Phenom 9500 w/ MSI K9A2 Platinum

[Brother Esau]

Guys does the latest version of CoreTemp work accurately with Phenom or no please?

[Oldguy932]

So far the max htt has been 268. I think the HT might need more voltage, but I haven't tried anything with it yet because I put the xp-90c on to get the load temps back down. I should really get around to buying a quieter cooler because the vantec tornado is just deafening...

[KTE]

Issues.. again

ID: idle
LD: load

2900MHz... I cannot get it WISE stable from 1.519v ID to 1.45v ID - anymore. It will freeze after 3 to 18 hours uptime. It is fully bench/load stable at 1.45v ID though, make no doubt, just like you saw with B2 - but for WISE, same problem as B2 The way I see it since the beginning is the boards with weak PWM area are the ones giving this problem. We need to approach this with facts, appropriate knowledge and using a grounded mind.

The ASUS/DFI/Sapphire/GBT DQ6 790FX have the best PWM area out of these boards, which can handle larger power draw with far more stability and thus, naturally, more higher watt oc is possible this way - on all boards, you have to cool the PWM area active if you want to oc and throw in +150W power through them to the CPU, which you can easily draw with an oc'd Phenom.

Another thing, you have to verify your PSU has enough juice on the rails (Amps), holding good loadline voltage under these loads, or it'll fail outright at POST.

Compare the Intel boards' PWM area with AMD boards' PWM area; most Intel P35 budget and mainstream boards I've come across have much better PWM area than the AMD 790FX/790X budget boards have been given, and far better than most 770/780 boards have. Why?

The R25 inductors on the MSI board are very weak for oc 125W CPUs - R80 is what you want for good oc. The limit of this 4+1 phase will be very close to 200W, thus you're restricted to oc. All the SMD Inductors are rated for an inductance at a certain frequency, ambient conditions and maximum Adc (amps). The ones on the MSI board seem very likely to be rated at 40Adc max at 25C with 0.18uH inductance at 100kHz. The inductors also have a max amperage beyond which they will begin degrading and break down. As you increase temperature above 25C, the maximum amps they ca handle will decrease and so will their efficiency.

All lower and cheaper chipset boards, i.e. 790X/790GX/780G/770 will on the majority have a weaker PWM design than their 790FX counterparts, so they will:-
a) overheat much with 125W CPU if they support them
b) will not be able to handle much more than 150W even if that with 3+1 phase, any lower will have major trouble not burning if not v.high quality inductors
c) will be under maximum stress and degrade quickly
d) have a high risk of catching fire and burning. The key to limit this is volts, the current with Phenoms is set after a cold reset at bootup by the CPU and you can access that value looking through PVI codes and MSRs and hence work out what power your CPU can pull at max to stay below the threshold.

Volts
Don't freak out at my volts, this board has huge vDroop at high volts. It is much less at lower volts. Like I said, I'm stuck on a bad BIOS for oc, volts are limited. This is how the VCore works out on this board:-

1.519v idle is 1.456v load
1.480v idle is 1.424v load [CPU pulls 203W DC at 2.9G this setting]
1.464v idle is 1.416v load
1.456v idle is 1.416v load

I could not get anything above 2.8G WISE stable yet. Load/bench stable I have had upto 3055MHz. I don't know how to tackle this but will first have to try another stronger PWM board to check since its reacting like the B2s

CPU does not like voltage for 100% WISE stability, loves it for benching though. Around 1.424v idle / 1.376v load seems to be the WISE full stability limit here. ATM I'm not touching RAM or NB, just CPU and I'm testing how stable 2.8G is.

BTW, I've heard conjectures everywhere for a while about Phenom being lower 3D Mark'06 perf. than X2 6400 and so on, well no, it's not and has never been. Even a 4500MHz Wolfdale cannot beat a 2990MHz Phenom in 2k6 CPU. Compare the two: 2990 CPU vs 4500 CPU

This cpu never had a problem with being idle stable. The BE I have is the only one to ever show problems with that, but it was because it had started to deteriorate. Max boot so far was 268x11.5, not at all stable though. Right now I'm doing everest stability at 262x11.5 with 1.34v cpu and 1.35v nb. I need a 790fx board or 780a board with the tweakability of my crosshair, I miss the memory bandwidth.

Edit: And the 9600 was previously bench stable at 266x11.5 for wprime32m and superpi1m, 264 was where I did other benches I think.

Problem why I can't increase HT Ref is due to being stuck at 10x NB multi with no NB multi or NB volts option in BIOS. Over 238MHz HT / 2380HTL / 2380NB is not possible before crashing at stock volts boot, so I'm limited until I change BIOS.

CPU starts to behave odd for a while after too much heat and voltage lovin.

Which PSU are you testing it with? Check your rails, at 2.9G 1.424v full load, I was at 16.1A draw from the CPU 12V1 rail, which is not far from the maximum the rail can handle before OCP makes it shutdown

Benched 2.8GHz/2.0GHz 1066-5-5-5-16-18 today. I get better results with 5-5-5-16-18 than with 5-5-5-15-11 btw also the ram needs ~2.05V now.

Yeah, same as my both sets then. Need 2.05v for 1080 5-5-5-15 Memtest stability. I don't run anything not Memtest stable though, while in windows it seems fine, it will start giving worse problems like OS corruption sooner or later which I don't want to deal with knowing how much-a pain it is. For benching, 638 5-5-5-15-11 2.2v is stable enough.

Stability testing 2.8GHz/2.0GHz at 1.3125V/1.285V over night, will bench that tomorrow and go for 2.8/2.4 then.

That's what I've decided, to test lowest volts 2.8G/2.0G stability today and then move on.

Will post a summary of benchmarks results for 2.8 at different NB speeds then.
After that ill go for 3GHz ref HT wise.

Thanks. If B2 could hit 2.6G NB, B3 should at least do this much, mine has already benched 2380NB at stock volts, the max possible on B2 1.3VID was 2200NB for me before it degraded, it was then 2150NB (not stable but benchable). The minute I flash a better BIOS, I'll experiment on NB alone.

I'm new to those mesurements. Saw that 12V1 is for the cpu only. I guess i can verify at least the volts with a DMM on the rails?

Verify which rail increases current and decreases volts by which component load. The source rails my not be the same as the labeled rails, i.e 12V1 and 12V2 labeled on the PSU and separated outside may only actually be 12V1 combined, so it can get tricky

Yep, for volts DMM will be far more accurate.

ΚΤΕ i suppose you are going to OC the Phenom on the 780G? Im really curious how accurate this Anandtech article is. It seems really strange to me.

Not sure, 780G I bought for X2 4850e and 9100e or 9150e only. The article may be journalism but it has some good points.

First of all, all of those problems in there are true, some to more of an extent than others. My 780i board and replacement 790i board both killed MEM, HDD and MEM perf. like with others.
The 780G/790X/790GX/770 boards with cheap, weak and lower rated PWM section will have problems with high TDP CPUs, without a doubt. I have never considered 9850 etc being feasible for 780G boards for HTPC and such similar low watt uses, it is more an enthusiast CPU with high power, SMD and circuitry requirements. Secondly, the BIOS on such boards won't allow much oc on these CPUs. Thirdly, and most importantly, if you go beyond the inductor max.current limits, you'll have a fried board very quickly and at the least, a very degraded board. The 3-phase designs are not for Phenom above 95W in any way, you're asking for trouble. The 3+1 designs can handle higher, you just have to cool the damn PWM section to try and stay as near 25C as possible.

Some problems with that article is the common problem with geeks: they start passing off assumptions as facts too often when either their own knowledge, resources or experience is weak in a field. Those guys haven't worked with these boards long enough to figure out why. The problem with most of the boards Gary lists including GBT 780G is an overheating PWM area problem rather than a non-supporting problem, all he needs is to keep a fan on them like any experienced overclocker will do second nature when overclocking a CPU or with high wattage CPUs running on lower quality inductors and/or less than 3+1 phase motherboard PWM designs and many will handle 125W CPUs fine.

IMO, even owning a 9850/9750, I will never use it inside that board unless I can find a very good, low volt overclock. That will make it a very powerful offering, I "think" 2.7G 1.25v is a very real possibility for 100% stability on such 780G/790GX boards and that setting will give the 9850 BE a 125.5W maximum rating, which is still well within the board working limit and stock power draw. If you can then underclock to 0.7v 600MHz idle, then power draw/temps would be excellent.

That all said, I'll test the 9850 upto 2.8G 1.4v on the 770 and 780G boards to see how it copes, and if I get "death within seconds" like they're showing.

Another note is, the guys saying they've had "dead" boards which start but keep restarting before POST is the same problem I was getting on 3 boards. It's a cold reset problem rather than dead CPU/MB, like I found after 6 chips.

BTW how do you manipulate CnQ settings in windows. Is there a special tool that allows it?

Using Sams Phenom MSR tool, or worse, MSR Editor in EVEREST/Crystal CUPID

Guys does the latest version of CoreTemp work accurately with Phenom or no please?

Works fine for its intended purpose, read my last post starting section above.
Accurate? That's a subjective term only AMD or such microprocessor MFGs can finalize really, or a professional EE in research. You need to know the Tcase_max for your CPU, when it's reached and what that software reads when it is reached to stay below it, and that we already know.

So far the max htt has been 268. I think the HT might need more voltage, but I haven't tried anything with it yet because I put the xp-90c on to get the load temps back down. I should really get around to buying a quieter cooler because the vantec tornado is just deafening...

I'd just get a Xigmatek S1283 rather than that, very cheap too

[aGeoM]

KTE It is possible to activate AOD Turbo mode from Sam's tool?
Tried all AOD versions, all of them gave me troubles, and I can't use none.
I'm following your work on the 9850 with close attention, as always an 5* work.

[SocketMan]

KTE It is possible to activate AOD Turbo mode from Sam's tool?
Tried all AOD versions, all of them gave me troubles, and I can't use none.
I'm following your work on the 9850 with close attention, as always an 5* work.

Once you run the "tlbdisable" tool then aod starts up with the circle "red"
already,on my board anyway.
Like the green light on that Cooler Master kit

[KTE]

KTE It is possible to activate AOD Turbo mode from Sam's tool?
Tried all AOD versions, all of them gave me troubles, and I can't use none.

Which problems?
Which stepping Phenom?

Sam's tool can change any MSR, as long as you know it and edit the correct MSR. When you say "Turbo mode", do you mean AOD Yellow or AOD Red?

Once you run the "tlbdisable" tool then aod starts up with the circle "red"already,on my board anyway.

Is this with the latest AOD version?

With mine, AOD "button color" was always yellow and the patch was still disabled.

[aGeoM]

Which problems?
Which stepping Phenom?

Screen stripes all over, restart system...,just don't work at all...
Still on B2, I'm expecting B3 by Friday (It's cames by German Post, no tracking system, it's the first time I shop in this e-tailer)

Sam's tool can change any MSR, as long as you know it and edit the correct MSR. When you say "Turbo mode", do you mean AOD Yellow or AOD Red?

AOD's Red mode, and I don't know witch MSR register to edit.

Is this with the latest AOD version?

With mine, AOD "button color" was always yellow and the patch was still disabled.

Versions: 2.0.7; 2.0.9; 2.0.12; 2.0.14b; and 2.0.17, tried all.

After Sam's tool applied, I have Yellow circle.

Thanks.

[aGeoM]

Once you run the "tlbdisable" tool then aod starts up with the circle "red"
already,on my board anyway.
Like the green light on that Cooler Master kit

Mine,no color in AOD's circle (Vista SP1 x64/Server 2008 Ent).

Seams to be a Watter kit.

[Oldguy932]

I just upped the HT voltage to 1.5v, so 268 works fine now. Nothing higher is bootable, probably just limitation of the bios cause I'm still using 904 which was the first to support phenoms on the board. Currently running 268x11@1.325v because this board has some vdroop issues and it doesn't like high voltage to get the 1.3v at load that it needs to run 3+ghz. Not sure if that's a board issue or a psu issue, I have the pc power and cooling 510 watt, but I could move the 1kw one over to check.

2 more days till I get my 9850 BE...

[aGeoM]

This is what happens most of the time with AOD.

[Oldguy932]

My 9850 is priming at stock right now, just want to fully torture it before doing any clocking. The computer starts at -20C so the coldbug is lower than that. I did get these new settings in the bios for ECC options, for error correcting when the memory or caches are idle. I'll play around with them after I get a decent clock.

[Morais]

KTE, what is your ambient temperature? These idle and load temps are very good!