Phenom II X4 960T weird behaviour

[DragonClaw]

I recently bought a Phenom II X4 960T from a seller here in Bulgaria for the equivalent of $100. I was told that the CPU unlocks to an X6 1605T and was fully stable and it is. However, it doesn't seem to like overclocking at all when it's unlocked. The absolute maximum frequency I'm able to get for all six cores is 3.2GHz regardless of the voltage. Stock voltage is 1.375V, I've tried both under- and overvolting it with no success. A 3.3GHz overclock crashes after 5-10 seconds of Prime95. I've also tried setting LLC to High (settings are Auto, Regular, Medium, High, Ultra High and extreme). The motherboard is Gigabyte 990XA-UD3.

 

Is there anything else I can try to overclock any further? And is there a way to make the temperature sensor work when the CPU is unlocked?

 

P.S. I should also say that when it's not unlocked, the CPU behaves rather normally. However, I have seen people saying that they can achieve a 3.8GHz overclock at default voltage (1.375V) which my particular CPU can't.

 

Thanks!

[ohJey]

The cores were disabled for a reason.  Most people have to overvolt just to get the extra cores stable.

[Monti]

I guess you might have to do a trade off for more cores or more Ghz. I don't overclock so I know nothing to help you there.

[DragonClaw]

Meh. I guess I'll stick with the 'more cores' option and wait for AMD to come up with something at least as exciting as the 1090T was back in 2010. I was never too into the Zambezi/Vishera stuff, even though I had the chance to own them both. On the other hand, I've always wanted to own a Thuban CPU, but never really found good enough deals until now.

[GamerDude]

Meh. I guess I'll stick with the 'more cores' option and wait for AMD to come up with something at least as exciting as the 1090T was back in 2010. I was never too into the Zambezi/Vishera stuff, even though I had the chance to own them both. On the other hand, I've always wanted to own a Thuban CPU, but never really found good enough deals until now.

Same here, and although I have a Vishera in the FX8350, I was kind of curious about the AM3 Thuban CPU. I'd recently gotten a chance to buy a Phenom II X6 1100T + CM V6 GT cooler + Asus M4A77TD Pro bundle for about 140USD, so I jumped at it since I had a spare PSU, some HDD's and a 3GB GTX580 as well as a retail copy of 64bit Vista. This rig rocks, I played Watch Dogs with it and I can do Ultra setting but with lower AA setting.....ran pretty good I might add. Played Wolfenstein TNO as well and it handled the game with ease.

 

BTW, unlocked CPU's like yours is no guarantee of good OC's, just be glad that you had killed it trying to OC it, and that it runs stable with the additional 2 cores enabled.

[DragonClaw]

Same here, and although I have a Vishera in the FX8350, I was kind of curious about the AM3 Thuban CPU. I'd recently gotten a chance to buy a Phenom II X6 1100T + CM V6 GT cooler + Asus M4A77TD Pro bundle for about 140USD, so I jumped at it since I had a spare PSU, some HDD's and a 3GB GTX580 as well as a retail copy of 64bit Vista. This rig rocks, I played Watch Dogs with it and I can do Ultra setting but with lower AA setting.....ran pretty good I might add. Played Wolfenstein TNO as well and it handled the game with ease.

 

BTW, unlocked CPU's like yours is no guarantee of good OC's, just be glad that you had killed it trying to OC it, and that it runs stable with the additional 2 cores enabled.

Whoa, you got yourself a great deal!

 

I knew I was taking a bit of a chance by buying a CPU that I intended to be unlocking so my hopes for a good OC were not too high. However, I did find it very curious that the CPU outright didn't want to go over 3.2GHz at any voltage so I posted this topic to ask if was doing something wrong. At least now that I'm at my max frequency, I don't have to worry about buying a better cooler, hehe. (unless I wanted to lock it again and OC the hell out of it, which I dont, 'cause I like seeing more colors on my All CPU Meter gadget :lol: )

 

Fingers crossed that the new x86 architecture they're designing from the ground up would be awesome.

[GamerDude]

Whoa, you got yourself a great deal!

 

I knew I was taking a bit of a chance by buying a CPU that I intended to be unlocking so my hopes for a good OC were not too high. However, I did find it very curious that the CPU outright didn't want to go over 3.2GHz at any voltage so I posted this topic to ask if was doing something wrong. At least now that I'm at my max frequency, I don't have to worry about buying a better cooler, hehe. (unless I wanted to lock it again and OC the hell out of it, which I dont, 'cause I like seeing more colors on my All CPU Meter gadget :lol: )

 

Fingers crossed that the new x86 architecture they're designing from the ground up would be awesome.

Whoa Nellie! Just really noted the price you'd paid for the Phenom II X4 960T!  Man, that's a tad on the high side, but hey, it's now a Phenom II X6, so it's good imo. New hardware in my neck of the woods costs a pretty penny, well above what it'd cost in the US anyway (not sure about prices in your neck of the woods though), but once used and relatively 'old', they are usually unceremoniously 'dumped' at pretty low prices. I'm very happy with the way my FX8350 handles games and ripping, and the Phenom II X6 bundle was simply too good to resist, and now that I have it, I can honestly say it was money well-spent. B)

 

Good luck with your rig, and have loads of fun with it.....

[DragonClaw]

So I've had some more time to mess around with different settings and I've discovered a relation that I'm not sure is normal: the more cores are enabled, the lower the max frequency I can achieve.

 

Before that, though, I found which were the worst cores by booting the PC with Core 0 (because it can't be disabled) and one more core enabled. For each combination of two cores, I ran SuperPI 1M, wPrime 32M and Cinebench R15. The only combinations that crashed during these tests at 4GHz 1.45V were the Core 0 + 4 and Core 0 + 5 (the only two combinations with unlocked cores). I know - probably not the most scientific way to do this, but one would think that the least stable cores would be the locked ones and my test confirmed that.

 

For my next test, I decided to run Core 0 + Core 4 + Core 5 (the default core and the two unlocked ones) at 3.6GHz 1.4V (I know, quite a lot of voltage for such frequency, I just wanted to make sure the CPU has enough juice) - a setting which is no where near stable when all six cores are enabled. Here's the result:

 

 

The other three cores that are disabled in this picture are three out of the four which are enabled on the X4 960T. They would do 3.6GHz at 1.4V just fine so I'm not going to bother to test them separately.

 

So clearly, the fact that I cannot go above 3.2GHz with all six cores and have it be Prime95 stable for more than one or two hours is not due to bad/defect cores. I'm running out of ideas, please help! I really want to run this bad boy at 3.6-3.8GHz.

 

EDIT: The VRM and CPU temperatures are not causing this. I'm monitoring them with thermocouples and they're both at reasonable temperatures.

[Priller]

Which ram do you have?

[DragonClaw]

I have 2x2GB of A-Data DDR3 at 1333MHz. Since I had to raise the bus speed (because the CPU doesn't seem to like multiplies over 16x), I set it to 1066MHz in the bios to make sure it's not running out of spec.

[Priller]

I have 2x2GB of A-Data DDR3 at 1333MHz. Since I had to raise the bus speed (because the CPU doesn't seem to like multiplies over 16x), I set it to 1066MHz in the bios to make sure it's not running out of spec.

 

Which should mean you are running the ram at 1204mhz currently.

 

 

Have you set the ram timings and voltage manually?

[DragonClaw]

Which should mean you are running the ram at 1204mhz currently.

 

 

Have you set the ram timings and voltage manually?

No. The test in the picture above was done at 8-8-8-23 timings and 1.5V.

 

Are you saying that the RAM might be what causes crashes when all six cores are enabled, while being perfectly stable with 4 cores or less?

[Priller]

No. The test in the picture above was done at 8-8-8-23 timings and 1.5V.

 

Are you saying that the RAM might be what causes crashes when all six cores are enabled, while being perfectly stable with 4 cores or less?

 

Lets start from the beginning. 

 

Set ram speed, voltage and timings to their stock settings.

 

Multi unlocked as well?

 

Unlock all cores and set to 1.400 volts. Set LLC to Very high. HPC mode enabled, APM disabled. 

[samuel]

Had a 960t with the same motherboard. It was stable only with 5 cores enabled at decent clocks tough...

[DragonClaw]

Lets start from the beginning. 

 

Set ram speed, voltage and timings to their stock settings.

 

Multi unlocked as well?

 

Unlock all cores and set to 1.400 volts. Set LLC to Very high. HPC mode enabled, APM disabled. 

 

Done. Now what?

 

EDIT: I don't have APM. I used to have it under Advanced BIOS Features when I had an FX CPU, but now it's gone. I don't have HPC either.

 

 

 

[Priller]

Take clock ratio and FSB ratio off of auto and set them manually.

 

With LLC on Very high and under load what does the voltage drop too?

[DragonClaw]

How do I measure the actual voltage? The board doesn't have Vcheck points.

 

AOD, Core Temp and HWINFO report 1.4V all the time, while CPU-Z says 1.408V at idle and 1.424V under load, if that is of any use.

[Priller]

How do I measure the actual voltage? The board doesn't have Vcheck points.

 

AOD, Core Temp and HWINFO report 1.4V all the time, while CPU-Z says 1.408V at idle and 1.424V under load, if that is of any use.

 

OCCT report the same as CPU-Z?

 

So it is given a bump under load. I wouldn't expect to see that until Extreme LLC is used.

 

Now with it set as is. Try bumping the multi to give 3.1 ghz and test it with Prime95. See if the ram was an issue.

[DragonClaw]

OCCT report the same as CPU-Z?

 

So it is given a bump under load. I wouldn't expect to see that until Extreme LLC is used.

 

Now with it set as is. Try bumping the multi to give 3.1 ghz and test it with Prime95. See if the ram was an issue.

OCCT reports 1.41V at idle and 1.42V under load. Given that the figures are rounded to two digits, I'd say OCCT and CPU-Z report identically.

 

By the way, 3.1GHz was stable before for all six cores with just a multiplier bump (before I started messing around with FSB, RAM and other speeds). So I don't think there was any point in what I've just done. Did you mean 3.3Ghz instead of 3.1?

[Priller]

OCCT reports 1.41V at idle and 1.42V under load. Given that the figures are rounded to two digits, I'd say OCCT and CPU-Z report identically.

 

By the way, 3.1GHz was stable before for all six cores with just a multiplier bump (before I started messing around with FSB, RAM and other speeds). So I don't think there was any point in what I've just done. Did you mean 3.3Ghz instead of 3.1?

 

No. Meant 3.1.

 

Now start walking it up with the multi. Go to 3.2 then to 3.3. If it fails a core bump CPU voltage by 0.025 volts and see how far you can get with it.

[DragonClaw]

No. Meant 3.1.

 

Now start walking it up with the multi. Go to 3.2 then to 3.3. If it fails a core bump CPU voltage by 0.025 volts and see how far you can get with it.

Oh, man! Forget about it, everything works like a charm now. As it turns out I need higher LLC to make the CPU stable at higher frequencies. I did try 'High' before posting this topic but it didn't help at all so I just ignored it and never tried an even higher LLC setting. I guess I was afraid of how much more voltage it would feed the CPU.

 

Many thanks to all who made time to help me solve this and to Priller for suggesting a higher LLC setting.

 

Currently running 3.6GHz overclock, which passes Cinebench, wPrime and SuperPI. Prime95 stability test coming up. Then all that's left for me to do is buy a better cooler and see how much more I can squeeze from my unlocked CPU.

[Priller]

Oh, man! Forget about it, everything works like a charm now. As it turns out I need higher LLC to make the CPU stable at higher frequencies. I did try 'High' before posting this topic but it didn't help at all so I just ignored it and never tried an even higher LLC setting. I guess I was afraid of how much more voltage it would feed the CPU.

 

Many thanks to all who made time to help me solve this and to Priller for suggesting a higher LLC setting.

 

Currently running 3.6GHz overclock, which passes Cinebench, wPrime and SuperPI. Prime95 stability test coming up. Then all that's left for me to do is buy a better cooler and see how much more I can squeeze from my unlocked CPU.

 

With the Phenoms you can take the voltage to 1.475-1.50 for daily use. Just make sure it you have Cool N Quiet enabled so it will drop CPU speed and voltage down when not doing heavy tasks. That should allow you to reach closer to 4GHz.

 

The issue you had before was the ram running too tight on timings causing instability and most likely with a high FSB of 226, the CPU NB voltage wasn't high enough and possibly the NB voltage as well. 

 

If you got 3.6Ghz on multi only and 3.7Ghz fails, try to raise the Ram voltage from 1.5 to 1.525 or 1.550 volts and slowly increase the FSB. I wouldn't try to go much higher then about 210 on the FSB. That will put your ram speed at 1398mhz and your CPU speed at 3780mhz. If you do try to use the FSB make sure to bump the CPU NB voltage to 1.25 volts.