Overclocking a Phenom II

[Rennn]

I was disappointed with my performance in Dragon Age: Origins, since I have a rig that should be demolishing it:

 

2GB GTX 660 GC at 1006Mhz

8GB G.Skill Ripjaw RAM at 1600Mhz

AMD Phenom II X4 955 at 3.2Ghz

ASUS M4N68T-M V2

 

Instead of eating DAO for breakfast, my rig seems to be chugging. I get an average of 45-50 fps in Ostagar, when benchmarks seem to indicate I should be getting 100+ fps at all times.

 

Since changing my resolution from 800x600 to 2560x1440 did absolutely nothing to performance, I decided my GPU wasn't the bottleneck and started looking at my CPU.

I overclocked my Phenom II to 3.5Ghz, and gained about 5 fps in Origins. Disabling 3 of my cores temporarily also dumped the framerate to 15-20 fps. So I'm pretty sure the CPU is the bottleneck.

My CPU hits 68-73% load in Origins, so it's probably using the majority of 3 cores. Considering it's only optimized for 3 cores, that makes sense.

 

Now, the question is, how far is it safe to overclock a quad-core Phenom II 955 on stock cooling? What kind of voltage should I be using for 3.5Ghz or 3.8Ghz?

 

In addition, should I be getting such low performance in Dragon Age? I knew the game was CPU-intensive, but I didn't think it would stress a three of my cores at 3.2Ghz. On every other game, including new releases like Borderlands 2, Last Light, and the older (but still CPU heavy) Skyrim, my video card maxes long before my CPU.

Edited August 30, 2013 by Rennn

[HeyYou]

What ya got runnin' in the background?

 

First thing I would do is 'streamline' the system. Kill off unnecessary processes/applications. First thing I did with my new machine was to follow one of blackvipers' tweak guides, and shut off any service/process that wasn't required for windows. (My win xp looks a LOT like win 98..... :) ) At startup, when things have settled down, there are only 17 running processes. Vista/7/8 you won't be able to get quite that low, as things changed pretty dramatically with Vista.... A lot of the 'prettys' are resource hogs..... :D

[Rennn]

There are 74 processes running, but combined they take 1-3% of my CPU, and they're all on the first core.

 

The heaviest one is Steam, but even if it would make a noticeable difference, I can't stop that since I own DAO on Steam. :/

I don't think culling background processes is going to help.

[Erik005]

At 73% load the CPU is not the bottleneck. A gtx 660 is a nice card for 1920*1080, but will struggle at 2560*1440.

 

My GTX680 struggled somewhat at 2560*1440, my titan can of course handle 1440p easy.

Edited August 30, 2013 by Erik005

[Vecna6667]

I've knew someone who has hit 4GHz on stock cooling with a Phenom II X4 965 and using a good thermal paste like arctic silver 5, but I would suggest a better cooler(like a Hyper 212+ or evo,) before trying to hit that mark. Also the resolution you have is a killer on what ever processor gets pushed. If you are using Vista or 7, disable Aero, Aero Peek, transparent glass, show shadows under mouse pointer and windows to name a few features that you might not need.

[Rennn]

At 73% load the CPU is not the bottleneck. A gtx 660 is a nice card for 1920*1080, but will struggle at 2560*1440.

 

 

I use 1080p for most games, I just downsample from 1440p when a game doesn't support sampled AA (like Mass Effect).

I tested 1440p in DAO just to see if my framerate would change, and ofc, my framerate stayed the same as when I was at 800x600. That was just to test whether my video card was the bottleneck.

[Rennn]

I've knew someone who has hit 4GHz on stock cooling with a Phenom II X4 965 and using a good thermal paste like arctic silver 5, but I would suggest a better cooler(like a Hyper 212+ or evo,) before trying to hit that mark. Also the resolution you have is a killer on what ever processor gets pushed. If you are using Vista or 7, disable Aero, Aero Peek, transparent glass, show shadows under mouse pointer and windows to name a few features that you might not need.

 

I don't normally run at 1440p. That was a downsampled resolution. My monitor's native is 1080p, and that's what I normally use.

I just switched to 1440p downsampled to test if my video card was the bottleneck, which it's not, since my framerate didn't change at 1440p.

 

Thanks for the advice, right now I'm keeping my CPU at 3.5Ghz, until I either get a better cpu cooler or find out for sure what a safe overclock is.

[Phalanx108]

If you want to splash out a little to keep it up to pace, but not as far as to get a new CPU, then I would suggest the Hyper 212+. Great cooler with solid performance at all RPM's.

With a Hyper 212+ and a good thermal paste like Arctic MX-4 for example, I'd suggest about 3.9-4GHz on 1.33-1.35 V range.

 

If you want to push the limits a little more, 4+GHz at 1.4xx V range would be pretty obtainable, but while it may be stable don't expect it to last. The lifetime of the CPU will dive down after 1.4V, at least the Phenom x4.

 

With stock cooling... hm, probably stick with 3.5, but you could maybe go with up to 3.7GHz, on the 1.33-1.35 V range, which should suit fine. However, that boils more down to what your general ambient and case temperatures are. Naturally enough, you don't want to OC very far, if at all with stock cooling if your ambient temperature is about 30C.

 

Let me know how you go.

Edited August 31, 2013 by Phalanx108