Cores vs. Frequency?

[InnocentSam]

I'll add that Phenom II X4 850 is not a real Phenom, is just an Athlon II X4 650 with 100MHz more. So due to the absence of the L3 cache you'll get lower performances at the same frequency...

Ah.

Well, I tried overclocking it, and it failed due to my motherboard. I destroyed my last one and needed a cheap replacement, so I bought a £30 Gigabyte M68MT-S2 rev 3. If I increment my frequency by 1, then it refuses to boot 9 times out of 10. I can only OC via multiplier, which is impossible for this one as it's not a black edition.

But hey, it's Christmas, right? New year, new processor

Thanks for the help guys! Happy holidays

[jaw2floor]

Hello, all. I recently upgraded from an AMD Phenom II x2 555, which I overclocked to 4.0gHz, to an AMD Phenom II x4 850, which is at 3.3gHz.
.....

You should've unlocked the cores on that 555. It's a quad core with 2 disabled cores.

But as you just said its Christmas soon, so get a i5!

[InnocentSam]

You should've unlocked the cores on that 555. It's a quad core with 2 disabled cores.

But as you just said its Christmas soon, so get a i5!

An i5 would mean getting a bigger wallet, as well as a new motherboard.

And I tried unlocking the cores. At best, I could get it to tri-core and even then it was a bit unstable.

Any road up, I got an FX 4100, which when OC'd to 4.4gHz easily manages Dark Cloud. Thanks for the replies though guys.




Incidentally, if anyone is a techy guy, can you solve my problem? Basically, despite a new processor, most games are very prone to stutter and/or hang. I've always chalked it down to the hard drive being faulty, but after replacing it and the processor and finding it to still had the same problem, I was wondering if it may be either because my motherboard (GA-M68MT-S2 rev 3.1) only goes up to 2000mHz on HyperTransport, making high-resource games stuttery, or perhaps my RAM, which is a generic 9-9-9-24 4GB DDR3 1333mHz stick (on it's own).
Thanks to anyone who can answer this as well ^_^ Hope everyone had a jolly Christmas, and has a safe new year.

[refraction]

Ram or an unstable overclock are usually the causes of hangs and crashes. There are 2 tests you can do.

First is run Prime95 for a few hours, make sure your pc doesnt hang or get too hot, this will test your overclock stability. OCCT is another program you can try which seems to be popular these days.

Secondly id download Memtest x86 and run that for a few hours on your system, this will thoroughly test your RAM for errors. As it is Generic RAM, it's highly possible.

[||dav1de||]

FX sometimes instead of showing instability due to OC will show a decrease in performances, so you should:
a) compare the performances with some benchmark in respect to default situation (disabling turbo)
b) otherwise you should try increasing the voltage.

As refraction said, a reason could be overheating: when the cores reach 70° the frequency is automatically lowered, giving, obviously lower performances.

Unfortunately it's late...but you buyed the worst FX processor: the 6100 generally costs a few euros more (often 10 or even less), and at same frequency is better than the 4100 if you use 3 or more cores due to the shared resources, so even with games (that generally use no more than 4 threads) it's better; FX-Piledriver are much better than FX-Bulldozer, so a very good choice would be the 6300, while a better choice than your would be the 4300.

[InnocentSam]

Ram or an unstable overclock are usually the causes of hangs and crashes. There are 2 tests you can do.

First is run Prime95 for a few hours, make sure your pc doesnt hang or get too hot, this will test your overclock stability. OCCT is another program you can try which seems to be popular these days.

Secondly id download Memtest x86 and run that for a few hours on your system, this will thoroughly test your RAM for errors. As it is Generic RAM, it's highly possible.

I've already run Prime95 to test stability; it's fine. I'll try memtest.

As refraction said, a reason could be overheating: when the cores reach 70° the frequency is automatically lowered, giving, obviously lower performances.

I have a BIOS alarm set for when the processor goes over 60 degrees and even during a high-end game, it doesn't get past 55 at the very maximum. (software temp readers are inaccurate with this processor)

I'll try memtest, then do what dav1de said and run some comparison tests and/or raise voltage. Will report back with results. Cheers guys.

[||dav1de||]

I use coretemp to monitor my FX-6100, it seems inaccurate when you're in idle because it reads temperature lower than the room temperature (often it reads temperature like 5°C while in my room there are around 18-19°C averagely). The problems are not due to the software: the sensor in the CPU are designed to read values higher than 40°C, so in idle they are highly inaccurate, but it's not a problem because you know that the temp are low, at full load instead they work well.

Oh and in my case at high temperature the value read by the mobo is lower than that read in the cores, so it's still possible that you reach 70° without noting it...

[InnocentSam]

Oh and in my case at high temperature the value read by the mobo is lower than that read in the cores, so it's still possible that you reach 70° without noting it...

Hence it being set to 60 degrees.

Well, I ran memtest, and it worked fine. No errors whatsoever.

I did was dav1de said and ran some comparison checks, and I didn't need to go very far; at stock voltage + frequency, I played 3 whole games on Natural Selection 2 (the game I experience high jitter on) without any stutter at all.

So it must be that I didn't raise the voltage high enough, or the overclock was too high.

Cheers for the help guys! Happy new year

EDIT: Yes, raised the voltage and was much, MUCH more stable. Slightly hotter, but s'all good.