Final Overclocking and Benchmark Results

Since I’m home sick today, and utterly bored, I was sitting here this morning surfing the web, and I noticed that there is more and more information becoming available on the web (from *reliable* sources) around Phenom II overclocking and what is safe so I decided to revisit the idea.

I was at a friends house last night who just built an Intel Core i7 920 System with an Nvidia GTX 285 Video card. After getting everything loaded up, we ran it through a default run of 3DMark 06 and it scored 15K and some change. Now, I knew I’d spent a *lot* less (especially on the Video Card), and I also knew that at stock speeds I was getting around 11K in 3DMark, but when I’d been messing around with the OC, I had broken 14k at least once. Now, that’s pretty doggone close, and I really do hate to leave all that performance on the table. You always want to get the most bang for your buck…right? I sure do.

As I said, after reading some of the new information that has come about, I feel pretty confident about the stability, safety and longevity of my overclocked system. This has always been why I never have done much with overclocking before – I get it all set up, then I chicken out, turn it all back off and leave well enough alone. This time, I spent the extra cash on the unlocked Black Edition processor, and I made sure I got a case with proper air-flow, *and* for the first time I got something other than a bargain basement Motherboard and a “just enough” PSU. I’ve done everything right this time, so why not reap the rewards?

Anyway – Below you will find my final, stable overclock settings, and you will find some basic benchmarks comparing stock speeds to the overclocked speeds.

System Setup and Specifications:

Stock Speeds:

AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0GHz, 1.35 Voltage (1,800MHz NB/1,800MHz HT Link/Reference Clock 200MHz)
ASUS M4A79 Deluxe
8GB DDR2-800
ASUS ATI Radeon HD 4830 512MB PCIe GPU Clock=575MHz RAM Clock=1000Mhz
Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB HDD (Primary)
Western Digital WD3200AAKS 320GB HDD (Secondary)

Overclock Changes:

AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.58GHz, 1.375 Voltage (2,050MHz NB/1845MHz HT Link/Reference Clock 205MHz)
ASUS ATI Radeon HD 4830 512MB PCIe (GPU Clock=700MHz RAM Clock=1185Mhz)

As you can see, I have an overclock of (actually) 588MHz on the CPU, and that is only needing an extra 0.025V…I can live with that! Also note, I also raised the Northbridge speed (would have been 2,000MHz had I left the reference clock at 200MHz). My reason for raising the reference clock was that I couldn’t quite  hit 3.6GHz @ 1.375 Voltage, and I didn’t want to make that leap to 1.4V, so I went back to the 17.5 Multi and raised the reference clock to “meet it half-way” so to speak.

Also I was able to (easily) get and extra 125MHz out of the GPU. From what I’ve read on the web, I’m 100% sure I could get more out of the GPU, but that is as high as AMD’s ATI Overdrive in the Radeon drivers will let me go, and I’m not going to use a 3rd party tool – I’m going to use that limitation as my governor!

So finally, here are some benchmark results! (This isn’t Tom’s Hardware, ExtremeTech or Anandtech so no fancy graphs, just results)

Cinebench R10:

Stock Speeds:

Rendering (Single CPU): 3137 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 10327 CB-CPU

Overclocked:

Rendering (Single   CPU): 4104 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 14458 CB-CPU

3D Mark ‘06 (Default Run):

Stock Speeds:

11722 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score 4426
SM 3.0 Score 5160
CPU Score 4174

Overclocked:

14063 3DMarks
SM 2.0 Score 5333
SM 3.0 Score 6228
CPU Score 4883

CS:Source Video Stress Test (set ‘fps_max 0′ in the console to stop from limiting fps to 300fps):

Stock Speeds:

1680×1060 @ Default (NoAA/NoAF):
312.81fps
———
1680×1050 @ 8xAA/16xAF:
285.58 fps

Overclocked:

1680×1060 @ Default (NoAA/NoAF):
436.39 fps
———
1680×1050 @ 8xAA/16xAF:
324.04 fps

HDTune:

I really wasn’t expecting to see any difference here, but surprisingly there was a slight advantage on Burst Rate, Access Time and CPU Usage when overclocked…

Stock Speeds:

HD Tune: WDC WD6400AAKS-00A7B2 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 56.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 116.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 94.1 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.1 ms
Burst Rate : 136.0 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 3.8%

Overclocked:

HD Tune: WDC WD6400AAKS-00A7B2 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 56.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 116.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 94.1 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.0 ms
Burst Rate : 143.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 2.4%