-220. Anything higher will show a higher Ghz, EX 3.6Ghz, but won't load Windows due to the warnings stated earlier.

Any help to get this Chip to at least 3.9 Ghz would be nice. If for some reason that's not possible, can someone explain why or what I'd need to change (ex: different BIOS revision, etc). BTW, BIOS is FULLY unlocked as far as I can tell.

 

[BobCharlie]

Also, my multiplier is set at 15. I can't go higher with it, but I can go lower.

 

[henydiah]

i think you get 3.6Ghz with your CPU is good .. I do not know if the system you can use to go to it or not , in 3.9ghz above many risk with vcore , i see in review oc at 24/7 need 1.52v , with a HTT Link Speed of 1820MHz (7x base) and a Northbridge Frequency of 2600MHz (10x base)

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/amd_athlon_ii_x2_250_processor_review/1

 

[BobCharlie]

LOL, that was one of the links I was looking at earlier. Like another user here who has the 440 3 core version, getting Windows to post is an issue.

 

[BobCharlie]

Update: The best I could get was 3.72Ghz. The A780L3L board was limiting anything further due to not being able to go past 1.400 CPU volts as everyone I've seen in the 3.9 to 4.1 Ghz range were running 1.500v + . The settings I used to get 3.72 are :


200 is base, upped to 248. Anything over Windows didn't like

1.400v was base for me-- 1.375 for CPU actually responded better and was more stable to a slight undervolting

CPU NB volts were lowered to 1.3875 from 1.400 as well

1800 for CPU-NB freq.

HT link freq 1.4Ghz

Advanced clock calibration enabled- read in literature that it supposedly helped to make OC slightly more stable

4 gig DDR3 1066 was set to manual and dropped to 800, rest of DRAM settings were left on auto. (manually setting clocks is preferred)

I'm sure with more trial and error 3.8 is possible with this board and that chip with further tweaking but I couldn't get it. This set up should help Athlon II x2 240-260 users to at least get in the ballpark. I got as high as 3.82, but stability needed refined. Windows is a pita as it rejects settings A LOT. Any other boards might not like these settings as I'm finding out now with my new MSI 760GM-P35 board with the same processor. It's finicky. I ran Orthos for 15 min and no error. None of anything else crashed either for me. Again, different boards and processors will react differently. I'm not going to waste hours running Prime95 as it's unrealistic to 100% load something for hours. It also kills the lifespam as it's like redlining a car @6500 rpms for an hour or longer. But do as you may and good luck!

Anyways, hope this helps someone get started.

 

[henydiah]

finally you get 3.7 keep cool

 

[BobCharlie]

Actually, I was finally able to get 3.9 Ghz. I had to relax the RAM timings slightly. It had issues with Prime95 on one of the cores, but I wasn't interested in relaxing the timings anymore as the CPU voltage was kinda high and I wasn't seeing much (if any) difference in performance. For the record, the RAM timings on Auto were 6,6,6,15,20. Which were inline with what the Manufacturer recommended @1066 speed which was close to where I was at (it's 1333 capable sticks, but never stable at that speed with OC). This was all at or around 3.66Ghz with my current board and 3.72Ghz with the Biostar one. More than 3.66Ghz with this MSI board and I went to 7,7,7,17,22 (what was recommended from manufacturer at next speed up from 1066) and it booted and never crashed @ 3.9Ghz. I might go back to the 3.9Ghz and fiddle with the settings more and try to push 4ghz as heat was not an issue whatsoever. About 2 degrees hotter at idle and maybe 4 more under load. I need to do some real world tests (like copy and paste a large 10gb file and time it, to compare speed increases or decreases). I settled with 3.66Ghz for the time being as I had other stuff to do and needed a 100% stable setup with this MSI board. The 3.72 was 100% stable with the Biostar board oddly enough, considering it's a cheaper board and not "recommended" as an OC board. If you're running that Biostar board, I'd suggest loosening the timings slightly and 3.8 +/- should be easy. Eventually I'll order a new bios chip for that board and throw this processor back on as I'll eventually step up to a Phenom 6 core BE

 

[BobCharlie]

Actually, I forgot, My highest was a suicide shot of 4.05 Ghz. I'm tired now and was tired when I ran it so forgot I had saved the Validation link. So, here's my 3.9 and 4.0:

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2010732

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2012636