Almost 4Ghz on my Athlon II X2 250

pullmyfoot · July 31st, 2009, 11:44 AM

Im at 3.9Ghz stable now, the chip I got is a real clocker

260 x 15 @ 1.5V. I hope I make it to 4ghz! Wish me luck

Ultima · August 5th, 2009, 08:52 AM

That seems to be a real nice overclocker PMF, good luck on reaching the magic barrier.

Is your 720BE really running @ max speed or do you feel you can still go a bit further?? Btw, I found out, the latest bios from Gigabyte, you can install that without worries, the 4th core unlocking option is still available in the latest bios.

pullmyfoot · August 5th, 2009, 10:12 AM

Well the 720 is on the newest version of the AM2+ 790X series Gigabyte boards. There is an option, but Ive not tried it yet. Maybe next week when I have a little time

. 3.9Ghz is my max but I scaled it down to 3.8Ghz to try and keep the voltages down a bit. It wanted a lot of voltage for that last 100Mhz

. Its at 1.5V right now.

And I didnt manage to reach 4Ghz on the AII 250! Max was 3.95Ghz, but that was at a crazy almost 1.6V, so I scaled that down to 3.85Ghz for 24/7 use

It did run pretty cool though on my Noctula NH-U9B cooler, reaching 45C at the max OC

Ultima · August 5th, 2009, 10:26 AM

Ohh I thought you had the same board as I do. I could also get it to boot @ 3.9Ghz, but 4.0 wouldn't boot.
I wonder what voltage would be needed to get 4.0Ghz.

for cpu about 10% is safe in voltage upping right??

1.6V on a Phenom II?? the default is like 1.325V or something, trying to fry something?? hahaha

pullmyfoot · August 5th, 2009, 12:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ultima

1.6V on a Phenom II?? the default is like 1.325V or something, trying to fry something?? hahaha

oops, i didnt say. 1.6V was for the Athlon II. I booted at 4Ghz on that. I dont mind frying it because its relatively cheap and I could get another one the next day if it went poof (though I prefer not to of course). But for the sake of 4Ghz, what the heck

well ive heard about 15% is good

. Exactly. 1.6V for a little while did the trick. I managed to boot at 4Ghz on it. Took a quick look at CPUZ, smiled, then quickly shut it down and backed it off. LOL

pullmyfoot · August 5th, 2009, 12:46 PM

I really wanted to get the Am3 version of the board like you have, but DDR3 is still super expensive here! It costs more than twice as much still. The prices here tend to lag about 3-4 or even 5 months behind the US. Thats becasue the market is relatively small, so when they bring in stock, they have to sell it at that price if not they start losing money. If they kept bringing in small numbers to keep up with prices, their margins go down too. So its a bit of a pickle for us.

A set of OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600 costs like SG$220, which is like US$145. On the other hand, I got my OCZ Reper PC-6400 at SG$90, which is comparable to the American prices at US$60. At least ram has a relatively larget market, the board itself is really expensive since they can only ship it in in small numbers due to small demand. Hence my opting for the cheaper AM2+ version which has been around for longer and gone down in price.

Besides, the AM3 version of my rig only gives me negligible performance increases the majority of the time for the extra 10 or 20% I pay

Ultima · August 5th, 2009, 01:51 PM

yeah I know what ya mean.

But for the exact same reasons you went for AM2+, I went for AM3, future upgradebility.
I went for really cheap DDR3 1333, 4GB costed me 60 euros or something, and when prices come down, I'll buy some better ram.

KarmaKiller · August 5th, 2009, 02:01 PM

*off topic*
You know if you guys ever want something from egg, let me know. Of course I'm not sure it's worth it given shipping cost, but if your desperate,

On topic

4Ghz is a nice spot to be at.

My Quad takes 1.56v to be there, which Intel says no more then 1.5v..

But now that I'm back on air cooling, I can't push that kind of voltage, so I'm down to ~3.7Ghz or so.

Nice OC though PMF, I'm impressed with those chips.

pullmyfoot · August 5th, 2009, 02:17 PM

well actually i do order from american sites once in awhile. shipping craptacularly expensive though, nullifying the cheaper prices. That was through this direct post service Singapore has, which lets you ship things from sites anywhere in the world. They have an office and warehouse and they give you an address (which is some box in the warehouse). So you ship it to them and they ship it to you. Ive also got an aunt at Washington State that helps me out once in awhile. Last month I made a pretty big order (US$600+ worth of clothes) and shipping came up to US$200. Thats 1/3 of the total price.

Then again, about US$200 worth of stuff was mine. The rest was a couple of friends and family who decided to hitch a ride on my order

pullmyfoot · August 5th, 2009, 02:20 PM

im on air cooling for all my rigs though. I get 30-35C on idle at 3.85Ghz on the Athlon II 250 with my Noctula NH-U9B and 45-48C on load. Thats pretty Impressive considering that the regular tempreature here is 26-28C on a cool day (I dont think you people in cold countries can believe thats "cool" huh?) and 30-33C on a hot day.

that same cooler is on the 720, and that keeps it <55C

I managed to get them real cheap, at SG$73 off a supplier (I bought 6 of em), which is like US$47, same price as Newegg. I also got like 10 Noctula fans from them (the 12cm FLX ones) for SG$23 (US$15), which is not bad. Its actually cheaper than in the US for once, and I dont know why. Its US$23 on Newegg

. I was quite supprised. Those things move a ton of air and are nice and quiet. No. Nice and silent.