Hi everyone having a bit of overclocking trouble with the FX-6100.
My previous motherboard was an ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 (4+1 VRM, 4-pin CPU, 760G Chipset). I was able to overclock the FX-6100 to 3.9 Ghz (6 cores). Disabling two cores making it a quad core allowed a mere 4.4 Ghz overclock. Disabling another 2 cores to make it a dual core allowed a budge to 4.5 Ghz. All this was done setting the voltage to 1.45.
Now, my new motherboard is a much better ASUS M5A97 PRO, with 6+2 VRM (Digi + VRM) with TPU and EPU (with heatsinks) and a 8-pin CPU power plug. It has the newer AMD 970 Chipset (supposedly for better overclocking AM3+ CPUs). It comes with the nice GUI for the BIOS with AI Suite II, so it has much better features available than my previous board, with some features such as:
CPU Load Line Calibration
CPU/NB Load Line Calibration
CPU Phase Control
CPU Power Duty Control
VRM Frequency Control (Fixed frequency or spread spectrum)
CPU Current Capability
CPU/NB Current Capability.
It has all the usual overclocking tools, but here's the odd thing, I get somehow WORSE overclocking. For all 6 cores a mere 4.0 Ghz is pushed. Disabling cores to make it a quad core only allows just over 4 GHz, with all cores except the default enabled to make it a dual core, it just pushes for 4.5 Ghz.
I have set for normal mode instead of power saving, all features above to extreme (for apparently better overclocking), and still it only reaches the above frequencies stable, no higher without errors from Prime95 or freezing. The new ASUS board I have features auto phase control, so apparently it will adjust voltages for the overclock, or you can manually set it.
With the default settings (so everything at standard) the most overclock I can get is 4 Ghz, but the strange thing is the max frequency I can get for only TWO cores is 3.5 Ghz... that is a 200 Mhz overclock.
Am I doing something wrong, are there any features that may be stopping an overclock? Anyone experienced overclocking with this board, because somewhere I read this board is great for the FX series, but bad for the Phenom series. But I have an FX.
Surely it can't be my memory, because my previous board was fine with it. Besides you can overclock the CPU using the multiplier on its own, you don't need to mess with memory timings and frequencies any more?
My details:
Corsair TX650W PSU.
HD 5830
1x HDD 500GB SATA
8 GB DDR3 RAM (4GBx2)
CPU never passes 40 degrees, idles at 12-16 (yes my house is very cold).
Sorry for the essay-like description
Thanks everyone for the support!