Overclocking Phenom CPUS and A6/A8 CPUS

[wolly]

Hi,Can You overclock these cpus ar the highest frequency without the BIOS?If not Can You use AMD Overdrive?

https://www.citgrup.ro/calculatoare/second-hand?a-procesor-132=amd-phenom-ii-x3-7597,amd-572,amd-phenom-ii-x4-7538,amd-quad-core-7515&sort=price

The PC with i5 was not. received by the Courier and so i got this site with diferent pcs.Is this a good site for AMD cpus?Can I use them on 3d rendering/animation?

 

[P4-630]

Phenom CPUS and A6/A8 CPUS​

Can I use them on 3d rendering/animation?

Rendering/animation with AMD CPU's from 2007~2011 takes ages to finish.

For rendering/animation get intel 12/13/14th gen i7 / i9 or wait for 15th gen intel or go AM4 5900x/5950x or AM5 7900x/7950x.

 

[natr0n]

site says im blocked

phenom only good for old school gaming at this point

 

[DaemonForce]

Overclocking the Phenom II is not a big deal but if you're on some chipset like the 790GX or similar 700 series with IGP, I would avoid using AMD-Overdrive or any auto-overclocking features.
My flagship build from that era featured pretty much all of that:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 (3.2GHz) ↗3.5GHz
2x2GB Mushkin DDR3-1600 ↗2.08v (Yes I know that's very high, would not stabilize at any other setting, even at default clocks)
128MB HD3300
Probably a 700W OCZ PSU
30GB OCZ Vertex II sata

Price isn't an issue if you don't have these chips. The real issue is the remainig lineup of boards and their feature sets. I cannot for the life of me find a stable AM3 board and they don't exist in compact form. Worse, I had no choice but to water cool the CPU and chipset just to have a miserable desktop experience with most games and CAD software. If you're looking for a decent web jobber, the Phenom II is great. It's also a good workstation chip for doing AutoCAD, Blender and most Unity/Unreal stuff but it runs out of steam really quickly as a multitasker, especially when paired with weak memory. Crucial and G.Skill are pretty much the only decent options for it and the better SKUs started to become real scarce just a few years ago. 3D batch jobs aren't that bad but not great either.

Do yourself a favor and strategize the purpose of that machine for the most ideal situation. FX is getting super scarce, tripled in price only a month after I finally went FX-8370 and then the price became completely unglued from reality, making it a non-starter. Ryzen is super cheap and the memory is plentiful and GOOD. My Ryzen 3600 box goes BRRRR.

This is my last Realbench on Phenom II:

And here's my current minute compare:

Soooo....Yeah. :/

 

[wolly]

site says im blocked

phenom only good for old school gaming at this point

 

[Toothless]

Yeah no, none of those are worth it for any kind of rendering.

 

[Keullo-e]

Agree also. Phenom II is kinda good for its age but it's so outdated that don't even bother using that for anything intensive today.

 

[wolly]

@DaemonForce so you can overclock the amd cpus with amd overdrive?will that increase the performance of the cpu?

 

[DaemonForce]

It does but at a pretty stupid price. The only times I ever got the AMD Overdrive features to work was when I didn't want it active for extended periods. The one touch overclock doesn't seem to have an undo option without a reboot. The above example is a manually tuned overclock by setting the multiplier. It was a more ideal situation by the time I was doing that.

 

[delshay]

I'm a Phenom user.

I do use it for modern browsing (posting with it here) & run modern gaming with workaround (if available) due-to missing SSE4.1/2. But unlike the title of this thread, my CPU is underclocked 2.9GHz for efficiency but is highly tuned for ultra low latency Can play most games with very high frame rate 1080p max settings & internet is very snappy.

Windows 7/10 ..Note: Win 10 is very sluggish when compared to win 7, but games run much faster on windows 10.
.

 

[natr0n]

I'm a Phenom user.

I do use it for modern browsing (posting with it here) & run modern gaming with workaround (if available) due-to missing SSE4.1/2. But unlike the title of this thread, my CPU is underclocked 2.9GHz for efficiency but is highly tuned for ultra low latency Can play most games with very high frame rate 1080p max settings & internet is very snappy.

Windows 7/10 ..Note: Win 10 is very sluggish when compared to win 7, but games run much faster on windows 10.
.

Every play with 8.1/embedded ? it was much faster for me with a phenomx4/x6

 

[delshay]

Every play with 8.1/embedded ? it was much faster for me with a phenomx4/x6

I have the original win 8.0, but i'v never installed it since I bought it many years ago. I just don't know which video driver will work best with win 8/8.1. ..Should I install win 7 or win 10 video driver? on win 8/8.1

R9 nano & Vega 56 nano

 

[QuietBob]

The Phenom II X4 does surprisingly well today for a 15 year old architecture. When overclocked and coupled with DDR3 and an SSD, it can be used for many everyday tasks. Pair it with a suitable graphics card, and you can play most competitive games, not to mention numerous older ones.

But the lack of instructions newer than SSE3 will often pose a problem for contemporary software. As such, I wouldn't recommend using the Phenom for serious productivity tasks. Here's a comparison of an X4 oc'd to 4.2 and an entry-level four year old 4c/8t CPU:

The Image Editing test uses GIMP and focuses on single-threaded and memory performance. It utilizes up to SSE4.2 extensions.
It is also representative of office apps, lighter/older games and typical home use (web browsing, social media, digital media consumption, etc.).

The Encoding test uses Handbrake H.264 and focuses on multi-threaded and cache performance. It utilizes up to AVX extensions.
It reflects the needs of content creation/professional software used for video editing, rendering, and also those of modern AAA games.


@DaemonForce
Could you run the current version of RealBench? The results from 2.56 don't seem comparable with yours.

@wolly
What software are you going to use?
EDIT:
Nevermind, I've just noticed your five other threads on the same subject. You've kept asking this question since you registered here, and yet failed to follow the advice. Rather than posting listings of random used PCs, you should ask someone with PC expertise to build one for you within your budget. Good luck!

 

[natr0n]

I have the original win 8.0, but i'v never installed it since I bought it many years ago. I just don't know which video driver will work best with win 8/8.1. ..Should I install win 7 or win 10 video driver? on win 8/8.1

R9 nano & Vega 56 nano

win 7 works on 8

https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/radeon-rx-vega-series/radeon-rx-vega-series/radeon-rx-vega-56

also the enterprise driver can work too

 

[DaemonForce]

The Encoding test uses Handbrake H.264 and focuses on multi-threaded and cache performance. It utilizes up to AVX extensions.

Oddly enough this was the one thing that made me start looking into picking up the FX because there was one day where I got up and an update threw this entire system out of support for my VR world stuff because Oculus Audio Spatialization took a huge dump on everyone by trying to force AVX instruction. The screeching wa unreal and that lasted maybe half a day before it got rolled back but JFC that's one hell of a way to draw the line in the sand.

@DaemonForce
Could you run the current version of RealBench? The results from 2.56 don't seem comparable.

I don't have any updated version available and the one I have saved is the one I use internally to track results.
There was a time that I updated the copy on 2019 and this was the outcome:

Also I do compare them side by side anyway. Note the memory. A 32GB kit on Ryzen is perfectly okay for all things. Any 16GB kit is perfectly okay on FX and Phenom II/Athlon II as well. It's when you start maxing out the DIMM slots that real I/O lag starts. There's no way I could meet this again. Not on 64GB.

 

[wolly]

I bought a PC with A8 6500 CPU can you overclock it?

 

[P4-630]

I bought a PC with A8 6500 CPU can you overclock it?

It has a locked multiplier and also it's slow for any rendering...

 

[Onasi]

If you really, really insist on using such a system for rendering, the best play is to shop around for a recent-ish NV budget card at a low price, like a 3060 or even a 2060, throwing that in there and using THAT for rendering. Doing anything on the CPU this old would be torture.

 

[breakfromyou]

I bought a PC with A8 6500 CPU can you overclock it?

Technically you can overclock the A8-6500, but to do so, you would need a good FM2 motherboard with the A85 or A88X chipset, and you won't get very far with the CPU even then.

I seriously doubt that AMD Overdrive would allow much to go on if you have a cheap motherboard out of a prebuilt.

Though if you wanted to get some experience with overclocking, socket AM2+/AM3 CPUs and motherboards could be very cheap and fun to play with and learn.

 

[DaemonForce]

Certain generations are better at different clocks and the methodology to get there varies with each generation/socket.
Phenom II introduced me to 64-bit computing but also the first real steps in memory overclocking.
It was mostly me just fighting to get 1600MT memory to work as stated instead of the board limited settings but I got there and eventually moved to a board that likes 1866-2133.
I didn't get good at memory overclocking until Ryzen and the general opinion is that it's still terrible. Say what you want but 64GB of 3200 ↗3600 is good enough for me.

There were other things to learn about too.
Some boards like every Gigglebyte ever seems to have issues locking BCLK. I have no idea why. Just one more thing to watch out for if you have one.
I learned that some boards will enable a CPU to behave slightly better at certain clocks than other boards. So the VRM loadout and microcode also matter a lot.
Voltage load level matters a lot but it matters more to have appropriate level of callibration or you're going to be frustrated with unstable settings.
I knew how to bitflip multiplier OC settings from Super 7 but that era has come and gone.
There's also a form of multiplier unlock on some antiques that goes way over my head and it's older than most chips we discuss here.

Phenom II and FX 4000-8000 series are definitely a really good starting point for learning to overclock. Just don't get stuck chasing unstable settings from a junk Asus board like I did. Sometimes it pays to learn the hard way.