# AMD HT Link speed a big deal?



## hat (Mar 9, 2010)

How many of you think having a high HT link speed helps out with overall system performance? I set mine to 2250 up from 2000 and it seems a lot snapper—I don't know if it's placebo effect or what, but I'm liking it...


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## Yukikaze (Mar 9, 2010)

hat said:


> How many of you think having a high HT link speed helps out with overall system performance? I set mine to 2250 up from 2000 and it seems a lot snapper—I don't know if it's placebo effect or what, but I'm liking it...



There was a thread here where members tested system performance at different HT Link settings. IIRC, the conclusion was that there is very little, if any, difference.


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## MohawkAngel (Mar 9, 2010)

There is a difference for my motherboard because some motherboards st the HT default to 2000 when cpus are in fact 2400. I did the change to mine but you have to the the CPU/NB multiplicator you need to multiply by your FSB cpu number. Then it gives you the HT link you need in bios. 

Exemple: Mine was set at 200mhz FSB for my cpu it was ok. So based upon AMD website my phenom 550BE was suppsoed to roll at 2400mhz HT.  So i took the FSB of 200 leaved it stock,  put the CPU/NB multiplier to 12X then the HT link to 2400mhz all in my bios. With those settings my CPU was at his full stock potential without even overclocking. 
Something special happened with my onboard video radeon4200. Stock it is set at 500mhz i tried at 1000 with the 2000mhz ht link and ti wont work BUT at 2400mhz ht link i was able to push the onboard radeon4200 passed over the 1000 for a 1100mhz igp.

For your athlon and my phenom HT are supposed to be 4000mhz but we woul have to do a lot of settings to get it.


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## Necrofire (Mar 9, 2010)

I don't think you'd find any noticeable speedup raising that far. I wouldn't anyway.

As a test, I took the HT multi from 10x down to 6x. It went from 2050MHz to 1230MHz, and I did a few tests.
I didn't lose any fps in furmark (gpu intensive anyway) and my cpu benchmarks didn't go down as far as I thought they were going to. Ram benchmarks (in everest) were almost identical.

So, my answer would be yes and no. I guess if you're trying to overclock an IGP, then maybe HT does matter.

Also, hey mohawkangel, have you unlocked your 550BE? You have the same mobo and cpu I do, and I'm rocking a quad-core right now


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## MohawkAngel (Mar 9, 2010)

Necrofire said:


> I don't think you'd find any noticeable speedup raising that far. I wouldn't anyway.
> 
> As a test, I took the HT multi from 10x down to 6x. It went from 2050MHz to 1230MHz, and I did a few tests.
> I didn't lose any fps in furmark (gpu intensive anyway) and my cpu benchmarks didn't go down as far as I thought they were going to. Ram benchmarks (in everest) were almost identical.
> ...




Wasnt able to unlock but tell me your exact settings ill give it a try. If i have the same as yours and it wont unlock then ill know i cant unlock. For now computer just shut down when i try to unlock them.


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## Corduroy_Jr (Mar 9, 2010)

mowhawk, why u trying to overclock with no dictated video card lmo


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## erocker (Mar 9, 2010)

hat said:


> How many of you think having a high HT link speed helps out with overall system performance? I set mine to 2250 up from 2000 and it seems a lot snapper—I don't know if it's placebo effect or what, but I'm liking it...



When you upped it to 2250 you probablly upped the Northbridge to 2250 which is what makes the difference. There are no real performace gains to be had over 2000mhz.


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## cadaveca (Mar 9, 2010)

From 200 to 335mhz HTT I got very small gains...less than 3% in benches. Real-world, there'd be no difference.


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## MohawkAngel (Mar 10, 2010)

Corduroy_Jr said:


> mowhawk, why u trying to overclock with no dictated video card lmo



People tend to think that you need videocard always highest power to get a fast system but thats not always true  
I know how to overclock stuff and I do it right so I overclocked also the onboard videocard.


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## Steevo (Mar 10, 2010)

I have issues with HT over 2700 Mhz, keeping it lower made stability go up, and made my overclock stable.


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## Delta6326 (Mar 10, 2010)

I voted  for I can haz cheezburger? as im new to AMD and want to start a build.

Hey Mohhawk im looking to get that same MB you got how is it? and what type of fps you get


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## sweeper (Mar 10, 2010)

I just messed around with my system. Ran the FSB up to 250 with no changes to memory or HT. 3.25GHz . Ran a few tests. I went back into the BIOS left the FSB @ 250, Set the HT @ 1800 and memory @ 266. Booted @ 3.25GHz, 333MHz(667 Effective), 2000HT. Ran the same tests and the difference was very minimal. In real world application you won't notice a difference IMO.


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## MohawkAngel (Mar 10, 2010)

Delta6326 said:


> I voted  for I can haz cheezburger? as im new to AMD and want to start a build.
> 
> Hey Mohhawk im looking to get that same MB you got how is it? and what type of fps you get



Really fine overclocker even at AUTO everything except i adjusted the ht link and fsb manually to 2400mhz for my phenom.  Man I cant really tell about the fps i did nottested it but i never care about it i test it online with multiplayer war games when you have 64 players in same map with flying jets, vehicules and lot of explosions. That the real way to test it. Analogy with cars... You could have a good engine on the dyno and good car handling on papers but the real results youll see it on track and road. 

I double the mhz of the igp and got 3.5 gigs on my phenom. The overall result kick asses.

Look my thread on it with some of my testing http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=117034


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## Necrofire (Mar 11, 2010)

To unlock the cores, there's a setting under CPU. Just set Unleashing mode on, and change it to all 4 cores.


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## MohawkAngel (Mar 11, 2010)

It's not that simple. Some of them have to be downclocked , some not, some  release more HT link than other. All depends of serial number.  Ive read somewhere that on 550BE the 3rd letter indicate if you can unlock or not. H indicate you cant and Z you can.


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## runnin17 (Mar 11, 2010)

Had some problems with my HT speed at 2400MHz, so I put it at auto. I think the real problem was I had my ram timings too tight. So I put my multi at 19x and FSB at 200MHz (stock FSB). So right now I am running OCCT (about 20 minutes in and it is perfectly stable). I think my problem was I was trying to mess with too many things. So I want to make sure the CPU is stable at 3.8GHz and then I will mess with the other stuff. I also think my mobo has a bit of vdrop too. CPU-Z mainly reads 1.440v and OCCT reads 1.42-1.44v most of the time when my BIOS voltage is set at 1.46v. Oh well, I am happy so far since I spend a total of $200 on this whole setup and I have a quad core running faster than my old Q6600!

My rig setup right now:
CPU: Phenom II x2 555BE (unlocked and OC'd to 3.8GHz @1.46v)
CPU batch: CACAC AC 1004 EPMW
Mobo: Asus M4A785-M
Heatsink: Thermalright Ultima 90 (120mm fan)
PSU: OCZ 600w modxstream
RAM: G. Skill Pi DDR2-1066 (@ 800 5-5-5-15 for stability testing right now)
GPU: Sapphrie 4850 (stock)


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## MohawkAngel (Mar 11, 2010)

runnin17 said:


> Had some problems with my HT speed at 2400MHz, so I put it at auto. I think the real problem was I had my ram timings too tight. So I put my multi at 19x and FSB at 200MHz (stock FSB). So right now I am running OCCT (about 20 minutes in and it is perfectly stable). I think my problem was I was trying to mess with too many things. So I want to make sure the CPU is stable at 3.8GHz and then I will mess with the other stuff. I also think my mobo has a bit of vdrop too. CPU-Z mainly reads 1.440v and OCCT reads 1.42-1.44v most of the time when my BIOS voltage is set at 1.46v. Oh well, I am happy so far since I spend a total of $200 on this whole setup and I have a quad core running faster than my old Q6600!
> 
> My rig setup right now:
> CPU: Phenom II x2 555BE (unlocked and OC'd to 3.8GHz @1.46v)
> ...




Sets the CPU/NB at 12X  and the HT LINK at 2400  in the bios directly. everything else at auto. Then youll see if it work then after you can begin to overclock the cpu itself. Search for my threads and youll see i posted one on my rig


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## runnin17 (Mar 11, 2010)

MohawkAngel said:


> Sets the CPU/NB at 12X  and the HT LINK at 2400  in the bios directly. everything else at auto. Then youll see if it work then after you can begin to overclock the cpu itself. Search for my threads and youll see i posted one on my rig



Yeah, I'm gonna try that. I just wanted to make sure the CPU was stable at 3.8GHz and then I will start messing with other stuff.


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## MohawkAngel (Mar 11, 2010)

Wont be stable at 3.8 with ht at 2400. Put it at 3.6 and 2400 youll notice a difference. Also at that speed you could also upgrade the graphic clock to 1000mhz...youll see how lightining fast it is


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## erocker (Mar 11, 2010)

runnin17 said:


> Yeah, I'm gonna try that. I just wanted to make sure the CPU was stable at 3.8GHz and then I will start messing with other stuff.





MohawkAngel said:


> Wont be stable at 3.8 with ht at 2400. Put it at 3.6 and 2400 youll notice a difference. Also at that speed you could also upgrade the graphic clock to 1000mhz...youll see how lightining fast it is



Keep it at 3.8, drop the HTT down to 2000. HT is pretty much useless unless it is locked to the NorthBridge. With an unlocked CPU it is not. Keep HT at 2000, setting it higher will yield little to no difference in performance and only make things less stable. The key to overclocking/performance with AMD is CPU and North Bridge. runnin17 is using a graphics card which has nothing to do with HT, CPU, NB or any other overclockable system hardware.


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## runnin17 (Mar 12, 2010)

erocker said:


> Keep it at 3.8, drop the HTT down to 2000. HT is pretty much useless unless it is locked to the NorthBridge. With an unlocked CPU it is not. Keep HT at 2000, setting it higher will yield little to no difference in performance and only make things less stable. The key to overclocking/performance with AMD is CPU and North Bridge. runnin17 is using a graphics card which has nothing to do with HT, CPU, NB or any other overclockable system hardware.



Thanks for the info. I have it set at 2200MHz and put the HT voltage at 1.30. So far so good. Looks like my motherboard has some vdrop (set at 1.46v and in OCCT it normally shows up as 1.44v). That is encouraging b/c I plan on upgrading motherboards here soon. Maybe this thiing will be stable at 4.0GHz on 1.46v when I get a better motherboard 

I will be moving to watercooling, so I think my ultimate goal is to see if I can get the chip near the 4.5-4.8GHz range with all 4 cores unlocked. That might be wishful thinking at this point, but in the end I will be extremely happy with getting anything above 4GHz all cores unlocked and stable. I would consider that an absolute steal for a $90 CPU!!!!!


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## Necrofire (Mar 12, 2010)

4.5 is probably wishful thinking. I'd say 4.0 should be your target, and 4.2 maybe if your water cooling is good enough.

Keep us informed, OCing is always interesting.

Unlocked quad cores under $100 FTW!

Hey, anyone else notice that newegg has raised their prices on amd cpus?
My 550BE was $95 when I got it like a month ago, and it's up to $136.


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## runnin17 (Mar 12, 2010)

Necrofire said:


> 4.5 is probably wishful thinking. I'd say 4.0 should be your target, and 4.2 maybe if your water cooling is good enough.



Not necessarily. I have seen multiple posts with 940's getting up to 4.3GHz on water. With a 555 turned into a 955 I am sure 4.5-4.6GHz is not out of the picture on water.


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## sweeper (Mar 12, 2010)

Newegg's prices keep fluctuating on all sorts of products. I've seen MB's go down to $65.00 then up to $79.00 in a day. 

Anyway, those 'BE' stepping CPU's are NICE!


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## MohawkAngel (Mar 12, 2010)

you dont even have to regulate the voltage man. put it at 2400 and 12X like i told you its supposed to be ok on that board
begin at the stock cpu speed but with the 2400 and 12X like i told you leave everything else at AUTO and just go modify the FSB inthe bios leaving the FSB multiplier to AUTO. Dont forget to not mic up tyhe CPU/NB and the FSB CPU multiplier. 
Check out my thread man eveything is explained there seek for it .


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## MohawkAngel (Mar 12, 2010)

sweeper btw tell me what exactly in the CPU biao you setted at 5-4-4-12 because i will try it but when sets to manual theres more than 4 numbers you could change for the ram on a mobo like ours
thx


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## sweeper (Mar 12, 2010)

I left it at auto and it set itself. The only changes I made was I changed the FSB to 250, set the HT to 1800 and set the Memory to 266. When I booted it came to:

3.25GHz
HT - 2000
667 - memory (which is what mine is stock)

So the system sees it as stock except the FSB and CPU MHz.


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## MohawkAngel (Mar 12, 2010)

Up to you if you wanna do like i id or not lol As long as you have fun.


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## sweeper (Mar 12, 2010)

I can't change my Multiplier on this CPU. So I just up the FSB, drop the HT, Drop the memory speed, (do a little math to figure out where I'm going to be at) then reboot. For now it runs great. I just put on a different HSF (ZEROtherm BTF90). It's alright but not as efficient as I'd like. I have a new one coming from the EGG next week. Will try higher clock then.


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## hat (Mar 12, 2010)

Hrm... so I increaced it to my board's max multi (10x, or 2000MHz) and it's sitting at 2500MHz now instead of 2000. It's had no adverse effects, so I'll leave it at that. At least it can't hurt any if it doesn't help... maybe if I had really insane clocks on a quad core...


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