TPU's AMD APU Owners Club

[_JP_]

So far stable at 4GHz@1.25v.

 

[xorbe]

Ohh an APU owners club. I have an A8-5500 + ASRock FM2A85X-ITX (just ram + ssd) but it's running openSUSE 13.1 linux. I was thinking maybe to switch up to A10-6800K. (Also have an A10-4600M laptop.) Both are "low power" setups, so no overclocking here ...

 

[rhapdog]

I've got an A10-6800K on an ASUS FM2A85-V PRO running 16GB Corsair at 2133MHz.

Still using the stock fan and heatsink, though, so not really overclocking right now. I should be receiving an order I placed for a Cooler Master Seidon 120M Water Cooling all in one system for my A10 just any day now. After that, I'll try some overclocking and see what I can get, then post back. Unit only comes with a single 120mm fan, but will take a second fan to set it up in push-pull config, which is what I plan to do with one of 4 spare 120mm fans I have laying around. Can't wait to get this installed.

If anyone else has this chip/motherboard, and can tell me optimum settings for manually overclocking, I'd be grateful to get off to a better start.

I have overclocked my iGPU to 1013MHz, but it keeps getting hot (according to GPU-Z). It starts climbing up to 89C under load, which is when I stop the game and let it cool back down for a few minutes. The CPU side is just set at 4.4GHz, which is pretty much standard, turbo wise, so not any extra there yet. I'm honestly more interested in OC'ing the iGPU than the CPU. Any advice I can get on that would be appreciated. I do plan on getting an R9 270X, but we just had to battle pneumonia with my little girl, and now I'll have to wait until summer to pick one up, so OCing the iGPU has just become more important to me.

EDIT: I've removed the screenshot, as I'm uploading a newer screenshot of my new settings in a post below.

Anyone know how hot is safe for the iGPU? how hot is safe for CPU?

 

[Jetster]

I would run GPU-Z over 80c. The stock heat sinks are horrible. I wouldn't overclock anything until you get a proper heatsink

 

[rhapdog]

I agree. The stock heat sink is horrible. It's fine for the casual user, though, which is what the APU is really targeted at. I just tried playing that same game again, with the exact same settings, only I reset the iGPU to original clock rate with no overclocking. It still overheated to the same degree, but this time it took an extra 10 minutes to get to that high temperature. That's what I call a horrible heat sink. I think a water cooling setup is in order, which is on order and should arrive today.

Just got notification that my new APU water cooling kit is out for delivery to arrive by end of business day today. Never done this before, so I wonder how it's going to go. This will be a bit trickier than installing a heat sink/fan, but should go well as long as I have everything planned well.

Perhaps this little "APU Owners club" needs to add a column for iGPU freqency, instead of just CPU and Memory. That's what interest me the most right now, because that is what will get you more performance in Windows overall (at least the way I use Windows.) Just a suggestion.

 

[xorbe]

The stock heat sinks are horrible.

Last night I ripped out the stock hsf, installed a cm hyper 212 evo, and the temp sitting in the BIOS (not idle) dropped from 64C to 38C. It's like the fins on the stock heatsink keep the center slightly raised! I also lapped the apu slightly. Besides cooler, it's also much quieter. What a nightmare getting it all back into a mini itx case.

 

[rhapdog]

Last night I ripped out the stock hsf, installed a cm hyper 212 evo, and the temp sitting in the BIOS (not idle) dropped from 64C to 38C. It's like the fins on the stock heatsink keep the center slightly raised! I also lapped the apu slightly. Besides cooler, it's also much quieter. What a nightmare getting it all back into a mini itx case.

I've got no room for a hyper 212 evo, because it would overlap my memory slots and take up space currently occupied by my Corsair Vengeance memory.

However, the CM Seidon 120M arrived, and I added an additional fan to transform it into the 120XL. I bumped up the clock on the iGPU (Radeon HD 8670D) from stock at 844MHz (where it was still getting up to 85C under load), to 1169MHz, and under the same load it had before it never got above 49C. It has also gone from 43C at stock and idle to 35C @ 1169MHz and idle. I may try bumping it up some more later. It has already increased my frame rates in Tomb Raider 2013 by about 35% over what it was. It has also resolved the tearing issue I was having, and the stuttering issues.

About the CPU frequency, I can't seem to bump it up over 4400MHz and it stay stable with Prime95. I'm getting stable iGPU, but not CPU.

I'll post another screenshot of the new settings once I get them finalized.

EDIT: I've gotten it to 4800MHz tested with Prime95, and it's completely stable, temp never gets above 44C. It actually hovers around 43C and occasionally, briefly flickers to 44C. The iGPU is stable at 1085.5MHz. I tried 1169MHz, and it worked fine and was stable while gaming, but other stress tests caused a BSOD. However, while I noticed a substantial frame rate improvement and the elimination of tearing when I went from 1013 to 1085, there was no noticeable difference between 1085 and 1169. I saw in one post that if you go above your memory clock, it ceases to improve performance until you boost the memory more. Not sure how true that is, but my eyes seem to confirm it, whether true or not. I didn't do a frame rate comparison between 1085 and 1169, though. Perhaps later I will get to that.

Here's my updated screenshot stats. I have managed to get a 5200MHz stable, but had to reset the BIOS after hitting 5300MHz due to system lock up, and I lost my settings. I failed to write down everything over 4800, so starting over from there. Grr! Hope to make it back to at least 5100 later, perhaps first part of the next week. At least 4800MHz puts me in 2nd place.

So, my stats are:


EDIT: This time I ran Prime95 for an hour instead of only 10 minutes between increases in clock, and discovered I get an error with Prime 95 on 2 of my cores at 4900MHz, but at 4800MHz I am completely stable. While my system seems to run fine at 5200MHz, I don't trust it long term, so I'm going to lock it in at the 4800MHz speed.

You can add me to the list now, please.

 

[_JP_]

Well, I might have declared victory a bit too soon.
The CPU was stable, enough to finish 10-runs of IBT. Played games too. Temps were fine (mb sensors). In fact, they were great.
But I did notice HWiNFO stating that core voltage was at 1.275v and not 1.25v, after that round of gaming.
And then the board started complaining. Yesterday, I powered it on and it went: Fans spin for 2 secs - shut-down 2 secs - power-on - post - boot. No beeps.
Today, the same thing happened. I suspected ASRock's BFG was kicking-in and decided to change the voltage.
1.275v -> same sequence of events at power-on.
1.3v -> post+boot at 1st try.
So I guess I'm going to stick to 1.3v until I sort this out.
In a way, I now think I was being too optimistic and demanding. I was following guides that were tested with an ASUS A85 PRO board, which has a better power circuitry.
Oh well, it's still below the stock 1.35v.

 

[N-Gen]

Just to throw this out there, I'm really disappointed using the APU to stream gameplay. I have to render on average settings in order to not max the APU out even when overclocked.

When I was streaming off the machine I'm gaming on (in the specs <-) the i5 pulled off the game as well as streaming at the same quality the APU does without a single problem. Now I know the price difference and the overclock values are way off, but still, I was hoping for it to do a bit better.

 

[N-Gen]

Ohh an APU owners club. I have an A8-5500 + ASRock FM2A85X-ITX (just ram + ssd) but it's running openSUSE 13.1 linux. I was thinking maybe to switch up to A10-6800K. (Also have an A10-4600M laptop.) Both are "low power" setups, so no overclocking here ...

Why go for a K model when you're not going to overclock? Especially since they're low power setups the A10-6800k isn't exactly a low power solution.

 

[torgoth]

any updates on Kaveri? can't wait for them will probably build my secondary with one of them

 

[N-Gen]

Gets released on Tuesday, so you don't have to wait much longer

 

[rhapdog]

Is this club dead? I notice the listing of owners has not been updated since Aug 29, 2013, and it doesn't seem to be getting updated with my info.

The OP now has an FX8350 as CPU in system specs. Has the OP abandoned this club?

 

[N-Gen]

Don't know, I'm still not on the list

 

[rhapdog]

I see people from September/October 2013 not on the list yet. I'm gonna declare this club as dead. Since I'd like to actually see a club like this for APUs, I suppose I'll have to open up another one, if that doesn't offend anyone. However, I think I'll make it for A-Series only.

 

[_JP_]

I've noticed that Durvelle27 has been spending more time at the FX club, for obvious reasons, but how about sending a PM to the OP before starting to declare stuff?
The table needs an update, that's all. There's still activity in the thread.
The only entity that can declare threads as dead are mods, when they close them.

 

[rhapdog]

Yes, table needs an update. Has needed an update for four months. Four months is an eternity in internet time. If it had been one month, I wouldn't be concerned.

Perhaps "Dead" is the wrong term. Abandoned by the OP is quite true enough, since it has been August since the OP has posted or updated. (4-1/2 months now.)
When you start a thread, you automatically watch that thread and get alerts about new posts in that thread. He is either ignoring the alerts or has stopped watching the thread, which, in either case, means he has abandoned it. I don't think sending a PM is going to cause the OP to generate more interest if he is already ignoring it for this long.

Understand I don't say this to reflect bad on the OP. The OP interests have likely just changed, which happens. It's called being human and moving on to new areas of your life. Nothing wrong with that. I'm all for that.

I don't think it's bad to start an A-Series club, though. It's more specific than just APUs in general.

 

[Durvelle27]

Sorry guys eyes have been away from thread as last time I checked no one was posting. I will update thread in a minute

 

[xorbe]

I accidentally bought a huge Bit Fenix Prodigy case (I think) for my mini itx system. Naturally I had to go buy a 64W video card for my 65W apu (and install a tower cm hyper 212 evo hsf) ... cutting it close for my 160W pico psu hehheh. I have this huge 192W power brick (fits in the bottom of the case) and a 120V AC Watts-Up, but I want to tap into the 12VDC side with my R/C hobby WattMeter, curious about the brick's efficiency.

 

[rhapdog]

Sorry guys eyes have been away from thread as last time I checked no one was posting. I will update thread in a minute

Hmm... I'm still not seeing the update. Cleared my cache to make sure that wasn't it. Am I missing something?

 

[emissary42]

Would really like to join you guys with another APU setup, but since the Gigabyte F2A88X-UP4 will not be available in Europe, i'll pass this time.

Maybe i will give Richland another shot, when it gets sold off...

 

[_JP_]

Well, it seems kaveri has made dual graphics reach the performance level it should have had since llano. HSA looks incredibly promising.
My board still complains when going below 1.3v, yet the CPU stays completely stable. :\
Heh, I'm used to ASRock boards heaving strange fits about custom settings, when it comes to either CPU or RAM, so I best not argue more. (until a BIOS update comes along )

 

[_JP_]

TRWOV suggested me to use a mod for IBT to test with this chip, so that it would get the expected results (instead of around 20GFlops avg.).
My machine was completely idle and the runs were made one after the other, only with logging and screenshots in-between.
So, in order:

So...as you can see the scores were a bit inconsistent, between each 3, not within each run. Can't really find a reason for that. :\

 

[GreiverBlade]

Hmm... I'm still not seeing the update. Cleared my cache to make sure that wasn't it. Am I missing something?

mmhhh and so?

anyway sad my Athlon X4 760K isn't a APU but FM2+ on a ASRock FM2A88M Ex4+ i might upgrade later from a Richland Athlon to a Kaveri A10-7850K still i don't know when

 

[emissary42]

Cross-posting, because