My OCed 955BE Good-Bad ?

[kaitheus]

Well recently I got my hands on an ASRock 990FX Extreme 4 mobo and 4GB of G.Skill ECO 1600MHz Cas 7 DDR3, so I decided to see if I could get my 955 BE to 4GHz as before with my old board and ram my max stable OC was 3.7GHz, but then my board decided to stop playing .AVI's and BSODed every time I played one so I replaced it lol.

Cpu: Phenom II X4 955 BE
Stepping: C3
Frequency: 4000MHz
ref*multi: 200*20.0
CPU voltage: v1.4125
CPU-NB: v1.1 (Default)
nb frequency: 2400MHz
NB volts: Auto
RAM: 4GB G.skill ECO 1600Mhz DDR3 7-8-7-24-2T @ 1.35V *Defaults to 1333MHz though *
Motherboard: ASRock 990FX Extreme 4
Cooling: Zalman CNPS10X Performa w/2 120mm in push/pull
OS: Win 7 Ult 64 bit

My Idle temp hovers around 88F to 93F depending on room temp and Load during Prime95 never went past 52c.

So is this a Good or Bad OC ? I'm almost totally new to OCing like this so I'd like as much input as possible lols. My biggest concern is the Vcore increase, I'm not a big fan on increasing voltages unless I have too lol. Should I be worried about damage to my CPU or are these settings good to go as a permanent setup ?

 

[cuecuemore]

Looks rock solid to me. I wouldn't be worried about damaging anything; your volts are way too low to do that. But you temps are great and if it's prime stable then you should be good.

 

[AbdullahG]

Nice OC. Everything seems fine. Your voltage isn't too high. At that speed, as well as the same stepping, I've seen people pull up to +1.5V O.O AND they claim it to be stable. Your temps are great. Nothing to worry about really.

 

[dontcrosthestreams]

im only at 3.8 with temp max of 45....your numbers look good

 

[beenthere]

The OC looks fine as long as it's stable. Use OCCT, P95 or Linpack to stress test for stability.

The links below may help you further.

http://www.overclock.net/amd-cpus/902756-amd-overclock-guide-newbs.html

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

 

[jordanjr23]

looks good but i would oc the northbridge to 2600 too

 

[kaitheus]

looks good but i would oc the northbridge to 2600 too

Would putting at 2600 significantly increase performance or is it more for stability ?

 

[iam2thecrowe]

^it increases performance, not a significant increase, but its there to be had. Increases the speed of the link between the motherboard and the CPU.

 

[kaitheus]

I'll give it a shot an see if I notice anything lols.

Update:
lol I just changed it to 2600 and right after I did that my mobo auto rebooted itself then I went back in the bios and changed the NB voltage from v1.1 to v1.2 *I was hoping to get away with the default voltage lol*and I booted up just fine, then I ran WEI as a *in the ball park test* and that passed, I'll run Prime95 again either later tomorrow or the day after as tomorrow I'll be out hunting with my dad on the last day of deer season, but so far it seems good atm but I wont know for certain till I re-run Prime95.

 

[kaitheus]

Changed my mem timings to 8-8-8-24-2T and was able to hit 1600MHz with my ram, though if I set it to 7-8-7-24-2T and 1600 I wont even post .
lol I guess this is the happy medium with this cpu which to say is pretty impressive I'd say lol. Ganna run Prime95 for a bit an see if these new settings are stable, lol woke up an turned the PC on and I'm idling at 74F LOL... love my air cooler!

Update:

Just ran Prime95 for just under an hour (didn't figure I really needed more then that) and it seems stable atm with the new settings, I donno why but my core clock evened out to 4000MHz instead of 4017MHz and my base bus also evened out from 200.9MHz/201MHz to 200MHz.

 

[Wisecracker]

For each 10% you increase the speed of the IMC/NB, memory bandwidth is increased 3-4% and latency is reduced 3-4%. Keep your HT link speed in the 2000MHz range.

I think 7-8-7-24-2T at 1333Mhz might be a touch faster in benchmarking but in the 'real world' you will not notice any difference with 8-8-8-24-2T 1600MHz.

If you are stable I wouldn't change a thing -- except maybe that power-sucking HD4890 - LOL (actually being DX10 is still quite good)

 

[kaitheus]

For each 10% you increase the speed of the IMC/NB, memory bandwidth is increased 3-4% and latency is reduced 3-4%. Keep your HT link speed in the 2000MHz range.

I think 7-8-7-24-2T at 1333Mhz might be a touch faster in benchmarking but in the 'real world' you will not notice any difference with 8-8-8-24-2T 1600MHz.

If you are stable I wouldn't change a thing -- except maybe that power-sucking HD4890 - LOL (actually being DX10 is still quite good)

Surprisingly my HD4890 doesn't use anymore then around 190-220Watts max, and being how old it is now that's pretty decent lol as I think 190 was its rated TDP . Also I've noticed a significant jump in performance having the ram set to 8-8-8 1600 rather then 7-8-7 1333, mostly in SW:ToR I can now play at 1080p maxed settings including shadows with 50+ FPS (80+ without shadows) on average where as before I was getting mid 30s (an 60+ without shadows) with shadows so its a pretty good indicator of the difference between 1333 and 1600.

 

[Wisecracker]

The issue is more the idle power consumption of the HD4890. AMD has made serious improvements with the -5000 & -6000 series; can't wait to see what the 7s bring at 28nm.

My experience has actually been the opposite on the RAMs but I'm not the gamer type. Tighter timings seem to trump speed with my stuff -- but I'm using an under-volted 95w PhII 925 -- not sure how there may be that big a difference in the IMC.