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Thread: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

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    AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    Hey everyone finally bought Athlon II x3 440. It has unlocked to a Phenom ii x4 b40.

    But can someone either point to a guide or explain about overclocking. I am new to overclocking. I may want to overclock a triple core. Because unlocking to the Phenom II x4 doesn't seem stable at the moment. VID is set to 1.4v. But in HWMonitor its wattage is running at 137. Is this safe?

    I don't really want to up the voltage too much. Its temperature is at 34 degrees Idle. Whilst my triple core idle at 17 degrees.

    So can someone explain the artifacts, about voltages and FSB for AMD.

    My motherboard is running at 34 degrees.

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    1.45 will be alright on air cooling for regular use.

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    If is isn't stable it could well be that your extra unlocked core was disabled because it is bad. It might also just be that the core leaks power, in which case you will get a better overclock without it.

    If you can selectively disable that core and keep the chip unlocked, you get to keep the 6MB of L3 cache which I think for most people is more use than a 4th core.

    Are you using the heatsink & fan that the CPU came with?

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    I will give that a go. Yeah I think the cores faulty.

    No I am using the new Zalman CNPS 5X, which is amazing. Keeps it at 17 degrees idle, never goes past 25 (when using prime95). Unlocking that extra core puts my CPU to 39 degrees idle.

    I will try bumping up the voltage first. I am using a Gigabyte motherboard, with the BIOS overclocking but it doesn't seem to like being overclocked. Can't get the FSB past 215.

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    OK I unlocked the CPU and disabled the extra core, so it shows as a Phenom ii x4 b40... with only three cores. No L3 cache.

    But however I set the FSB to 215 and according to CPUID CPUZ my CPU is running at 3555MHZ and sometimes bumps up to 3795mhz... running at x15. this doesn't sound all right. Doesn't add up.

    Prime95 hasn't found any problems yet, CPU running at 50 degrees using prime95

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    Managed to bump up the voltage to 1.45 and get the FSB to 225 and it is stable at the moment. I thought Athlon IIs can bump up to around 3.6ghz though...?

    Its underline 3.4ghz at the moment. And is very cold, never goes past 35 degrees using Prime95

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    Be careful when overclocking and looking for safe temps. AMD boards/CPUs don't read the "CPU TEMP" correctly. The reading you want to take notice of is TMPIN0 or TMPIN1.
    35C seems pretty low for an overclocked, voltage bumped Athlon. I may be wrong and you may have a cool chip though ! 17 also seems very low for idle as idle will be at least 2C above your room temperature.

    In regards to overclocking, some Athlons can hit 3.6GHz but they (the quads at least) very rarely go past that IIRC. To squeeze every last MHz out of the CPU, you may need to mess with your CPU_NB and memory frequency, multiplier etc. Some chips/setups will do a high base clock (FSB) allowing you to use a lower multiplier but still get faster overall frequency.

    Hope this helps !

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    The temps are from the BIOS too. My old Athlon 64 x2 5600+ was around 55 degrees. I have since changed the heatsink and fan to a Zalman CNPS 5X, which had good testing results at cooling. And as my Athlon II isn't high end the HSF is really good.

    I upped the voltage to 1.47, and the northbridge voltage I increased by 0.50v. Can't get it past 3.4ghz, although Prime95 hasn't found any problems I have found problems within ARMA II. Graphical problems and also very slow. 3.4Ghz is slower than 3.0Ghz? But I have increased the voltage
    Last edited by mikeo01; 23-12-2011 at 09:17 PM.

  9. #9
    Bagnaj97
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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    I've got a couple of guides bookmarked at home, I'll try and remember to link them when I escape from work. I'll also post my settings (voltages/multipliers/clocks etc). I've been pretty lucky to get my X3 to 4.0, but the multiplier on yours is 15 rather than my 16 so if by luck my exact settings work for you then you'll be at 3.75 GHz.

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    Quote Originally Posted by mikeo01 View Post
    And as my Athlon II isn't high end the HSF is really good.
    Once unlocked it *is* high end. You have a Phenom II x3 there, and with an overclock+overvolt it will want 125W easy.

    Hence on my wife's PC I only clock her PC to 2.8GHz. I have had 3.0GHz rock solid, but don't want more heat in a small case.

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    I tried looking up your motherboard but couldn't find it.
    Are you *sure* that it is rated at 125W or 140W cpu? If it is rated at 95W as most microATX boards are, then that may be the problem.

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    Direct link to Gigabyte site of my motherboard http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/prod...px?pid=3726#ov

    It is revision 3, the VRM on it are better built than the last version so overclocking should come easier if I tried without overheating them.

    My Athlon II x3 is rated at 95W but my motherboard can support up to 125W (140W is a no go). Its maximum CPU support is the Phenom x6 125W version as listed apparently.

    Yeah that is why I don't know where I am going wrong, if its rated 95W originally an overclock should work shouldn't it? I have an extra 30W to play around with. That is why I went for a 95W in the first place, to give me some headroom as I was on a budget. I knew if I went with a Phenom it would want 125W whilst an Athlon handles 95W nicely, meaning I could overclock it. But I definitely don't want to go over 1.45 V, its maximum rated voltage as I am really experienced enough to play around with higher voltages.

    And thanks Bagnaj97 that would be really helpful fingers crossed the settings would work or be similar, because anything above 3.5Ghz would be great.

  13. #13
    Bagnaj97
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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    Quote Originally Posted by mikeo01 View Post
    And thanks Bagnaj97 that would be really helpful fingers crossed the settings would work or be similar, because anything above 3.5Ghz would be great.
    Right, my settings as promised, even if a bit late:

    Bus speed/base clk/ref clk: 250

    CPU Multiplier: 16 (Generally use the max you have here) (16x250 = 4GHz)

    HT Multi: 8 (You don't want the HT speed over 2GHz as there's little to no performance gain, but a chance at introducing instability. For me this works out at 8x250=2GHz exactly)

    CPU-NB Multiplier: 10 (This controls the speed of the bus between the cpu and the integrated memory controller and has a noticeable impact on CPU performance. My PC was unstable at 11x250 but 10 is fine)

    RAM multiplier: 3.33 (this puts my RAM at 832.5MHz, so 1665MHz DDR; about right for DDR3 1600)

    CPU Voltage: 1.475v


    This spreadsheet
    is a very useful quick lookup table for CPU, CPU-NB and RAM speeds/multipliers. This guide covers overclocking AMD cpus fairly well. Hope this helps, just bare in mind that the terminology could well be different in your bios.

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    I don't have the option for the HT multiplier and the CPU-NB multiplier. Instead I have a setting which says K8 > NB HT speed and K8 > NB HT bandwidth.

    The options are

    K8 > NB HT Speed auto .... x5
    K8 > NB HT Bandwidth 8 8 or 16 16. I assume this is x16 and x8 bandwidth but do I change this?

    If I change the CPU freq to 250, the CPU multiplier to x15 (my maximum), 1.475v and RAM it doesn't allow me to POST. It doesn't like anything past 225

    Lowering the K8 > NB HT Speed does not allowing POST either.

    Could this be a limitation of my motherboard? I can only get this thing to overclock to 3.3 ghz, but then there is headroom for overclocking.

    Thanks for all your help!

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    Unless you have a Black Edition chip you want to leave the multiplier on auto, it will already be at maximum.
    HT Bandwidth sounds like it is really just "HT Width", which can be 8 or 16 bits. Never heard of a good reason for 8 bit wide, 16 bits is normal.

    I suspect you need to find a RAM timings setting somewhere.
    If you are configured for ddr3 1333 memory, then with an 25% overclock you are now up to 1666 and with most RAM that sort of overclock is IME pretty doomed. If you can manually select 1066MHz speeds, then a 25% overclock on that gets you back up to 1333 where your ram want to be

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    Re: AMD Athlon II x3 440 Overclocking??

    Thanks DanceswithUnix

    It does work, I set my RAM back to 1066 mhz, and I am able to overclock the FSB to 235, HOWEVER the BIOS still doesn't like anything over 225...

    I tried using the Windows program EasyTune6 by Gigabyte (My motherboard which provided it) and it automatically increases the RAM speed as you increase the FSB, so why would the BIOS not like anything over 225? I did check within the BIOS and the RAM speed is set higher when I set the FSB higher, but upon reboot it says 'Please re-setting CPU frequency in the BIOS'.

    It does work because I was getting 3.5 ghz within the Windows using EasyTune6.

    CPU voltage is at 1.45 at the moment.

    Thanks for everyone's help and replies

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