Legit Reviews

well it's finally in my hands, Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz 9MB
picture time: before i really get into things, the 'test system' GA-890GPA-UD3H rev. 1 with BIOS F5(need to flash sometime)


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AMD gives me this meaty guy, people say it has a loud fan but it looks like a decent Heatsink compared to the solid chunk of aluminum you get with Athlon II's
http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u37/ ... G_3493.jpg
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for some reason photobucket turns random pictures sideways(but it also initially failed to upload 11/17 photos to begin with)
http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u37/ ... G_3494.jpg
all my hard drives moved over from the Core2Quad system including my new Seagate Momentus XT 500GB 2.5" Hybrid HDD which is now my primary system drive
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interesting sight here, at idle the cores bounce around from x4 to x14(which is set in BIOS manually)
http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u37/ ... retemp.jpg

To start: Idle temps: 23ish, load is a firm 38C (2hr prime95) in a ~77 degree room(which is rather nice as it's a humid 97 outside)

(HD 5770+HD 5750 mix crossfire, both running at 800/1250)

now on to the fun/frustrating part, figuring out a new CPUs capabilities

Looking forward to see what you can do with it

at 3570MHz or 4207 w/turbo so far(255x14)

Nice!

heres the 3570MHz run in vantage, solid pickup


gonna take a tiny break as theres a couple thing i gotta do, this was only my 3rd OC boot and i havnt really touched voltages yet
(updated my BIOS to F7c btw)

the Ripjaw kit has been twisting my arm(blend would crash and or error within seconds or blue screen randomly) because i have to run it around either 1300MHz or 1800MHz because of the ratio and it won't run below its default 1.5v, but i have it at 1424MHz 8-8-8-22 now 21min prime95 blend stable with the 1055T @3737MHz so the ram is good to go since it'll only be going closer to spec from here on up, so its back on the CPU to be tweaked, its running at 48C now though because i've been running the small FFT test which threw it up at 53C(to verify RAM was the problem) and hasnt been idle to stabilize much, btw my northbridge fan:

yes, held on by the kind of ties you use to close trash bags(got a 50ft spool of it a couple years ago, great way to spend $2.50), and its the 92mm rocketfish fan from my other cpu cooler(running a different 92mm 3pin fan on a fan controller on the Q8300 system) pushes a lot of air

edit IV: 279x14=3905MHz 10min blend stable, 48C

OHAI TURBO need to try getting it to boot at 16.5 turbo but this is good :D

okay, set with my super stable clocks:


so, 5hrs blend stable i'll call that good
for vantage the extra 238MHz picked up 1k marks for CPU, 4,500 above stock(14,550 @2.8 vs 19,050 @3.8 ).

Now need to get off my butt and finish the build (or at least start playing on the tech station) with mine!

my initial goal was to beat 6.00sec and i'd say i met that goal also ran the 1024M at 4.116GHz but didnt like the temps so i didnt run it at any higher freq. than that

one 92mm fan on NB, one 120mm hiflow on PWM, window fan, the dual fan rad for the H50, ~75F room temp wouldn't boot above 304MHz even with 1.7v vcore and all the other voltages in the orange: (ignore the 306 bus, took the pic after just changing that)

I'd give you a thumbs up, but the system at work looks to have dropped a lot of the smilelies!!

Tried playing with mine but looks like a OS re-install and bios flash is going to be required for me. So have backed off until the 300 V'Raptor gets here next week for the primary drive. Will be trying W7 for the forst time and don't want to do it twice.

haha yea i use my XP PRO install for serious cpu clocking because of boot times (4sec), it performs better in 2D apps, and its a snap to install (have an nLite'd version). i'm always happy when i don't have to reinstall during an overclocking session tho

Skier, got a question for ya on the 1055 OC'ing. Got my system stock settings right now, and I wanna delve into the wonderful world of overclocking. The question is: where to start? CPU? RAM? Graffix? AAARRGGGG....kinda overwhelming! LOL! Care to give a newb a little direction? Thanks man!

well generally you start out Overclocking the CPU as that provides the most substantial and seeable gains, i underclock my RAM if possible and loosen timings (8-8-8-22 instead of 7-7-7-20) to make sure that the only thing i'm dealing with is the CPU stability.

CPU:
Heavy gain in everyday use as well as gaming
rule #1, if you're on stock cooling get an aftermarket cooler as soon as possible -looks like you're on water which is excellent for Overclocking
rule #2, MAKE SURE you keep load temps under 60C no matter what frequency because the chip does not like running that hot, 56C load is fine
rule #3, disable onboard graphics if applicable because enabled leads to much higher Northbridge temps that can severely limit overclockability

how I start out is on stock multiplier (14x) add 20MHz to the bus, boot up, check stability, add 10MHz more, 10MHz again, until it starts crashing, then start bumping the voltages, generally add one notch to CPU & NB at a time, while bumping PLL and other sub voltages like so:

throughout your testing, run prime95 x64 or 32bit blend to ensure stability and verify max temp on each frequency is under 60C usually this takes 5minutes to find out instability and achieve close to max temperature, but once you think you are done clocking, run for AT LEAST 2 hours to verify stability

200MHz, stock everything
220MHz, stock voltages, lowered NB & HTT frequency multiplier to stay close to 2000MHz for each (you can bump them up later, or not, they dont matter too much) verify them both being less than 2300MHz each time you enter BIOS
230MHz, stock voltages, still runs fine
240MHz, bump CPU-PLL,CPU-NB, CPU vcore, and NB/SB/HTT all by one notch
250MHz, keep voltages
255MHz, bump CPU-NB, CPU Vcore
260MHz, bump CPU-NB, CPU Vcore
265MHz, bump CPU-NB, CPU Vcore, PLL, NB/SB/HTT one notch each
270MHz, bump CPU-NB, CPU Vcore, PLL, NB/SB/HTT one notch each
275MHz, bump CPU-NB, CPU Vcore two notches each - this is because the upper end of the overclocking spectrum for Phenom II's is and has always been very temperamental requiring big voltage adjustments to maintain stability, I currently run 1.625v for 24/7 clocks, but only because i have good cooling to deal with the heat

also I Disable Turbo because with a big overclock on all the cores to begin with, turbo does very little aside from directly causing instability
also disable C1E or any other power saving options

of course the above is a generalization for MY system not yours, and all CPUs and motherboards overclock differently (even the same models) you have to play it by ear so to speak, and it takes time

RAM:
little gain in normal use
RAM is very finnicky on AMD systems because there is a very limited amount of CPU/RAM Bus frequency options, basically either 1600-1333-1066 or 800 for any AM3 motherboard and all based on 200MHz bus (200x4=800MHz/ 200x5.33=1066/ 200x6.66=1333/ 200x8=1600 for standard DDR3 1600MHz (PC3 12800)) as you overclock the CPU ensure the RAM frequency is within 100MHz of or under the factory spec (up to ~1700MHz or as low as 1300MHz for a 1600MHz kit) as frequency is not that big of a deal, so much as timings they are running at (a 1600MHz 9-9-9-24 kit is much slower than the same kit at 1333 or even 1250 7-7-7-21) i currently run 1.5v 1600MHz CL9 Ripjaws at 1450MHz 7-8-7-21 for my 3.808GHz OC (272x14 for CPU, 272x5.33 for RAM)
-higher Frequency =slightly higher voltage
-tighter timings = slightly higher voltage
the thing i hate the most about tweaking RAM is that 90% of the time that your RAM is unstable, you will have to clear CMOS and reset every settings which is why i ignore the RAM entirely once it is at a nice underclock and loose timings, then once i have a solid CPU overclock i take a picture of the cpu settings screen of the BIOS and then start working

video card:
moderate gains
every video card is different and it's all "luck of the draw" but for 5770's i'd say 920/1350MHz should be stable for everyday use if you crank the fans up, i personally do not overclock video cards during normal use, only when benchmarking specifically and graphics cards can run very hot and be very loud and without much gain but run Furmark v1.8.2 multiple GPU stability test for 10-20 minutes and if it works fine then you're set

that's about all i got in my noggin

Just a quick question: I saw that you had an issue with the multiplier hopping around while viewing in CPU-Z, which I am having the same issue. The multiplier will jump around between x4 and x14. Is there a way to keep this as a set value?

that is C1E and i forget the other setting's actual name but they should both be on the same page as the enable/disable cores and hard drive boot priority

as i said you want to disable a lot of things, C1E, turbo boost, as well as anything that says power saving or throttling in the name

Cool. I'm running Prime blend right now, on a 220 on the bus. I set the memory to the stock settings (I've got 2 different Ripjaws memorys, and the set both to the higher stock timings, which is 8-8-8-24, and ran memtest on that, which was ok and stable). Right now, prime has been on for 6 minutes, and going back to the next set of adjustments. Thanks for the help! I appreciate it! Keep ya posted on the advancements...

uh oh...just turned back to my comp, and i see that its rebooted by itself....<Scratches head>

so bump the CPUNB and vcore one notch and try again

ok....got it running @ 3.0 GHz stable, and Prime is running good (so far...just 18 minutes into it. LOL). I printed out your previous replies, and tmw will continue the saga...one question though: on startup, it gives me an overvoltage warning...is this normal (ie, i get a fan warning now that I have water instead of the CPU stock cooler)?

and its running @ 40C stable...been there since about 5 minutes into Prime.