my overclock campaign......

[ALMOSTunseen]

The MSI LN2 bios is the best BIOS I know of.
This thread may be of interest to you, some guy managed to flash a 7970 BIOS onto a 7950:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?284653-I-Finnaly-DiD-IT-MSI-7950-TF3-OC-V2-X-Flashed-with-7970-Bios-!!!

This is the BIOS he flashed it with that should work with your card:
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/126754/HIS.HD7970.3072.120816.html

 

[Lightofhonor]

What clock speed is your fx-4100? I've had mine at 4.8 for over a year now, but I may try for more seeing this. Just scary since I'm already north of 1.6 volts(!), but it defaults at 1.45. I'm running a 7850 and get P6657 in 3d11.

 

[ALMOSTunseen]

What clock speed is your fx-4100? I've had mine at 4.8 for over a year now, but I may try for more seeing this. Just scary since I'm already north of 1.6 volts(!), but it defaults at 1.45. I'm running a 7850 and get P6657 in 3d11.

I thought 1.5v was their recommended limit.....?

 

[Lightofhonor]

I thought 1.5v was their recommended limit.....?

lol I know! But it came with almost that out of the box. I maxed at 61C folding. I've had it at 5ghz before, but that was just for fun

 

[d1nky]

some guy on another forum said fx's don't like too much voltage?!

I couldn't get mine stable pass 4.8 for over an hour, but for benches........ well whatever you can boot on it will bench and bench hard!! I did all this on air, so water should help loads.

and I was running 1.6v for benching purposes and about 1.4v @ 4.5 24/7

I think I did some damage now because it wont get stable like before, hence I got the 8350.

yours sounds like a good chip and if its been 4.8 I reckon you could get higher if everything is good, ie temps and mobo vrms.

sometimes I wish I had it back on the 990fx to try harder, but when I was doing it I literally killed it sometimes.... even 3dmark was falling apart in places lol

 

[Lightofhonor]

some guy on another forum said fx's don't like too much voltage?!

I couldn't get mine stable pass 4.8 for over an hour, but for benches........ well whatever you can boot on it will bench and bench hard!! I did all this on air, so water should help loads.

and I was running 1.6v for benching purposes and about 1.4v @ 4.5 24/7

I think I did some damage now because it wont get stable like before, hence I got the 8350.

yours sounds like a good chip and if its been 4.8 I reckon you could get higher if everything is good, ie temps and mobo vrms.

sometimes I wish I had it back on the 990fx to try harder, but when I was doing it I literally killed it sometimes.... even 3dmark was falling apart in places lol

Yeah, maybe I'll see if I can coax it down in voltage, but I can't increase the NB much without it crashing and I'd rather overvolt the CPU than the board (I kinda want to keep it). All the other voltages are stock. My case is covered in fans (6) and is perforated so heating was never an issue. I have been able to boot at a much lower voltage before, but it was never stable in Prime95 until I hit 1.6~. I'm trying to milk some life out of it so I can wait for Steamroller.

 

[d1nky]

when I was doing the benching I would have the window open whens its freezing out, but my chip seemed so fragile with any changes. sometimes I could run prime for 30mins, crash and then run it straight after and it would be fine and solid for hours.

but 4.8ghz stable is pretty good, voltage is high but it needs when over a certain frequency.
it depends on the motherboard with other voltages, but my CPUNB voltage would be at 1.3+ , I sometimes hit a multi limit so used cpunb to gain a little extra which requires volts.
and the cpu northbridge is in the chip so you shouldn't hurt mobo from it, and upping cpunb voltage may help bring cpu voltage down.

what made me try higher clocks is beating the top spots in 3dmark11 and I done firestrike/cloudgate for a laugh.

feel free to add screenshots of benches on this page, im hoping it'll help other 4*** users out.

 

[Lightofhonor]

Was able to get it to 4.5ghz stable @ 1.56-1.58v (it fluctuates), although I realized I was at 1.66-1.68v. I believe it's the fluctuation that makes it more unstable, but we'll see. I also found 5.0ghz was stable at the save voltage as before 5.0gz gets me 1 min 14 secs on Multi-Core Pi, about 6 seconds less than at 4.8. Still not very high scores, but better!

 

[erocker]

Yeah, you guys are pushing way too much voltage for not using any kind of extreme cooling. Degradation happens.

 

[Lightofhonor]

Yeah, you guys are pushing way too much voltage for not using any kind of extreme cooling. Degradation happens.

Well I am using a closed-circuit water system, but I agree. Stock is just too slow and the rest of my system doesn't OC well so I can't ramp up the clock speed much. Everything is done in the multiplier. And stock is north of 1.4v so, really it's just a 15% volt increase even at 1.6. People do way more than that to GPUs usually.

 

[d1nky]

can it be done?!

ive been contemplating taking the top spot for single cards on my fx4100. (3dmark11)

the top spot is 4100/7970 = 8326 points

my best is 4100/7950 = 8058 points

however the guy with the 7970 had lower cpu clocks, but better scores so im thinking some instability lost me points or ram, fsb wasn't high enough to tie all the overclocking together.

heres a link to the comparison. http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/5701215/3dm11/6373074

thoughts please?

 

[de.das.dude]

those top scores are usually done with extreme cooling. and they are point of no return runs.
at the end the chip becomes totally useless.

 

[d1nky]

those top scores are usually done with extreme cooling. and they are point of no return runs.
at the end the chip becomes totally useless.

I got top spot with my 4100/7950 on air. but I do understand the better hardware (8350. 7970s etc) are with the bigger boys and extreme cooling used then.

I jus want to know peoples opinions on the clock differences and if they think I can top single cards with the 4100.

 

[d1nky]

combined scores low again?!

so a while back I downgraded to a 8350.

overclocked and ran some benches (in ma new mod )

I get an issue where my combined scores are about half what they should be, which leaves me about 1k points short - firestrike.

heres some links for comparison.

I found similar gfx and physics

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/469409/fs/389811



this is compared to my fx4100 lol

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/469409/fs/345004

ive tried HT NB, different RAM, timings etc etc and nothing helps..... if you compare and evaluate these scores closely you'll see my problem. individual scores/clocks are great but they don't add up together!

please help, some kid has the top spot for my config and I need to beat him!

 

[Durvelle27]

so a while back I downgraded to a 8350.

overclocked and ran some benches (in ma new mod )

I get an issue where my combined scores are about half what they should be, which leaves me about 1k points short - firestrike.

heres some links for comparison.

I found similar gfx and physics

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/469409/fs/389811



this is compared to my fx4100 lol

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/469409/fs/345004

ive tried HT NB, different RAM, timings etc etc and nothing helps..... if you compare and evaluate these scores closely you'll see my problem. individual scores/clocks are great but they don't add up together!

please help, some kid has the top spot for my config and I need to beat him!

My HD 7870 scored higher werid

 

[d1nky]

^^^ LOL ya nutter firestrike compared to 3dmark11.

i was sat there thinking..... and thinking!

but my firestrike problem still exists

 

[Durvelle27]

^^^ LOL ya nutter firestrike compared to 3dmark11.

i was sat there thinking..... and thinking!

but my firestrike problem still exists

 

[d1nky]

degradation is a ****

Hey guys, what sort of degradation rates can one expect on a 5 month old card?

cards been benched pretty hard. and been folding for a bit.

well when new i could hit 11.5k and there abouts 3dmark11 graphics score

same drivers, several months on im finding it hard to even break the 11k barrier with same/more clocks.

so is a 1,000 worth of points expected loss?

thanks