Phenom 9500 w/ MSI K9A2 Platinum

[JumpingJack]

Ah haah ....so the Phenom 9600 Black Edition is a bust then....I knew it was going to be pure marketing hype!

Nah, there is more fun in unlocked multipliers than just get the max overclock, though that is the supreme quest.

[Brother Esau]

Haha I have a unlocked cpu which I leave at X10 its absolutely pointless unless you have phase Change or uber cooling!

[Swanie]

I got a stupid question, i know that the 9700 and 9900 have been put on hold/ delayed but i am seeing more and more sites having the 9700 up for sale .My question are if it is available is this a better prospect than the 9600BE?

[KTE]

Well, a full 8 hours of troubleshooting and 15 hours of no system bootup, even with the best BIOS flashed and no peripherals! It's very difficult to troubleshoot when you have no bootup.

It turns out Phenom 9600 BE I received cannot boot at stock volts anymore. So every CMOS clear/reset/BIOS flash, it just fails to boot.

I mentioned at the beginning that the system sets 1.192V 1.20VID at bootup at times (which is just about stable) and at other times it sets stock bootups volts at 1.2VID and 1.184V -> this does not bootup for hours repeatedly. Leave it to get cold and it'll bootup for you to change it. Bump it up one notch to 1.2V (next option after auto) and the system is fine.

But I can't keep a core which is problematic like this. It obviously has problems at stock. Going to run a stress test at 1.192V 1.2VID now and then 1.184V 1.2VID as it chooses randomly and see which core/s are failing. If so, back it goes.

Chinese characters were corrupt ATi drivers and the reboots causing a corrupted disk sector. No oc anymore until I get another core.

Swanie: no way.

[jonspd]

around 2.6 max not good...

[Swanie]

Thanks KTE - now it is settled. Will get the BE but will keep my 9500 as backup. At least i can play around again and see what it delivers and post my findings that hopefully can assist you . Are you going to get another BE?

[KTE]

around 2.6 max not good...

Whats the max HT ref., max single core, max 2 core, max 3 core, max 4 core, max 4 core short bench, max 4 core long bench (3D) and max 100% stable? (full details)

What about the NB/HT/RAM, what's the max stable you've managed (unganged - ganged is easy to hit high speeds even with non-BE, like single channel vs dual channel)?

Thanks KTE - now it is settled. Will get the BE but will keep my 9500 as backup. At least i can play around again and see what it delivers and post my findings that hopefully can assist you . Are you going to get another BE?

Yep.... hopefully but that depends on my stock stability test findings.

[KTE]

BTW, Super Pi 1M is like this at stock with 9600 BE (CAS4 because I don't want to reboot to change it to 3 and be stuck with no boot again).
2300MHz all cores, 1800MHz NB/HT, 400 4-3-3-3-11 1T RAM: 32.843s



PP: 75,539

No CDT/CW/Maxmem/theme/windows tweaks there, common windows run.

I honestly feel tempted to throw max volts/vids at -20C and try the 47x multiplier with 200 HT ref..... 9400MHz LOL

Do you like the wallpaper? I think it suits AOD quite nicely.

[DaMulta]

OK I installed 4 sticks of crucial tracer 8000 in mine Stock 1000 5-5-5-15 2.2v. With the 9500 I could not run at 1000Mhz with 3-3-3-10 2.3 volts like I did with my 580x board. I could not use the 1066 divider(I have had this ram at 1200Mhz before). Also with a bad system OC the bios didn't reset auto like it did with DDR 800 installed.

Then I installed a X2 6400+ I could run at 1000Mhz 3-3-3-10, but at 2.4v not 2.3v(2.3 is what I used on my 580x board) to make it stable. The system did reset the bios auto if you had a bad OC with the DDR2 8000 installed.

I might be a Quad Black 9600 soon to test this on as well.


1.1 Bios

[KTE]

OK I installed 4 sticks of crucial tracer 8000 in mine Stock 1000 5-5-5-15 2.2v. With the 9500 I could not run at 1000Mhz with 3-3-3-10 2.3 volts like I did with my 580x board. 1.1 Bios

How could you run tRC10 when 11 is the lowest option on these BIOSes?

[DaMulta]

It's not in mine. I'll take a pic before I go to work.

[KTE]

Even with Phenom installed? Do you get lower options for tRC?

Which RAM stick do you have BTW and can you post a CPUZ SPD ss?

Thanks.

[DaMulta]

These are tracer 8000 512meg chips.

I'm not oced at all right now.....

[DaMulta]

Even with Phenom installed? Do you get lower options for tRC?

Which RAM stick do you have BTW and can you post a CPUZ SPD ss?

Thanks.

Yes even with the 9500 installed. I don't have a ss as I sold the chip for the 6400 to play with(in which I liked the quad better), which in all has been fun. It's a tos between this chip and the FX-62 for me.

I can take a ss of tRC for you tonight.

the spd of these chips

[justapost]

My reply from yesterday got lost somehow.

Quite frankly, it looks like the CPU to me. The only thing it can still be is the RD790 clock generator which is what causes most of the oc errors around with people. It is hard to debug though, I'm trying to find out it's MSR to read the registers but haven't got anywhere since there is minimal official documentation on the RD790.

So clocks can be modified via MSR registers too. Great, I though it must be done with i2c/smbus.

I haven't, sorry. A benchmark for that field would be pretty good to use, I hope it's Windows based though and not Unix.

Will use the ITK/VTK toolkits together with CT's from the visible human project. So it will be platform indepenent and open source.

Some of the AM2+ boards, in fact many of them, require a lot of MOSFET/inductor cooling and for those the 9700 works pretty good (since it can cool the RAM and CPU supply circuitry at the same time). The only reason for wanting better cooling would be a) try low temp oc b) lower noise c) better cooling price/performance really. K10 oc doesn't seem temperature limited at all, so whether you try the stock fan or a 250W TDP CoolIT freezone Elite, it doesn't seem to enhance the oc in any way from my experience and observations.

Ordered the Big Typhoon, seems to have the best cooling results with ot so high temps.

[Swanie]

BTW, Super Pi 1M is like this at stock with 9600 BE (CAS4 because I don't want to reboot to change it to 3 and be stuck with no boot again).
2300MHz all cores, 1800MHz NB/HT, 400 4-3-3-3-11 1T RAM: 32.843s



PP: 75,539

No CDT/CW/Maxmem/theme/windows tweaks there, common windows run.

I honestly feel tempted to throw max volts/vids at -20C and try the 47x multiplier with 200 HT ref..... 9400MHz LOL

Do you like the wallpaper? I think it suits AOD quite nicely.

Wallpaper and AOD -perfect fit

[KTE]

Fellas, download EVEREST Ultimate latest beta (AFAIK) since from what I've heard, it supports Phenom fully and it does read much information more accurately than older versions.
If you have the Fintek F71882/F71883 hardware monitoring Super I/O chip on-board then this supports reading it's sensors better (many boards, including MSI 790FX/650i/P965 etc).

The latest beta I know of is v4.20 build 1227 as of 20th December: http://www.lavalys.com/beta/everestu...lnzh2xsqaf.zip

You can see the difference of beta build 1227 in my stock 9600 BE stress testing compared to 1183 beta:

-

Those are ~4 hr full load temps at stock settings with the lowest fan speed. As you can see, it is stable at 1.192V/1.184V real and 1.2VID. Software picks up those voltages correctly so when it was previously failing bootup the problem was 1.184V BIOS was 1.17xV real.
Temperatures reported in AOD are IHS case temps whilst the highest one there is the internal core temp (off the Tjunction diode). K10 has 8 new thermal diodes inside the cores and 6 separate ones in the northbridge alone. EVEREST now reports both, the highest value reported is the one that decides CPU throttling and shut down (75C).

EVEREST now also picks up Phenom values, RAM timings and DCT modes correctly:



Since documentation was short for the exact Super I/O IC on this MB, I measured the various voltages and currents. The Fintek chip takes 10mA at 3.24V and pin ~97 is VCore, pins ~96-92 read different values usually picked up as VIN1/2/3/4.. and one of them is also the DRAM voltage (which HWM picks up). On my board, measuring just after the MOSFETs and the inductors compared to what the Super I/O chip reports is dead on, including measuring VDIMM at the DRAM MOSFETs being in sync. HWMonitor and EVEREST read exactly those values real-time, whereas AOD reads the BIOS/AOD set voltage values instead of real-time. Thus in reality I'm at 1.18V and 2.18V in the above stability testing.

http://img.techpowerup.org/080114/4x4.jpg

These are tracer 8000 512meg chips.

Yes even with the 9500 installed.

the spd of these chips
http://img.techpowerup.org/080114/spd.jpg

I have the 8500 with the same SPD. I don't get those low options that I wanted though and I've flashed different BIOSes over 14 times.

My reply from yesterday got lost somehow.

Hehe

So clocks can be modified via MSR registers too. Great, I though it must be done with i2c/smbus.

Not too sure yet.

Will use the ITK/VTK toolkits together with CT's from the visible human project. So it will be platform indepenent and open source.

Should work out very fine this way. Let me know when you have an alpha to test.

Ordered the Big Typhoon, seems to have the best cooling results with ot so high temps.

You have too much money.

Wallpaper and AOD -perfect fit

I thought so too.

[Manicdan]

i noticed yesterday that sometimes when CPUz read the cpu volts it reports the VID or the Voltage, and is never wrong as long as you read what it labels the value at. so why does cpuz sometimes read one or the other, and not the voltage every time?

[KTE]

I'm not sure TBH. It will read the values you set rather than the idle/load real values though. Check them against EVEREST/HWM.

[jonspd]

Whats the max HT ref., max single core, max 2 core, max 3 core, max 4 core, max 4 core short bench, max 4 core long bench (3D) and max 100% stable? (full details)

What about the NB/HT/RAM, what's the max stable you've managed (unganged - ganged is easy to hit high speeds even with non-BE, like single channel vs dual channel)?

Yep.... hopefully but that depends on my stock stability test findings.

Dual channel on GBHZ pc6400 2x1gb max benchable about 237x11 , ht 5x, NB around 1800, ram at around 800 using a divider 1.41 vcore, supier pi 1mb slower then a opty 170 at 30 sec, 16080 in 3dmark 05 200 points less then opty 170 again, havnt been able to figure if this ram is not work it or what it seemed to have done better with 5 5 5 18 ram instead of 4 4 4 12, ocz vs g-skill.


You said the IMC on this thing sucks and that I can agree. Has you tried running really loose ram timings and see if it helps FSB and cpu clocks?

do you normaly used the cpu muilt at x2 in pstates? instead of divided by one?

what about the NB muilt? same thing divided by 1 or 2 or 4 or 8.

I'm wondering if the higher dividers might help out?

[justapost]

CPU Temp is TMPIN0 it seems. Same speedfan reports as Temp1 and the same Asus PcProbe report as CPU Temp.

[justapost]

Not too sure yet.

I did some research for the clockchip of the tyan board i had for a while. Found docs for the clockchips with smbus registers.
Can't be MSR registers, as those are locatet on the cpu, but there might be a pci interface for the chipset which can be used to modify the ref HT speed.
Just guessin here.

Should work out very fine this way. Let me know when you have an alpha to test.

For sure i will but it might take some time.

You have too much money.

Cheaper than the CNPS9700 and ~3Euro more than the Thermalright Ultra-120 here.

[KTE]

Dual channel on GBHZ pc6400 2x1gb max benchable about 237x11 , ht 5x, NB around 1800, ram at around 800 using a divider 1.41 vcore, supier pi 1mb slower then a opty 170 at 30 sec, 16080 in 3dmark 05 200 points less then opty 170 again, havnt been able to figure if this ram is not work it or what it seemed to have done better with 5 5 5 18 ram instead of 4 4 4 12, ocz vs g-skill.

Which BIOS did you use?
I can't drop NB multi on mine below 9x, I get a no boot situation. Thus I can't test HT ref. max or single core or multi-core max because NB rises along with it. At 10x CPU multi and 9x NB/HT multi (1.34V), 230HT was easy: http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=297594
But it crashed on 236 HT (NB stock volts/VID was over 2.1GHz by then).

You said the IMC on this thing sucks and that I can agree. Has you tried running really loose ram timings and see if it helps FSB and cpu clocks?

Yep. But no real point since I booted/ran 560 4-4-4-4 with ease at the same RAM volts (2.2V) before, hence I can't see how 400 4-4-4-12 on RAM at 2.2V will hold it back. The Phenoms before this I've benched 530 4-4-4-4 2T at these volts (3D). I mean, we're talking about this RAM at 2.35V here.

do you normaly used the cpu muilt at x2 in pstates? instead of divided by one?

If I set a high FID/DID, I get a no boot situation. Can you set a high FID/DID and bootup?

what about the NB muilt? same thing divided by 1 or 2 or 4 or 8.

I use 1 for both because of the above reason.

CPU Temp is TMPIN0 it seems. Same speedfan reports as Temp1 and the same Asus PcProbe report as CPU Temp.

Load your CPU and see if it goes up in sync then.
TMPIN0 is HWM/AOD reported temp, right?

[justapost]

Load your CPU and see if it goes up in sync then.
TMPIN0 is HWM/AOD reported temp, right?

On the M3A it does and looking on your screeny it seems to be the same on the K9A2 P. I'm sure about AOD dont have HWM installed but I remember it was the same. I wonder why AOD shows the diode temp four times as there is only one diode for the cores.

[jonspd]

Bios

113 that you sugested gonna try 1.3 as soon as they come out for stability reasons....

I have not tried high fid/did either thus the reason why I asked...

Right know I'm figuring out what I can fold it at. After that I want to test all probably combinations. As you said yourself you can only use did 1 I'm gonna try all others....