Phenom 9500 w/ MSI K9A2 Platinum

[KTE]

Well, like I said, I had no cooler or clip to fasten HSF down, nor any spare TIM... stock HSF resting on top was giving me 45C idle and Zalman 9700 fullspeed resting on top was giving me 35C idle but very high load.

So here comes my fav. cooler so far, at 22C Ta, just one HS fan=> Xigmatek HDT-S1283

Idle



5min. Stabilized Load



Remember, my last 9600BE stock was 87W load, much lower TDP. I've measured high power draw for the 9850BE stock alone. It will be very hot like the QX6700 and QX9770/9775 are, so these coolers will have to handle high heat loads.

I'm pretty good with getting temps. down on coolers with different mountings, TIMs and stock fans... but that just beat my Tunic Tower 120 by 5C ID and 4C LD, thermal resistance of around 0.12 C/W => very impressive cooler

And to add, you cannot hear the fan over ambient noise or my GFX fan noise, I have to keep checking EVEREST to see if its even running because I keep thinking its stopped or powered down to 4V

Beware! Damn if you use this cooler, the space on the MB between heatsink right bottom and RAM is extremely minute - you will have to push one fin up to get one RAM module in - laboriously tight fit and removal will also be a pain. Because of this, RAM will run hot as there is no airflow down there, you have the lowest aluminium heatsink fin which heats up, touching the first RAM module by covering its top heat escape route [gap], and hanging over the second RAM module but blocking the fan airflow from going down there; the heat from the RAM HS cannot escape anywhere [tshh tshh.. D9s run very hot and die very quickly by running hot] but the heat is recycled within both RAM modules, heating things up even more, so definitely get a little fan near it. I've just added a temperature controlled 60mm fan there which is at 800RPM and you can't even hear it above the ambient noise; it is running the RAM IC temp at 35C load, which is 39C better than stock, so good for me.

Anyway, for air, this cooler, 1/3 the price of TRUE here, is definitely recommended! Now, finally, the air oc starts

Here's stock Sandra [512MB access] Phenom 9850 BE bandwidth compared - they are our own results, upper two are mine and lower two are Achim's;
Phenom 9850 BE 2.5G 1066 Unganged vs Phenom 9850 BE 2.8G 800 Ganged vs Phenom 9600 BE 2.3G 1066 vs QX6850 2.33G 1066



Here's x264 benchmark [the older one we used before] comparing 9850BE 2.5G with 9600BE 2.6G =>



Check EVEREST PhotoWorxx stock 800 Ganged vs 1066 Unganged

let us know about 1.13 please so I know if I need to flash before install of a new chip

and if you get a chance to post up some smp client F@H frame rates around 2.8ghz or better that would be great. If I recall you had ran it before.

Hmmm... don't have the client installed but I have the bench CD lying around somewhere, HD is in a mess right now because I don't have free time for PCs. I'll check it out but I can't yet as I'm stability testing, apologies.

Can you try running mprime for a little while in 64-bit ubuntu? I'm really considering this board, but I don't use Windows and there's no point getting a board that has stability or compatibility issues with my OS of choice. Also, when you say you 'don't have graphics drivers' do they not work, or do you actually not have them in order to try?

They are provided by Linux, but the install procedure never works.
And it keeps asking me for the install CD when I don't have it anymore. It puts me off booting into it again.

mprime? I'd run it but it's a pain to run anything at those screen settings, it defaults to 65Hz which is way too bad to look at with a 150Hz CRT.

Thank you for the updates KTE,
Nearly finished 2.8GHz benching. 2.4GHz for the NB require lots o volts to be stable. Benched 2.8/2.4 at 1.4/1.4 finaly and even there it froze one time during sandra latency test. Had no issues so far during application usage.

You're welcome - I have benched 2.4GNB, required 1.325VID

My 9600BE required 1.4VID for 2.4G NB stable, but soon, it degraded... I have a strong suspicion that its not the cores that degrade but the IMC LOL

Are you testing in CnQ tweaked mode?

Have done, but not always. If I want to bench, I just click the power icon and switch CnQ off by choosing Max Battery:

Tony reported an 7x ht multi helped him alot with stablilty above 3GHz, have you tried that setting?

Nope, thanks for the tip, I'll try it for sure.

About linux, i had no problems booting into 64bit debian testing with 32bit winxp stable settings up to 2.6GHz. During a linpack run watching the syslog i saw that some cores stopped responding in time above 2.4GHz.
Tried last week released Xen 4.1 here and it has issues detecting more than one core. The have full virtualisation support on amd platform now so i'm really curious how it will perform. Received the GTB780G mobo today. Equipped it with the 9600BE and 4x1GB G.Skills and will try that mobo now for xen testing. Seems to detect all four cores proper (at least during install right now) and without not responding timeouts. I suspect problems with apic/acpi implementations on the DFI.

The cores not responding happened with me too but at anything above 2.6G with the 9850BE. I've not checked for 9850BE, so far it seems fine. I just need to GFX damn drivers working and I'll be happy to test in it

Have you noticed lower power requirements from the mem? I think 2.12V was the lowest possible with the B2 at 533-5-5-5-16-18 now they run stable at ~2.0V.

Hmm.. you know, I always Memtest any setting and never rely on what happens in-windows because windows thinks too much is stable, so it was actually the opposite for me

9600BE did 626 5-5-5-15-11 2.15v stable but 9850BE did not do that setting stable even at 2.3v. 9850BE did not run even 560 that setting stable at 2.2v, Memtest failed at Test#6, second run.

In-Windows, I've had more stability than B2 though, benched 638 5-5-5-15-11 2.2v which was not possible before. To check if it is better, I need higher HT and to test 500 4-4-4-4 1T 2.2v. B2 never had this stable but could easily bench it. Still it isn't really stable setting for me, just not crashing yet, Memtest shows it with many errors.

My this set of D9 is good, I can drop to 1.8v real 1066 5-5-5-15-13 and bench it in-windows perfectly fine - but it won't be Memtest stable, it needs 2.05v for that.

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.

1.5v HT voltage is needed? That's a first that I've seen, I have benched 2596MHz HT at stock 1.2v and even 260-274HT at that voltage across quite a few Phenoms

Why don't you change to a better BIOS if BIOS is the limitation?

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.

I might test this chip in the ASUS 790FX again very soon, just to see if max stable, max bench, max screen is worth the 2.5x price it has over the MSI. For volts, just use a DMM and check idle-load rails voltages.

This is what happens most of the time with AOD.

Wow, fireworks?

Seems you have a compatibility issue with it. I get that if I start RMClock, computer shuts down instantly, right that second!

I have no idea why that could be, quite frankly. check C:\Program Files\AMD\OverDrive folder for the logs. They should have errors in them. If they do, post those errors back, we can look over them and Sami may look over it and be able to advise you better

Hint:-
If you want AOD to start quickly and with bare minimum needed to oc, then go into C:\Program Files\AMD\OverDrive and cut/paste the file PageSettings.xml to a safe folder outside of this folder [as I've shown earlier].

Now go back into C:\Program Files\AMD\OverDrive and move the file PageSettings.xml I'm attaching with this post in there.

Now tell me how quick and trouble free AOD opens

Vista, just find the directory for the same file and do the same procedure.