Need help overclocking AMD 9950 BE

[bograt]

hi guys,

I have an amd 9950 black edition (2.6ghz) and would like to overclock a bit,

It is on the asus crosshair II formula motherboard.

I have a nice cool lian li case covered in vents with a very good airflow and im looking at the ASUS Silent Knight CPU Cooler as it seems to work well with the airflow of the system

where should i start? does anyone know any good tutorials?

all the vids i have seen so far the guys keep correcting themselves!

and what should i expect to get out of it? i dont want my system to be unstable!

I am currently clocked at 2855Mhz using 'ai booster' (came with the board) though that is the max.

my cpu seems quite happy staying at 45c (idle) - 55c (running crysis) and thats with stock cooler

cheers,

jules

 

[Ghosthud1]

in all seriousness i dont think you will be able to clock past 2.9-3.0ghz as the first phenoms are terrible clockers..when i say terrible i mean experience with a 9850 + 770 motherboard and it wouldnt post past 2.7ghz

 

[bograt]

ok well atleast i wont have to take any risks.... what about ram?

i have 2 sticks of kingston hyperX 1066mhz 2gb

can i overclock them a bit?

im just looking for a few tweaks to do

 

[Ghosthud1]

erm my friend owns a 4gb kit of them hyperX blue shiny things the most he's got is just tighter timings and maybe a slight OC maybe around 1090mhz

 

[bograt]

so what you saying is i cant really overclock anything else? my gpus are already from 512 - 670... i know amds are **** for overclocking but the ram??? how come i can get a 24mhz increase at best?!?! LAME! im new to pc building/ tweaking.. but i was hoping there was something i could increase.... serves me right for going budget i guess....

to be honest £600 aint bad for what i got! but next time its intel... and probbably ati the way things are going..

 

[86sixsix]

...i'm a few months late i'll grant you...

...if you're at the max your 'AI Booster' will go...then directly enter the numbers in a 'manual' mode...post them here (because I am nosy)...and then see what you can increase/trade-off against each other...

for example...a few of my AMDs only like high FSBs and low multi's...I have others that're the other way around...some fall down unless I drop the NB multi...as for RAM...see what changing the ratio and tightening the timing does as Ghosthud1 hinted at...

...are you after performance, or simply bigger numbers? ...bigger numbers I find are generally easier to attain... bang the ram down to DDR2-533 at 5-5-5-18-2T. drop the NB multi and v as low as you can. downcore to whichever's the strongest and give it as much v as you can. you could end up with a really high clock but it wouldn't be all that fast...

...or drop the CPU multi, hammer the FSB, hammer the v (and the chipset's v), hammer the pci-e, drop the ram ratio so your FSB brings it back to near stock, place a cup of coffee on the southbridge so it will keep warm forever and try that...

never underestimate a 'cheap' computer. any monkey can blow a grand or 2 on a new machine and have it perform. you'll have money left over for beer, cars, and so on...