Daveburt714: I have all the released BIOSes, not linkable online but they're on a HD that I can't access anymore. I'll try and see if I can get it to work and attach them on one of the posts here later on.

IMPORTANT NOTE: MSI board dropped in price very quickly on my side of earth...? Some MB manfacturers (namely, MSI and ASUS) are telling official reviewers that their motherboards need a new revision to solve so many of these problems (which is coming out very shortly), which is exactly the opposite to what we customers are being told, but no wonder we've had no help for over a month. So if I was you, I'd wait till a better, newer revision of the MB's are out to purchase one to keep. To experiment like I did, it's a different story.

Here's one (pretty new and quite decent) Phenom 9900/Spider vs Q6600 review where these MB MFG's told the truth to a reviewer: http://www.overclockersclub.com/revi...mon_9900/4.htm

QUICK NOTE

I don't have a Phenom since around 34hours now. It was sold and delivered to a friend incl. insurance and recorded next day delivery with P&P for $160.
That means, I cannot possibly test it or refer to it anymore beyond memory. My C2D laptop and P4 do not for some reason pick up my SATA drives used with Phenom so I can't access the information I stored on them. I can only speak from memory now, sorry. Waiting for BE now.

However, now I can speak with details and more thoroughly. My brain is free at last.

I've done many tests since our dear friend Lightman posted recently about Northbridge overclocking and if you remember, I had posted about it in this thread 2nd December with 3.12GHz NB speed readings by CPU-Z and many benches HERE. Start reading on from Post#69.

I noticed many many discrepencies later on, as did Sammi/Tony/lukija and after much testing and investgation with help from lukija, we decided the high Northbirdge reading in CPU-Z are faulty. It will not validate those high Northbridge reading CPU-Z files, no way. In fact, I will post comparison benches later on (when I can access the HD somehow) of same CPU MHz different NB MHz, and you will see that actual ≤9x multi Northbridge frequency change has a very noticeable performance effect even at +/-200MHz difference compared to these "errorsome" readings having zero performance difference whilst showing +/-1000MHz difference in speeds.
Another very easy way to determine what your Northbridge speed is, is to set a "high HT link speed". If you have a high Northbirdge speed from the BIOS, the HT speed can also be that high without problems. Try it.

You will see, that overclocking through changing northbridge multiplier with Phenom will only get you a faulty NB speed reading in CPU-Z and faulty component readings in all other monitoring software. The HT speed will not change from what the NB multiplier 9x would have it running at in any case. Meaning the NB pseed has not changed past what it was at 9x multi. Go and try it.

Why would Sammi say to overclock Phenom, "drop the NB multi"?

You see, inspect this:
Messing around I could get 3.12GHz on Northbridge speed by raising the NB multi through BIOS at very low volts..what?
However, when I tried coventional 9x multiplier (stock) CPU overclocking with max volts, it failed bootup past NB 2GHz-2.2GHz repeatedly, even in AOD.. ?
OK.
So I drop the NB multi to 5x and then overclock CPU and can reach +500MHz CPU speed beyond what I can with a 2GHz NB.. !?

Why would this happen if the NB could reach 3.2GHz NB on stock volts stable?

Eggsactly. You get what I mean.

Remember I've been saying I cannot OC Phenom anymore past 2.5GHz? Well, here's the crack.
I gave it one last shot before delivering it. THis time once again, I managed 2.84GHz with 5x NB multi (screenshots/CPU-Z files not uploaded yet).
As I mentioned very early at the beginning: The problem and bottleneck with Phenom is NB speed. Drop the NB multi to OC the CPU. Above 2GHz NB will start erroring randomly. At the start when your Phenom is new you may get upto 2.3GHz on NB speed at 9x multi, but soon if you keep pushing to this, this is going to stop you're oc on CPU MHz and lower it. Soon you won't be able to oc high CPU/NB MHz again unless you drop the NB multi/MHz to keep it below 2GHz at all times and then try and oc the CPU.

The only way to overclock the Northbridge so far with locked edition Phenoms is to leave the NB at 9x multi and oc high on HT ref. Then it'll continue going up in-sync and you see some very good gains sometimes past 100% CPU MHz scaling, which is due to the IMC/Mem MHz rising alongside the CPU MHz.
Hope it helps clarify much confusion. Thanks.