M3A overclocking

[justapost]

There is alway a third alternative. Short answer, we don't know cuz the bios limits the voltage you can apply to the cpu to 1,25V. With that voltage you can oc an 9500 to ~2350MHz.

[sargentbash]

aaaaa but ive heard that the asus and the gigabyte has the best stability and overclockableity than any of the other boards. i was hoping to get 2500mhz stable , is there any chance???

[justapost]

aaaaa but ive heard that the asus and the gigabyte has the best stability and overclockableity than any of the other boards. i was hoping to get 2500mhz stable , is there any chance???

You need more cpu voltage for that speed, so it does not work with the current bios. Once this bios issue is fixed, I assume it will be a good overclocker for phenom, got very good results for the ref HT/fsb speed ~270MHz.

[Methious]

My bad on the 95nm got a lap dog interfering with me , it is 90nm. Those temps are @ 3.52 full load Orthos X 1 hour. I just got the water block on, using the above described method. Neoprene hand cut gasket about 1/8" and it's rock solid (well rubber rock).

I'll have to get some time to run low multiplier high FSB tests to see if it's doing me any good. I ran it full load about a half hour and the NB was at 38C @ 220.
It was up around 53C if I'm reading the temps right. Been using AOD and Core Temp, and Speed Fan. What are you using to read it, and which one are you reading from so were on the same page.

That's probably not indicative of what you'll get temp wise, my Radiator isn't real great. Aluminum 1 1/2 thick, was a throw in to a trade so I'm using it until I can get a triple 120mm rad.

I took some installed pics, they should be up in about a half hour.

[justapost]

My bad on the 95nm got a lap dog interfering with me , it is 90nm. Those temps are @ 3.52 full load Orthos X 1 hour. I just got the water block on, using the above described method. Neoprene hand cut gasket about 1/8" and it's rock solid (well rubber rock).

Congrats for the succesfull mounting. You'll need more that 1,45V for that clock I guess.

I'll have to get some time to run low multiplier high FSB tests to see if it's doing me any good. I ran it full load about a half hour and the NB was at 38C @ 220.
It was up around 53C if I'm reading the temps right. Been using AOD and Core Temp, and Speed Fan. What are you using to read it, and which one are you reading from so were on the same page.

Hmm, my be2400 reached 392MHz ref HT but only with an 2x HT multi, nb temps had never been an issue but I have the mobo on the table and had one 12" fan for mobo cooling.
With watercooling and without the 12" fan the nb temps reached 50° but I worked a full day with that temps without a problem.

EDIT: I use speedfan for temp reading, Temp1 is cpu, Temp2 is the nb and Temp3 is sb temp.

I took some installed pics, they should be up in about a half hour.

Great, thanks.

[jpierce555]

aaaaa but ive heard that the asus and the gigabyte has the best stability and overclockableity than any of the other boards. i was hoping to get 2500mhz stable , is there any chance???

Right now that MSI is the best Phenom oc board unfortunately. Justapost is 100% correct on the need for voltage. I have a 9600 Phenom and can hit 2.46 100% stable.

[Methious]

Those pics are up over on Legit, here's the one you were interested in.



It originally had 2 legs that have to come off at the bottom of the block, then notch maybe 1/32" right where the legs were back into the block, cut one side of the retainer clip right behind the hole for mounting to the wire loop. Keeps it from riding on top of the capacitor. I don't think heat is going to be an issue for most on the NB, I got mine the day they released them, early on there was speculation it was NB heat holding Phenom back, your right it's not it's voltage. Figured since it was a free WB I might as well use it.

Temp on Speed Fan temp2 is 38c idle, 48c full load.

See ya in a while I'm a week behind on Company of Hero's

[SocketMan]

Leaving the first (closer to the cpu) DIMMA1 empty and filling the other 3 with 3x1024Gb "turns on" unganged mode, if cpuz and everest are correct.
The bad news is that AOD locks on the start up,SANDRA locks during Memory Bandwith test and Everest locks during Cache/Memory test.
During POST
M3A reports "single channel".
Using Phenom BE with the M3a.

[CRFX]

finally my acct got activated.
Anyways, if you hit F4 in bios it shows lots more settings, including unganged mode, more memory timings, and a few other things. Voltage is still stuck at 1.25 though.
Max OC I can get out of my Phenom is 2.7 single core, 2.6 dual, and 2.3 quad. btw I'm using the 601 bios.

[Methious]

Thanks for the F4 tip, I'll have to run my fingers through it

[justapost]

finally my acct got activated.
Anyways, if you hit F4 in bios it shows lots more settings, including unganged mode, more memory timings, and a few other things. Voltage is still stuck at 1.25 though.
Max OC I can get out of my Phenom is 2.7 single core, 2.6 dual, and 2.3 quad. btw I'm using the 601 bios.

Great find, thanks for sharing. I saw it has bank and channel interleaving fields now. Was always curious what channel interleaving will bring compared to bank interleaving.

[SocketMan]

You rock

Looks more like a dfi bios now!
Thanks a lot!

got to go to work now

[jpierce555]

Wow, how did you find that? Like the others said, thanks for sharing!

[CRFX]

Random button mashing, lol
Started wondering if there were any other functions available, so I hit everything.

[Methious]

3 cheers for random key mashing

Any one try vga coolers heat taped on the mosfets for increased OC stability? I know a world class over clocker that swears by it.

[jpierce555]

I was thinking you might have done something like that. Well that was the response I was hoping for that way I don't feel stupid.

[jpierce555]

My mosfets are still running cool to the touch. If they get hot I will go buy some thermal adhesive and start attaching some of the ramsinks I have laying around.

Are yours running hot now Methious? I have good air flow there, that might make a difference.

[CRFX]

My mosfets are running burn my finger off hot. Have some small ram sinks on them with good airflow and still way too hot. I was wondering if this board can even handle the power needed for a good over clock with a Phenom. Could that be why the vcore is still limited to 1.25?

[justapost]

Ran everest bandwidth test with ganged/unganged bankinterleave on/off and all types of channel interleave (including reserved ones).

As for everest and cinebench i get the best results ganged bankinterleave on(Auto) and using channel interleavemode 5 (default).
Channel interleaving has near no impact in ganged mode. In unganged mode
channel interleave works pretty equal in all modes beside mode 3 and 0 whom perform worse.

Tested it with 2x1G-1066 and 4x1G-800.

Channel Interleave Mode
0 Disabled
1 Address bits 6
2 Reserved
3 Address bits 12
4 Reserved
5 XOR of Address bits [20:16,6]
6 Reserved
7 XOR of Address bits [20:16,12]

Is someone aware of a benchmark, whom profits from unganged mode?

Have you guys with the hot mosfets tried to detect which settings affect the temps most?

[SocketMan]

Try the rightmark :
http://cpu.rightmark.org/download/rmma372bin.exe
Use the Multi threaded test. I also noticed that the TLB ("fix") can be disabled in BIOS now (with the f4) before I had to go work.
Can't wait to get back home.

Other staff (including source code)
http://cpu.rightmark.org/download.shtml

[justapost]

Try the rightmark :
http://cpu.rightmark.org/download/rmma372bin.exe
Use the Multi threaded test. I also noticed that the TLB ("fix") can be disabled in BIOS now (with the f4) before I had to go work.
Can't wait to get back home.

Other staff (including source code)
http://cpu.rightmark.org/download.shtml

Thank you SocketMan, will give it a try tomorrow. Are you sure about the tlb fix thought i tried F4 on all pages but have not noticed it, can be myfault.

[SocketMan]

I don't have it infront of me , but I think it's the part about the "Microcode" enable/disable, possibly under CPU configuration.

[justapost]

I don't have it infront of me , but I think it's the part about the "Microcode" enable/disable, possibly under CPU configuration.

Ah, ok I saw that field and I'm also away from the computer atm. thx

BTW: Searched M3A manual for "F4", it's definately nowhere mentioned there.

[SocketMan]

Just got home turned off that " Microcode update" as well as the secure virtual machine,but unfortunately the AOD still came up with the green/yellow circle and everest gave memory latency of 156, so I was wrong about the Microcode=
TLB fix. My bad , for some reason I thought it was related. Anyway, switching the AOD circle to red gave the Latency of 65 which is much better.
Also the "unganged" mode let's you configure the 2 IMC separately -2CL's,2trp's
so on. Guess we can use mismatched ram sticks in "unganged" mode now.

Edit*

It seems like turning the "Microcode updating" setting to off -disables the AOD's and/or other software ability to turn the "TLB fix off" judging by the high latencies in Everest,even thou the circle goes yellow/red in AOD.
Sandra's (x11sp1 x64 Edition) mem bandwidth test got a nice bump in "unganged mode" slightly over 10k.

It's interesting how there is noway of checking the NB temperature other then thermometer/fingers, mine got up to 80c once (measured with thermometer @the bottom of the actual heatsink) had to put a fan on top
of the video card to blow some air into it.

[Methious]

My mosfet's are hot to the touch @ 220 FSB, 2 120mm front and back in push pull, one 80mm blow hole blowing directly on them. It should be more of an issue at higher FSB speeds, but with phenom pushing 4 cores if they get to hot their going to cause stability problems. For that matter any cpu will tend to destabilize with the mosfet's running to hot.

Not to say that's the only problem, I'm positive lack of vcore is a big part. But it's some thing to look at.

I've been polling the high end over clockers I know and they all agree that on a value based board (especially under water) one of the top suspects in instability is excess mosfet heat.