Overclocking questions.

[TechTheWorld]

Ok straight to the point. I am overclocking a FX-6300 from 3.5ghz to 4.00ghz(for now) on this motherboard:http://www.microcenter.com/product/401771/970A-G46_AM3_ATX_AMD_Motherboard . I changed the multiplier and all that I just wasnt sure what to do with the voltage.My mobo has the cpu voltage set to "Auto" do I need to change it my self or can I just leave it? I have run several stability test with AMD OverDrive and everything seems fine. 100% load and never getting above 40 degrees Celsius. And wiill I see a difference in performance from overclocking? I will be using this pc mostly for gaming and normal day to day stuff...Will I be able to tell the difference?

[GreenLeafy]

Well... I wouldn't really recommend setting it to auto because it often gives the CPU more voltage than it needs, increasing the temperatures. The ones you're getting seem to be very good. I'm not very experienced with voltages with AMD CPUs, so I can't give you a recommended voltage, but what most people do is stress test their CPU and increase voltage until it reaches a stable point. Sometimes, running a stress test for a few hours may not be enough, because many errors pop up deep into testing (linus has frequently said this in videos). Linus and lots of other people use software called Prime95 (running in small FFT) for 24-48 hours to stress test the processor to make sure that it's stable. Will it increase your performance? This really depends on your graphics card.... but overclocking does increase how fast the processor can perform the calculations, so you'll probably see a slight increase in performance when playing more CPU dependent games. Many games are mostly reliant on the graphics card, so in that case, you'll only notice a minimal performance increase. For normal use such as browsing the web, you will not notice any difference. And in games, your fps won't increase a lot, so you'll probably only notice if you had 20 fps before, and 25 now. If you went from 100 to 105, then you won't realize a difference. If you're looking for more performance, I would overclock your graphics card, because there's a more noticeable difference when you overclock that. Good luck.

[TechFan@ic]

You can keep the voltage set to auto all the way to 4.0/4.2 Ghz depending on the silicone lottery.

But usually the auto setting over-volts the CPU too much, so I'd personally adjust the voltage manually, set it to the default and bump up the clocks until the CPU becomes unstable, then stop and clock it back to the last stable clock rate.

What CPU monitoring software are you using ? 40c seems ridiculously unrealistic .

[TechTheWorld]

Well... I wouldn't really recommend setting it to auto because it often gives the CPU more voltage than it needs, increasing the temperatures. The ones you're getting seem to be very good. I'm not very experienced with voltages with AMD CPUs, so I can't give you a recommended voltage, but what most people do is stress test their CPU and increase voltage until it reaches a stable point. Sometimes, running a stress test for a few hours may not be enough, because many errors pop up deep into testing (linus has frequently said this in videos). Linus and lots of other people use software called Prime95 (running in small FFT) for 24-48 hours to stress test the processor to make sure that it's stable. Will it increase your performance? This really depends on your graphics card.... but overclocking does increase how fast the processor can perform the calculations, so you'll probably see a slight increase in performance when playing more CPU dependent games. Many games are mostly reliant on the graphics card, so in that case, you'll only notice a minimal performance increase. For normal use such as browsing the web, you will not notice any difference. And in games, your fps won't increase a lot, so you'll probably only notice if you had 20 fps before, and 25 now. If you went from 100 to 105, then you won't realize a difference. If you're looking for more performance, I would overclock your graphics card, because there's a more noticeable difference when you overclock that. Good luck.

So with the temps I am getting now would I be ok just leaving the voltage alone?My voltage is at 1.3125 Volts right now. So should I just not bother with overclocking at all? Since I wont see much performance difference? Or should I leave it? Thank you for your very informative reply:)

[TechFan@ic]

Well... I wouldn't really recommend setting it to auto because it often gives the CPU more voltage than it needs, increasing the temperatures. The ones you're getting seem to be very good. I'm not very experienced with voltages with AMD CPUs, so I can't give you a recommended voltage, but what most people do is stress test their CPU and increase voltage until it reaches a stable point. Sometimes, running a stress test for a few hours may not be enough, because many errors pop up deep into testing (linus has frequently said this in videos). Linus and lots of other people use software called Prime95 (running in small FFT) for 24-48 hours to stress test the processor to make sure that it's stable. Will it increase your performance? This really depends on your graphics card.... but overclocking does increase how fast the processor can perform the calculations, so you'll probably see a slight increase in performance when playing more CPU dependent games. Many games are mostly reliant on the graphics card, so in that case, you'll only notice a minimal performance increase. For normal use such as browsing the web, you will not notice any difference. And in games, your fps won't increase a lot, so you'll probably only notice if you had 20 fps before, and 25 now. If you went from 100 to 105, then you won't realize a difference. If you're looking for more performance, I would overclock your graphics card, because there's a more noticeable difference when you overclock that. Good luck.

1.3125 volts is quite high for 4Ghz, you should be getting 4Ghz on about 1.25 volts, of course this varies greatly with every chip , so you'll have to stress test to find out how much voltage exactly you need.

Run prime95 for an hour and keep an eye on the temps, 40c can't be correct, download and use coretemp, AMD CPUs should not go over 70c otherwise they will throttle to avoid damage which will severely affect performance.

To answer your second question, the only way to decide whether an overclock is worth it or not is to test the results yourself.

A good CPU intensive game that would show immediate difference is Skyrim, so open up fraps and watch the FPS before and after overclocking to see the performance difference.

Also what CPU cooler are you using ?

[TechTheWorld]

Well... I wouldn't really recommend setting it to auto because it often gives the CPU more voltage than it needs, increasing the temperatures. The ones you're getting seem to be very good. I'm not very experienced with voltages with AMD CPUs, so I can't give you a recommended voltage, but what most people do is stress test their CPU and increase voltage until it reaches a stable point. Sometimes, running a stress test for a few hours may not be enough, because many errors pop up deep into testing (linus has frequently said this in videos). Linus and lots of other people use software called Prime95 (running in small FFT) for 24-48 hours to stress test the processor to make sure that it's stable. Will it increase your performance? This really depends on your graphics card.... but overclocking does increase how fast the processor can perform the calculations, so you'll probably see a slight increase in performance when playing more CPU dependent games. Many games are mostly reliant on the graphics card, so in that case, you'll only notice a minimal performance increase. For normal use such as browsing the web, you will not notice any difference. And in games, your fps won't increase a lot, so you'll probably only notice if you had 20 fps before, and 25 now. If you went from 100 to 105, then you won't realize a difference. If you're looking for more performance, I would overclock your graphics card, because there's a more noticeable difference when you overclock that. Good luck.

Hyper 212 evo.

[TechTheWorld]

You can keep the voltage set to auto all the way to 4.0/4.2 Ghz depending on the silicone lottery.

But usually the auto setting over-volts the CPU too much, so I'd personally adjust the voltage manually, set it to the default and bump up the clocks until the CPU becomes unstable, then stop and clock it back to the last stable clock rate.

What CPU monitoring software are you using ? 40c seems ridiculously unrealistic .

Ye that is what I thought. I am using AMD OverDrive right now....CoreTemp says my system is at 60 degrees Celsius at idle....Which one do I believe? I have also tried msi control center which is also waaaay off...its says like 20 Celsius...... I will try to reduce my voltage and I will probably reduce my overclock by at least .2 ghz....WAAAAIIIITTTT coretemp measures in Fahrenheit that makes sense...So I get around 90-100 degrees Fahrenheit while running prime95(I checked using coretemp).

[TechTheWorld]

OK so I was running prime95 and it was running at about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.Then it said there was an error after about 25 minutes. So I went into my bios and just clicked reset to defaults so I could just start all over when I have more time. And then my pc would not boot and I had to do a system restore. And THEN when I do that my anti virus (bot defender) has crashed and will not work..... What did I do wrong? The max I ever put the voltage was 1.26somethingsomething.......

[GreenLeafy]

Well... I wouldn't really recommend setting it to auto because it often gives the CPU more voltage than it needs, increasing the temperatures. The ones you're getting seem to be very good. I'm not very experienced with voltages with AMD CPUs, so I can't give you a recommended voltage, but what most people do is stress test their CPU and increase voltage until it reaches a stable point. Sometimes, running a stress test for a few hours may not be enough, because many errors pop up deep into testing (linus has frequently said this in videos). Linus and lots of other people use software called Prime95 (running in small FFT) for 24-48 hours to stress test the processor to make sure that it's stable. Will it increase your performance? This really depends on your graphics card.... but overclocking does increase how fast the processor can perform the calculations, so you'll probably see a slight increase in performance when playing more CPU dependent games. Many games are mostly reliant on the graphics card, so in that case, you'll only notice a minimal performance increase. For normal use such as browsing the web, you will not notice any difference. And in games, your fps won't increase a lot, so you'll probably only notice if you had 20 fps before, and 25 now. If you went from 100 to 105, then you won't realize a difference. If you're looking for more performance, I would overclock your graphics card, because there's a more noticeable difference when you overclock that. Good luck.

I would assume hat TechFan knows what he's talking about.. Like I said before, the reason your voltage is so high is probably because you have it set on auto. Having it set on auto almost always gives the CPU more voltage than it needs, therefore increasing temperatures with extra unnecessary voltage. You might be able to get it stable on 4Ghz by manually setting a voltage at maybe 1.25 volts like TechFan said, and then run Prime 95 for about 24 hours and if you get errors, turn up the voltage little by little until you can run P95 for 24 hours without errors. Linus said that 24-48 hours if you're deciding on a final overclock, but that's for you to decide.