Overclocking

[Snifferdog3]

Hey, so ive been overclocking my pc a bit, its a old system so there are some things that are confusing me.

 

CPU: AMD phenom II x4 965BE

RAM: DDR2-800 (Ik...)

mobo: Asus M4A785D-M Pro

 

so for starters my bios has a overclock profile on the cpu overclocking setting, It gives me some percentages to choose from, currently ive got it set at the max setting of 10%, that gives a BCLK of 220Mhz, and takes my CPU to around 3.76Ghz without changing the multiplier, my ram to 440Mhz and the HT to 2200Mhz. Vcore is on auto.

but the thing thats confusing me is loadline calibration.

by default its on auto (51.6%) and for me a higher percentage makes the system less stable, and lower makes it more stable. I have found that 25% llc is stable on the said overclock above.

Ive googled it, and from what I can tell llc affects Vdroop, and that if I have it at 0% my vcore will be a constant voltage at what ive set and wont drop, but that doesn't seem to be the case for me, as even at 25% it rises above what I set, for instance if I set the vcore to 1.35v it goes to nearly 1.4v at 25% llc (and is still crashes at 3.9ghz on cinebench and prime95), so I dont want to put it to 0 as im afraid it will go dangerously high.

Another thing. im using the OC profile because it seems to be more stable with the bclk at 220, than just putting the multiplier up to 3.8ghz and leaving the bclk at 200(or auto), also obviously having the bclk up, ups my ram speed a little.

I would like to achieve 4Ghz if possible, but I dont want to up the bclk more because im afraid that will do damage, when I increase the multiplier to 3.9Ghz and have the bclk at 220 its unstable, same with just the multiplier at 3.9ghz, and I dont want to increase the Vcore much untill I figure out how this llc works, as the vcore still goes above the setting I put in. should I turn off LLC? if so how, I cant seem to figure it out.

 

sorry if this is a little confusing, im just very confused with the voltages, why isnt it stopping at the overvoltage setting I put in? I need a good explanation of llc, all I can tell is it affects vdroop and that having it at 0% should make the cpu run constantly at the voltage set, but it doesnt seem that way for me, it still goes above my set vcore even at 25%.

 

[Jurrunio]

49 minutes ago, Snifferdog3 said:

it seems to be more stable

becuse 3.76GHz is lower than 3.8?

 

50 minutes ago, Snifferdog3 said:

Ive googled it, and from what I can tell llc affects Vdroop, and that if I have it at 0% my vcore will be a constant voltage at what ive set and wont drop, but that doesn't seem to be the case for me, as even at 25% it rises above what I set, for instance if I set the vcore to 1.35v it goes to nearly 1.4v at 25% llc (and is still crashes at 3.9ghz on cinebench and prime95), so I dont want to put it to 0 as im afraid it will go dangerously high.

That's still too much LLC (= too little vdroop). Voltage should drop say, 0.05-0.1V from idle to full load or voltage regulation (because voltage is never a flat line) gets horrible, especially in cases where it's overcompensating (voltage rises).

 

My guess is that the board vendor uses % Vdroop instead of levels of LLC in the BIOS even though they do the same thing. 0% could refer to max Level which always means getting overshoot, regardless of board you have.

 

1 hour ago, Snifferdog3 said:

should I turn off LLC? if so how, I cant seem to figure it out.

That's sacrificing clock potential.

 

1 hour ago, Snifferdog3 said:

my ram to 440Mhz and the HT to 2200Mhz

raising HT and RAM frequency can help with performance tho, if you cant increase these two without touching BCLK, keep it at 220MHz.

 

1 hour ago, Snifferdog3 said:

I would like to achieve 4Ghz if possible,

That's impossible without a good chip and good board (chip I dont know, board certainly isn't great by any means)