Maximum PC

I hope someone can clear up a mystery for me. I have an Asus M2N SLI and I just updated the BIOS and dropped in a Phenom II 965. The system posted just fine and ran a few days without error. Then I tried overclocking and installed CPU-Z for testing. Since I'm running DDR2 at 800 mhz, in the BIOS I kept the clock at 200 mhz and upped the multiplier to 18x, to reach 3.6, or so I thought.

I still posted and the Computer Properties claims I'm running at 3.62 GHz, which is what I wanted. That's what the BIOS says as well.

But CPU-Z has a different output that I can't quite interpret:

core speed: 803.7 MHz
Multiplier: x 4.0
Bus Speed: 200.9 MHz
HT Link: 903.7 MHz

The computer seems no faster, maybe slower in some regards. And my temperatures in SpeedFan even under 100% load are really low (38C). I doubt that's an accurate temp for an overclocked processor, even with an AC Freezer 64 Pro.

Am I doing something wrong? I probably should have benchmarked before the upgrade to test, but what can you do...

can you turn off Cool 'n Quiet in the BIOS?





Ted

Is that clocking down the chip? Usually the frequency fluctuates. I'll disable it and see the result.

Disabled Cool & Quiet with no change. Still get the same readings though. The BIOS also claims the chip is running at 3.6 though. Is there something that would cause CPU-Z to read incorrectly?

Also, I tried to install AMD's Overdrive, but I can't get it to run. I have an Nvidia chipset board. Does that prevent Overdrive from running?

Amd overdrive is for gpu's, not cpu's





Ted

AMD overdrive can overclock AMD CPUs as well, but you generally want to work in the BIOS, because you have greater control there.

I just wanted to use Overdrive to see the reading on the chip, if it gave me a clock speed to confirm.

Does anyone else have a Phenom II 965 and uses CPU-Z? I just wonder what output they see.

Another Update. Still reading 800 MHz in CPU-Z. I tried Cinebench 10.1 and here's the results:

single cpu: 754
multiple cpu: 2722

http://www.techreport.com benchmarked the same chip with these scores:
single cpu: 3929
multiple cpu: 14006

So the ratio is performance ratio is 5.21 to 1. So in simplest terms, my chip is running at 650 MHz rather than 3.4 GHz. With memory differences, motherboards, and the fact that Cinebench doesn't scale in a directly linear fashion, I think it's safe to assume my chip is running at the roughly 800 MHz that CPU-Z says.

When overclocking a Phenom II, do I need to change the hypertransport along with the multiplier? It seems like a straight multiplier overclock isn't going anywhere.

Your CPU speed is your bus speed multiplied by your multiplier.

200x4 = 800.

Increase your multiplier to a more reasonable number .. like, say, 16

Did you install the Nvidia chipset drivers?

I had something similar overclocking a phenom II x 6.

My motherboard's bios allowed me to up the multiplier and even told me the clock had increased. But checking CPU-z told me I was still running stock. Apparently my proc's multiplier is locked regardless of what the bios says. I could only over clock by way of the bus.

The low clock speed you see is probably the result of throttling. Run Prime 95 at the same time and you should see the actual overclock.