How to overclock FX CPUs and resolve throttle issues

[samuel]

Every time I see any kind of overclocking involved on chips, it always start with "disable turbo" and ends with disable everything else. Disable disable disable.
 
What is the no. 1 problem for the FX CPUs at this moment? Yes, it's single thread performance. When it comes to pure non-multithreaded software, it kinda sucks.
 
CPU Turbo should alleviate this. But it's rather complicated to mess with it and the performance boost is negligible. Wrong! This is an old thinking from the Phenom era.... Please check this out!
 
 

Results in peacekeeper:
 FX 8320@ 4 Ghz no boost enabled, locked frequency- 2478
 FX 8320@ 3.6 Ghz /W 4.5 Ghz boost- 3133.
 
I will not try to prove my result. Test it out yourself please! Other (better) benchmarks too. And games!
 
 

it's rather complicated to mess with it and the performance boost is negligible.

 

 
It's still rather complicated to mess with it, but I'll help you with that! I will show you how to keep the stock clock and change only the boost clocks while undervolting every clock state (or pstate for short).
 
There are 2 turbo states for our CPU by default: 3.7 Ghz when 4 or more cores are in use(up to 8)-that's called P1 state and 4 Ghz with up to 3 cores in this state-called P0.
 
The problem here is that the normal (BIOS) overclocking will make the P1 state get in the way, because we can't change that frequency in bios (at least I can't). So all of us want a clock base (P2) higher than 3.7 Ghz and then some turbo.. But there will definetly be some performance drop if not instability when the P2 is higher than P1, it's like swithing to a lower gear when a higher gear was expected. That's a real problem!
 
Now I will list all the pstates available for FX CPUs:
 
P6- should have the lowest clock, it is activated in idle (for all cores) or when only P0 is activated (up to 5 cores) to reduce the thermal output. This is done like....several times per second and swithed from phisical core to physical core to dinamically and evenly spread the turbo PS excess heat. This is a HUGE bonus over Phenom X6!
 
P5,P4- low-intemediate pstates, they exist for effeciency porpouse (I watch a movie with proper GPU HW acceleration so the CPU doesn't really idle but it's not necessary to run at high pstates - for example)
 
P3- The throttle pstate---that cursed clock when all the cores are at 100% and the motherboard thinks there is no more thermal headroom or the VRM is gonna explode.
 
P2- Base clock, the pstate that normal overlocker uses. Some of us even locks it down because it's cool ( I mean in the swag way cuz heat is actually hy) -no offence, and of course they don't pay the power bill.
 
P1- First and lower boost state
 
P0- Highest pstate available, abused in single thread software.
 
What will we do? We will try to make P2 perform like a third boost clock and P3, the thottle state, like a "there is war going on in my pc and this is the lowest I can get" new base state. But is not so dangerous as you think!
 
For this we use a tool called AmdMsrTweaker. It's the equivalent of K10stat that I (or maybe we) used with Phenom. But that time, turbo was off, honesly!
 
AmdMsrTweaker is a command-like tool to alterate clock speed per state and voltage per state aswell. It easily eliminates the problem of having too high voltage on a pstate (even in boost mode). To do that, we create a text file, edit it, change extension to "AmdMsrTweaker.bat", save it within the folder provided and when we are ready, we run that bat file and voila, the magic is happening.
 
Editing AmdMsrTweaker.bat- this is how it looks like! 
 
AmdMsrTweaker Turbo=1 P0=22@1.3125 P1=19.5@1.2 P2=17.5@1.15 P3=17@1.1375 P4=12.5@1.0500 P5=7.5@0.7625 P6=5@0.7 APM=1
 
Let me explain it step by step:
The line starts with AmdMsrTweaker so that the executable will know this file is intended to do the thing.
 
Turbo=1 activated
Turbo=0 deactivated.
You can still undevolt and overclock or only overlock with or without torbo activated but only by multiplier and NOT reference clock (200 usually). Turbo on off in this tool overrides the bios setting.
 
P0-P6: the pstates explaied eralier.
 
P0-P6=number : This is the multiplier, just like in bios. But available for all pstates and not only for base and turbo P0 like usual. Ex: reference clock=200, P6=5 : 200x5=1000 Mhz idle pstate for me,
 
@0.0125 - 1.55 : this is the full range of volages available for each state. Lower state should need lower voltage. Please use the default CPU voltage and clocks in bios for stability! It's very important!
 
APM- AMD Power Management- When enabled, even in bios if exist, this will make your cpu throttle at very high cpu usage. But when disabled, turbo goes off even if it's activated and the temps go crazy high too!
 
In that line I have 1 ghz idle, 3.4 ghz throtle, 3.5 ghz base , 3.9 ghz turbo P1 and 4.4 ghz turbo P0. I gradually increased refference clock in bios until I got 3.5 ghz throttle and 100 moar mghz for each high state but that's at the very end!
 
 
To test each pstate, you first need to lock it down in catalyst. Like this:
 

 
Use whatever stress program you want! Use 8 threads for all non boost pstates (including P2). Instable? Higher voltage or lower clock as usual. Unbootable? Reset bios.... yes I know.....it's weird!
 
To test boost states you need prime95 and...not use the PC when stress is happening. Close every little program you can see, unlock all states in catalist, close (hide catalist in tray) and run 3 threads large FFT for testing P0 and 4 Threads for P1.And wait! Don't even use the mouse! One temp monitor is advisable but if you're sure the temps are fine, close that one too!  About an hour of stress per turbo state is enough because you will never ever reach that level of stress with triple threads at max turbo in real world.
 
I will attach a rar file wich contains folowing:
AmdMsrtweaker folder with its executables.
Some stable clocks that works well for me. (just copy one in the same folder and rename it to amdmsrtweaker.bat)
A task schedule that you can import in task scheduler. Search Google if you don;t know what i'm saying.
 
When ready, import task and copy amdmsrtweaker folder to "C:\Program Files". After that you'll not have to execute the bat file anymore! It starts with Windows and re-runs by itself after sleep.
 
Be patient, it's worth it! And... don't do it if you expect 5 ghz turbo on a 4+1 phases Asrock!
 
 
 
 
I tried to do the same thread fiew months ago but I was too,,,inpacient to explain everithing!

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z1nw1kqmjmy1ujc/AmdMsrTweaker.rar?dl=0

[slashes_2_asses]

TL;DR

 

What do you want?

[samuel]

TL;DR

 

What do you want?

 I will show you how to keep the stock clock and change only the boost clocks while undervolting every clock state (or pstate for short).

 

 

Some users are having a hard time with throttle issues in games and stuff, If you don;t need it, don;t read. I tried to explain it properly so that if you try it, it will work. Thanks for your honest replay!

[harrynowl]

I remember this post before

 

I wonder how intel and amd compare... quite big gap, I wonder what the real world impact is (i5 4690k @ 4.6)

 

[slashes_2_asses]

Some users are having a hard time with throttle issues in games and stuff, If you don;t need it, don;t read. I tried to explain it properly so that if you try it, it will work. Thanks for your honest replay!

 Thanks for your effort. Then you should ask a moderator to move this to guides and tutorial section.

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/forum/30-guides-and-tutorials/

[samuel]

I remember this post before

 

I wonder how intel and amd compare... quite big gap, I wonder what the real world impact is (i5 4690k @ 4.6)

 

Oh shhh...