Help me OC my Phenom II 920

[dcfan60]

Hey guys. I took the plunge got a phenom II 920. The processor is great. I been playing crysis warhead @ 3.45 Ghz with and OCed 4870. it runs nice and smooth. but I need more Mhz, here is what I have.

Mobo: k9a2 platinum bios ver 1.6
CPU: Phenom II 920
RAM: 4x2GB for a total of 8GB in ram running at 840mhz 5-5-5-15 2.1volts
Drives: 3x sata 300GB hds and 1x sata Blue-ray player and 1x IDE DVD burner
PSU: Antec 1000w PSU
GPU: 4870 @ 830/970mhz


CPU and GPU are water cooled. CPU @ 3.45Ghz with 1.45 volts running at 33c idle and 39c full load. so it stays cool.

I have tried every combination of NB multiplier HT/NB/CPU/RAM voltage. I have dropped my NB multi to 4x and my FSB/RAM ratio to a 1:1 so it not the ram speed.

I set my CPU down 3Ghz and tried different FSB speed and I think I found the problem. I can’t get anything over 250mhz stable, not even 256mhz. I know from the k9a2 reviews that read this mobo can 280 to 300mhz on the FSB. am I doing something wrong? is there a setting I am missing? please help I’m sure i can get at least 3.7from this Phenom.

thanks guys

[dcfan60]

could it be because all 4 ram slots are populated? I heard storied of people having problems with OC when all 4 slots are in use.
what do you guys think?

[biohead]

first try two sticks of ram, then report back to us.

[dcfan60]

first try two sticks of ram, then report back to us.

will do when I get out from work.

back in the day we could give more voltage to the chipset in orther to increase FSB speed, i know things are alot diffrent since NB is integrated with CPU sooo is there anything similar?

[biohead]

will do when I get out from work.

back in the day we could give more voltage to the chipset in orther to increase FSB speed, i know things are alot diffrent since NB is integrated with CPU sooo is there anything similar?

well in this case, bus speed (base HTT clock) doesn't do anything by itself. it's just that with your 920 you need to increase it in order to gain CPU clocks. the reason i say remove two sticks of ram, is that there are cases where people can't run their ram above 800mhz with four sticks. can't find any consistencies myself, because there are also people happily running 4 sticks at 1066+.

if you can't get above 250-some htt and you're running 1:1, does that mean you're running ddr2-1000 or ddr2-500? (I'm still on DDR myself, so..)

[dcfan60]

well in this case, bus speed (base HTT clock) doesn't do anything by itself. it's just that with your 920 you need to increase it in order to gain CPU clocks. the reason i say remove two sticks of ram, is that there are cases where people can't run their ram above 800mhz with four sticks. can't find any consistencies myself, because there are also people happily running 4 sticks at 1066+.

if you can't get above 250-some htt and you're running 1:1, does that mean you're running ddr2-1000 or ddr2-500? (I'm still on DDR myself, so..)

it means ddr2-500. things are "backwards" with DDR2 so if my FSB is 200 and my ram is 800 then my ratio 1:2, if im at 200mhz and my ram is 677 then ratio is 1:1.66 and 1:1.33 for 550

so no nothing similar to voltage increase to chipset then?

[Titan7171]

I had the MSI K9A2 Plat.........one thing is that I had horrible experience when having the ht and nb at different multi's so keep both at the same multi. Only multis 8-12 worked for me with my 9950. I got mine up to 270 bus speed with a 9 multi on both ht and nb will give 2400+ and 3.6+ghz on the cpu.

but I would suggest setting the ht and nb at 10 multi and set bus speed at 210 reboot and go immediately into the bios set to 220 reboot and go immediately into the bios do it till you get to about 240 bus speed then drop both the ht and NB multi to 9 and go for 250. Mind you you dont need to add voltage to anything right now.......you can do all this will voltages on auto.

dont make to many changes in the bios at once as you will have to clear the cmos......not sure if they fixed that I was using the 1.5bios so thats what I had to deal with.

basically you will need voltages for ht and nb above 2450mhz and cpu voltage will need to start moving up at about 3400mhz with a bad chip if you get to 3500-3600 on stock voltages then you got a decent cpu

[dcfan60]

I had the MSI K9A2 Plat.........one thing is that I had horrible experience when having the ht and nb at different multi's so keep both at the same multi. Only multis 8-12 worked for me with my 9950. I got mine up to 270 bus speed with a 9 multi on both ht and nb will give 2400+ and 3.6+ghz on the cpu.

but I would suggest setting the ht and nb at 10 multi and set bus speed at 210 reboot and go immediately into the bios set to 220 reboot and go immediately into the bios do it till you get to about 240 bus speed then drop both the ht and NB multi to 9 and go for 250. Mind you you dont need to add voltage to anything right now.......you can do all this will voltages on auto.

dont make to many changes in the bios at once as you will have to clear the cmos......not sure if they fixed that I was using the 1.5bios so thats what I had to deal with.

basically you will need voltages for ht and nb above 2450mhz and cpu voltage will need to start moving up at about 3400mhz with a bad chip if you get to 3500-3600 on stock voltages then you got a decent cpu

thank, I have only seen the NB multy but not the HT. is it hidden in some other place in the Cell menu or out side or they linked?

excuse my noobnes but i see people saying 250HT is that short for 2500Mhz HT?

[G0ldBr1ck]

thank, I have only seen the NB multy but not the HT. is it hidden in some other place in the Cell menu or out side or they linked?

excuse my noobnes but i see people saying 250HT is that short for 2500Mhz HT?

I dont know about that board but some boards call it the North Bridge link speed some call it HT link, or HyperTransport link.

The 250HT you speak of is the base ref. clock. the clock that your are multiplying by to get your HT link, NB, CPU speeds. (also ram)

[dcfan60]

I dont know about that board but some boards call it the North Bridge link speed some call it HT link, or HyperTransport link.

The 250HT you speak of is the base ref. clock. the clock that your are multiplying by to get your HT link, NB, CPU speeds. (also ram)

ok, that makes sence.
here is a link of a review for my Mobo the 4th and 5ht screen shots show what i can see in my mobo that i can change. the call it HT Ratio. and that is where i can change my Multi for it. cant see if i can change the 250HT anywhere.

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Ha...latinum/4.html

[Titan7171]

It was so long ago but looking at those bios screens I believe the other setting for the NB may be in the advance dram configuration tab, but Im not sure. What I am sure about is that there are 2 seperate settings for the HT and NB and you must set them both to the same multi (ex. ht at 2200mhz and NB 2200mhz). If I would set them different I would get a black screen and would have to reset the bios immediately. There was a huge thread here that had my findings in it for that mobo and it helped a few people get their cpu's running much better than they had gotten them previously. It wasnt my thread though.........let me see if I find a link so you can read some of the info in it.

my results on the MSI K9a2 Platinim start in post 100 http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...=194058&page=4

[dcfan60]

ok guys, here is what I got after long extended testing lastnight.

1.-there is no NB multiplier that can be controlled with the board. but when I change the HT Multi lower than or higher than 9 it changes the NB multi to 10.... why does it do that? I dont really know but it does, but if its at 9 both are at 9.

2.- With 2 sticks of Ram I was able to get upto 270 FSB but after 40 minutes of testing the PC restarted and I cant get to be stable at anything over 250... sooo I went back 4 sticks of ram

3.- This board is frustrating to overclock and i guess im not the only one since there are sooo many people complaining about the NB issue

4.- I been overclocking since I could get my Pentium 166mhz OC to 200Mhz and there is nothing that I hate more than when i know my Mobo is what holds me back... sigh.... so can you guys recomend me a new one? Im hoping selling this one with my old phenom can pay for a better mobo thanks guys

[G0ldBr1ck]

I have realy got to liking this board http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157141 for only $100 and have seen some realy nice Phenom II 920 OC results on the web with it.

[Glow9]

well cheaper than the Asrock, 140 more people have reviewed it than the Asrock, and lastly it's not an Asrock http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813138128
p.s. I hate Asus, so using an Asus underling isn't gonna do it for me. Plus I've always had good experiences with Biostar and their service gets back to me within a day.

But if you want a board for tweaking, Go DFI. I'm waiting for the MCP82 chipset to come out then I might head back to AMD, I've always liked running Nvidia chipsets on DFI.

[bldegle2]

Glow9,

don't hang yer hat on DFI just yet, recent AMD support has been pathetic, they are flagshipping Intel right now...

i have always liked the AsRock stuffs, still have a Sata II unit with daughtercard, runs AM2+ like a beast, not bad for a board that will do bboth 939 and 940, got another friend setup on one of these, nothing but bliss for him, he loves it too....

i may get the AsRock unit to play with (i have two 940's, play time???)

laterzzzz.............