Overclocking Phenom ii x4 965

[highc1157]

Hello everyone, first off, thanks for taking the time to read this and check out my questions. I am no expert, and have followed guides to the best of my abilities

What I should change to tighten up my (2nd) overclock and get more performance? This is the one which is the 2nd BIOS picture below, where I have changed more than just the CPU Multiplier. In this overclock, I fiddled with the BUS, NB freq multi, cpu multi. I never touched my ram timings, but wondering if maybe that's something I need to do?

Where I should go from the BIOS picture which should produce better performance, any advice on BUS/NB freq/HT/RAM timings would be appreciated. I'd like to stay in the current 4200 MHz range for my CPU, don't really want to go higher because my load temps are 55-59 C for my "theoretically" better of the two overclocks.

Anyway, listed below are my bios settings for two different overclocks, and their respective passmark results. The RAM score decreased in passmark in the overclock which has higher RAM speed??? I don't know why... . I think my BUS speed too low, so it cant pass information to RAM fast enough or something? BUS and RAM might be bottlenecking?

brief system overview
-Phenom ii x4 965 BE
-Gskill DDR2 800 dual channel ram 4x1GB
-GIgabyte GA-MA790x-UD4P
-650W earthwatts PSU
-Corsair H60 cooling


OC #1 (theoretically worse OC)

OC #2 (Theoretically better OC)

OC #1 passmark scores (the theoretically worse OC)

OC #2 passmark scores (the theoretically higher OC)

 

[beenthere]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/258573-11-black-edition-overclock-guide-raising-multiplier

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596023

 

[highc1157]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/258573-11-black-edition-overclock-guide-raising-multiplier

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596023

thanks for those posts man, Yea I've read dolk's and the other one too . I'm just confused on where to go from here :/

 

[nagol567]

One thing i found is that my board would sometimes change the ram timings if i left it on auto making my system unstable. i would fix them at the timings they need to be at for stock speeds which cpuz can tell you. your bus and HT speeds look fine and i dont think they are your bottleneck. but you may wanna grab some ddr3 1600 if you are worried about it. i have 8 gigs of this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211409
but you may want to get 2 4gig sticks. they are so cheep right now that theres no better time to upgrade your ram before the price increase that usually comes in the next few months. best of luck!

 

[highc1157]

One thing i found is that my board would sometimes change the ram timings if i left it on auto making my system unstable. i would fix them at the timings they need to be at for stock speeds which cpuz can tell you. your bus and HT speeds look fine and i dont think they are your bottleneck. but you may wanna grab some ddr3 1600 if you are worried about it. i have 8 gigs of this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211409
but you may want to get 2 4gig sticks. they are so cheep right now that theres no better time to upgrade your ram before the price increase that usually comes in the next few months. best of luck!

Thanks for the info man. I'm not at a point where I can buy more ram because my mobo only supports ddr2. This means a ram upgrade with mobo would end up costing way more than I can afford .

Is there anything I should be doing with my RAM timings or changing my BUS speed to increase ram frequency more?

 

[nagol567]

you may be able to push them a little faster by increasing the bus and raising the timings... try putting them at 9 9 9 25 35 and increase the bus one at a time until you crash.