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 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 enoughSU. I’ve done everything right this time, so why not reap the rewards?

Anyway elow 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-wayo 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 ’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 (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 overclockedem>

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%