Overclocking the FSB

I'm chuffed because I figured out how to alter the FSB on my aging 9750. Upfront I have to say that it crashed after just a small amount of time and a small increase, but I'd love to know if anyone has better luck than me. Increasing the FSB alters the memory, PCI express, and CPU speeds, so any number of my components could be sub-par for that to happen.

Article on what I did here: http://my.grumpykitty.com/2011/08/sager-fsb/

Please, be cautious.

Barely anything - just 2Mhz on the FSB (26Mhz on the CPU). I need to do more testing - running Frozen Synapse showed the CPU climbing up to 65 degrees C, but I think that's just Frozen Synapse, and turning the fan on max cooled it down. For some reason that game runs the CPU hot.

But it seemed otherwise stable. If I can figure out how to change the CPU multiplier I can try dropping that and increasing the FSB more.

It's the FX-60

I'll have to give RMclock a shot as referenced here:
http://www.notebookforums.com/t/148471/9750-overclocking-the-fx-60

I didn't try that one.

Sweet I can change the CPU mul in RMClock, although it won't do the FSB.


I pushed it as high as +15Mhz on the FSB, which at 13.0* is a 195Mhz boost. Didn't take long (a couple of minutes, launching some 3D programs) before the CPU hit 70 deg C, and I shut it back down.

But it ran stable, and I'm considering leaving it at 12.5* at 215Mhz FSB.

lol - I can't justify a new one until this one stops working

I'll do some benchmarking this weekend and post here.

Stable without fans forced on max running AMD NBench 3, temperatures stay reasonable. I'll probably leave it here.

Rightmark CPU Clock Utility log while benchmarking:
00:05:01.984, CPU: 0, Clock: 2687.47, Throttle: 100.00, FID: 12.5, VID: 1.350, CPULoad: 89.47, OSLoad: 88.89, CoreTemp: 55.0
00:05:01.984, CPU: 1, Clock: 2687.38, Throttle: 100.00, FID: 12.5, VID: 1.350, CPULoad: 48.10, OSLoad: 46.03, CoreTemp: 58.0

Lowered Vcore to 1.35V at 12.5x and 1.2V at 6x. (1.1V is too low at 6x, caused hang)

Small but measurable improvement with Blender, rendering a model of a Dodge Viper RT-10:

(pod = performance on demand profile, others are maxed)
FSB*MUL = MHZ = Mem Ausmarks, Cpu Ausmarks => Blender render 1 frame
215*12 pod = 2430Mhz = 630,8, 1188.1 => 3.67
215*12.5 = 2687Mhz = 635, 1230, 3.48 => 3.36 5.5% improvement
215*13 = 2795Mhz = 661, 1264.5 (13 = heat issue, 12.5 = none such)
215*13.5 = 2902.5Mhz = 664,1307 => 3.40 (temperatures graze 70)
215*14 = bluescreen

220*12 pod = 2640Mhz = 647.2,1221.6 => 3.63
220*12.5 pod = 2750 = 650.8,1250.5 => 3.53
220*13 pod = 2860 = 678.5,1301.3 => 3.4 (temps rose quickly)

nBench3:
Baseline 200*13 2600Mhz: Integer-1 3348 Integer-2 3263
Overclocked 215*12.5 2687Mhz: Integer-1 3430 Integer-2 3263 (no change)


Summary, I'd just say that ramping up the FSB does demonstrate minor performance improvements even if the CPU multiplier must be dropped to compensate.