OC Questions on 1055T

[Blueprint]

I am using a 1055T on an ASUS M4A89GTDPRO. The only adjustments that I made were to adjust the CPU Freq up to 255, the CPU voltage to 1.35, and the CPU/NB Voltage to 1.25. HT Voltage is still stock @ 1.2 as is the SB Voltage @ 1.1.

Question 1: Under full load encoding video, CPUID tells me that the processor is using 141.6 watts of power. I believe the motherboard is 140 watt support, so should I be concerned about bringing that wattage down? (CPU temperature hasn't exceed 41C and the highest Core temp is 34C.)

Question 2: The NB Frequency is now 2322 MHz which made the DRAM Frequency 688 (1376). The timings are still 9-9-9-24-1T. Bios will let me step up the frequency higher, but is it worth it do so? Or am I better off to adjust to lower timings? (The DRAM voltage is currently 1.60 and the RAM is G.Skill CL7 ram with 7-8-7-24 timings).

Question 3: Based on the current config, should I look at changing the SB Voltage or HT voltage?

Thanks!

 

[lopri]

1. HWMonitor undoubtedly follows some kind of formula, but I have no clue what it is. Mine usually says 136.80W at any frequency, any voltage. On a few occasion I saw it goes down with higher multiplier. (?) I wouldn't worry too much.

2. Yes, it is definitely worth raising NB frequency. And at your current NB frequency 1.25V is not necessary. Most Thubans do 2.4 GHz at its default voltage. (1.125V, I think) @1.25V is for 2.8GHz+.

Assuming your running 3.57 GHz (14x255), set both the NB and HT multiplier to x10. You're getting nicely synced 2.55 GHz NB and 2.55 GHz HT link frequencies. If you're concerned about 2.55 GHz HT link frequency being too high, lower it to x8 or x9 but keep the NB at x10.

It looks like you're using 3:8 divider for your memory (255:688), and the next step up would be 3:10, which will net you DDR3-1700. Performance-wise I think it will be a wash - tighter timings DDR3-1376 v. higher timings DDR3-1800. Either way I'd raise the NB frequency.

Avoid raising HT voltage and SB voltage unless you're experiencing issues. They rarely do anything even at 300 HTT.

 

[Blueprint]

I changed the bus speed down to 250 for a little more stability since it wasn't making it through stress tests (but I think that's due to a voltage problem that I get to later). Both the HT Link and the NB are now at 2257 MHz and the CPU is at 3500 MHz. I also adjusted the DRAM ratio to 3:10 giving me DRAM Freq of 1666 (833). I changed the timings to 7-8-7-24-2T and upped the voltage from 1.6 to 1.65. Everything appears to be stable at these settings.

Regarding further tweaking: my motherboard doesn't appear to have anywhere to adjust the multipliers on the NB or HT. I can adjust the voltage, or the frequency on both parts. CPU NB frequency (currently set to auto) can be adjusted from 800 MHz - 2,000 MHz in steps of 200 MHz, while HT Link Speed (also set to auto) can be adjusted from 200 MHz - 2,000 MHz in steps of 200 MHz. Voltages are set to auto as well.

I later found out that my initial manual inputting of voltages in the ASUS desktop utility didn't save at each start up (where I had upped the CPU voltage to 1.35) All of the adjustments that I mentioned at the beginning of this post were put directly into bios and saved. Unfortunately, when I tried to manually input the CPU voltage to 1.35 in bios, windows wouldn't boot all the way. I put it back to Auto which adjusted the voltage down to like 1.296 and everything is fine, but that was the reason I had to back off from the higher bus down to 250. CPU-Z reads the core voltage between 1.26 - 1.29 for the most part, but sometimes jumps to 1.44 for a few seconds then back down. (All of this under pretty full load with video encoding- all 6 cores average @ ~90&#37

I guess the questions are: what will be the effect changing the frequencies in bios since I don't have multiplier control? I assume that whatever number is chosen will be affected by the higher bus speed and the manual settings are the frequency with bus @ 200. Is that the case? Either way, where should I start with adjusting frequency and/or voltage? Also, what are your thoughts on not being able to up the CPU voltage moderately in bios?

 

[lopri]

I don't know what your board's BIOS look like, but the selectable NB frequency (800~2000 MHz) sounds very much like multipliers (x4~x10). Maybe 1055T's NB multipliers and HT multipliers are locked. (?)

It looks like when set to "Auto", your board lowers NB/HT link multipliers automatically. Usually this happens around 225 HTT or 240 HTT. If you manually set 2000 MHz (x10), then at 250 HTT you will get 2500 MHz for both HT Link and NB. (You may need slight voltage increase for vNB @2500 MHz)

It's strange that you can't adjust vCore, though. I'd first make sure to disable any power-related options from BIOS. C1E, C'nQ, and Turbo. Oh and I realized that you've got a 890GX board - turn of IGP as well. Anything that reads "Speed Spectrum" can be disabled as well. Do not enable "Unleash Mode" or "ACC", and disable any vendor-specific power-saving mode if there is any.

After that, to see how far your board can go, set NB/HT Link to 1600 MHz (x8 multiplier) and set CPU multiplier to x12 (2.4 GHz) or even x10 (2.0 GHz). And adjust memory ratio to something lower than 3:8. (I don't know what divisors are available on DDR3 boards) Gradually raise HTT by 10~20 intervals. I'd think the 890GX should do at least 280~300 HTT.