Legit Reviews

AMD A8-3850 APU Overclocking w/ 7 Processors

When AMD released the 'Lynx' desktop platform back in June 2011, our motherboard reviewer ran into some bad luck when overclocking the processor. When you get a new platform setup for the very first time you really don't know what to expect and it does take some time to learn all the quirks and nuances of a new processor and motherboard. We recently ordered in six more processors and then overclocked all seven of them to see what the best one would be for our test system!

The original test sample that AMD sent us actually turned out being the least overclockable APU and was able to hit just 114 MHz on the baseclock for final clock frequency of 3.30 GHz. The best overclocker in the group of seven was an APU that could run stable at 132 MHz or 3.83 GHz.

Article Title: AMD A8-3850 APU Overclocking w/ 7 Processors
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1687/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $139.99 shipped

If you want to unload that crappy clocker I'll send you my address. After playing with the A8-3850 for a few hours I'd love to have it for a HTPC. Here's the problem I have with the AMD setup.
1) Download video card drivers, easy enough.
2) Download AVIVO drivers, fill out small questionnaire, then download.
3) Finally find the AMD southbridge drivers that are buried in the download site.
4) Find the AHCI drivers (only 90MB?!?!?!?).
5) Realize #4 won't do you any good when installing Windows. Go to manufacturer's website for appropriate driver.
6) Download the Fusion software.
7) Download Overdrive, yet somehow it isn't working with the FM1 chipset.

No kidding it took me 15 minutes and a few Google searches to find the southbridge drivers. Come on AMD.

My understanding is that the southbridge on these APUs automatically lower some multipliers at 133MHz BLCK. By dropping the multipler to 22x and immediately setting the BLCK to 133MHz, you've got an overclocked GPU and a standard (nearly) 2926MHz CPU.

From there, you can increase voltage as you increase the multiplier, but the Llanos seem to be have a nice island of stability at 133MHz BLCK, up to around 145MHz.

Might want to give that a try, see if your units experience this behavior.

Shooooot, I'd be happy with cpu #s 2-6 for that matter, that batch still looks pretty good at 3.6+Ghz! Any chance of getting the numbers off those dies so we know what to try to order for ourselves? OR any chance you will be parting with any of those for a discounted price when you are through with them? (hint hint ;) )

Thanks for the follow up, very cool!

Kaos Kid wrote:Shooooot, I'd be happy with cpu #s 2-6 for that matter, that batch still looks pretty good at 3.6+Ghz! Any chance of getting the numbers off those dies so we know what to try to order for ourselves? OR any chance you will be parting with any of those for a discounted price when you are through with them? (hint hint ;) )

Thanks for the follow up, very cool!

The CPU's are long gone... Dan did the testing back in July and I just got the time to write it up...

As for the die numbers... Let me see if Dan has the high-res images around still...

Apoptosis wrote:

Kaos Kid wrote:Shooooot, I'd be happy with cpu #s 2-6 for that matter, that batch still looks pretty good at 3.6+Ghz! Any chance of getting the numbers off those dies so we know what to try to order for ourselves? OR any chance you will be parting with any of those for a discounted price when you are through with them? (hint hint ;) )

Thanks for the follow up, very cool!

The CPU's are long gone... Dan did the testing back in July and I just got the time to write it up...

As for the die numbers... Let me see if Dan has the high-res images around still...

Yeah, I have them somewhere I'll take a look at them when I get home and let you know what we had

Cool, thanks!

Major_A wrote:If you want to unload that crappy clocker I'll send you my address. After playing with the A8-3850 for a few hours I'd love to have it for a HTPC. Here's the problem I have with the AMD setup.
1) Download video card drivers, easy enough.
2) Download AVIVO drivers, fill out small questionnaire, then download.
3) Finally find the AMD southbridge drivers that are buried in the download site.
4) Find the AHCI drivers (only 90MB?!?!?!?).
5) Realize #4 won't do you any good when installing Windows. Go to manufacturer's website for appropriate driver.
6) Download the Fusion software.
7) Download Overdrive, yet somehow it isn't working with the FM1 chipset.

No kidding it took me 15 minutes and a few Google searches to find the southbridge drivers. Come on AMD.

I hope you don't mine, but I showed AMD your comments and they said this:

Never thought of it before and its not that much different for a gpu owner. But ya he's right - I will get a super big package created monthly. It is all on the product CD though and that should install everything the first time. After that its just catalyst drivers and ccc that need updating.

I never use the software off of a motherboard disc. I just assume it's outdated the minute they press the disc. No point in installing drivers twice.

Normally Chipset / ACHI / RAID drivers do not get updated more than once or twice a year. There's no reason to really.

CCC / Video Drivers are monthly though.

If I recall correctly the southbridge driver version was v11.8, aka the same version as the latest video drivers.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/w ... ndows.aspx
Release date on all the drivers is 8/17/11.

But yeah Intel and formerly nVidia chipset drivers aren't released very often. The other reason I went the download route is the FM1 socket is still new. Since it isn't a mature chipset I figured I'd be better off looking for the latest and greatest. Just to update there is already another BIOS update for the system I put together. That's 2 new BIOS revisions in less than a month.

Apoptosis wrote:I hope you don't mine, but I showed AMD your comments and they said this:

Don't mind at all, didn't think my gripes would make it to the source. Thanks for passing it on and letting me know what was said.

I understand not wanting to use the cd since they are usually outdated, but if you are searching and searching for drivers, I think I'd use the CD to get it up and running. You don't usually see 2 bios updates on such a new product that quick. Now graphics updates seem almost weekly sometimes. :D

A short article like this is fine with me. It had pretty much all the essentials that anyone would need. More is welcome