Hexacore restoration thread (AMD Phenom II 960T)

[storm-chaser]

So the other day I was randomly going through my old hardware and taking inventory of some of my older CPUs. Just a little later that day my main rig, an HP z820, up and died out of nowhere. Low mileage chassis so I'm not really sure what the deal is with that yet. Wont post or power on at all now and I already swapped PSUs to a 1125 watt unit and still its a no go. And cant check for trouble codes either.

In any event, that situation with my main rig gave me incentive to bring back an old workstation favorite, the AMD Phenom II. Specifically, the Zosma based X4 960T that comes from the factory with two hidden cores. It's technically a Thuban (in 4 core mode it's known as a Zosma) based Phenom II and when its unlocked in hexacore form is still a force to be reckoned with. Pair with low latency CL7 1600MHz memory and you have quite the little powerhouse rig on your hands. At first blush, it's just as snappy as my 5.0GHz X6 9600KF rig, which has a Samsung 970 PRO nvme SDD drive and 4266MHz DDR4 dual channel memory kit. I would be using that rig in place, but the MSI Z390 ACE that I was using in it lost a PCIe slot. So that's been sent back to MSI for RMA.

In the interim, we will proceed with the AMD 960T restoration using all spare parts from my old computer storage inventory. I found a good, but battered Antec case of about the same vintage in my old parts storage to match the build. I also found a 500W Antec PSU from about the same vintage. I was up until about 3AM last night working on cleaning up the case and fitting new hardware. More details, OC results to follow. One of my goals is sub 50 ns memory latency. Not sure if it's doable with this memory kit but we will give it a shot nevertheless. And because I am running a Hyper 212 I am aiming for a more conservative overclock this time around. These are the core parts I am working with.

Motherboard: Biostar TA970, 140W TDP rated
Supports bios unlocking of hidden cores but not the greatest OC board, but that's okay because this one is going to be conservative in terms of OC





Memory:
CMX4Gx3M1A1600C6
7-8-7-20 1.65v ver 5.11 Dual Channel 1600MHz CL7 kit


Case I am using is the Antec Wired2Fire Diablo MaXcore Gaming Tower


GPU:
MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB



Rats nest in the case that needed to be dealt with:


Busted up Antec case that will be restored to its former glory


Swapping in the Noctua 120mm fan. Coolermaster CPU fan is relegated to the chassis. Although the Biostar TA970 does not have PWM control (other than for CPU cooler), so it may become a nuisance if it's turning to much RPM.
Also in the picture is a thermaltake 140mm chassis fan that will be mounted in the top of the chassis. The hyper 212 we will be using has been cleaned up and is ready for use and is seen here in the lower left.


Ultra quiet Noctua NF-A12 x 25 CPU cooler fan, PMW - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED



Looking a little better, cleaned out with compressed air and swapped in the X6 960T processor in place of the pre-existing and very sluggish FX 4350 X4 CPU


This is a badass video card if I don't say so myself

MSI has one of the best cooling solutions out of any RX 5700 XT on the market at this time: Consequently, the video card greatly improves internal case temps.
Even under heaving gaming, the backplate is only "warm" to the touch. Not the case with my old MSI RX 580... you could fry an egg on that backplate.


Wire management 101


The pigtails we will need to power the 5700 XT. The gaming X requires two 8 pin power connectors and has a TDP of 225 watts.


Power connectors and heatsink


The PSU only has provisions for one 6 pin power connector, so I needed two six pin to eight pin adapters to make it work



Sick Noctua fan for the CPU, which is virtually silent below 2500 rpm


Someone had spliced into the Antec PSU in the past, so we had to get that issue resolved for good with electric tape and shrink wrap


Had to cut a little bit out of the front area of the case to get the massive 5700 XT to fit in this chassis


All set!


Looking more like a high performance machine by the minute:


I was up until about 3 AM working on this. I still have many plans for it so stay tuned. Case is all cleaned up and front cover fixed!


MUCH BETTER!



Biostar's own BIOunlocking utility allows you to unlock hidden cores on a Zosma based chip. It's nice to see the X6 in the upper right, because it usually means the extra cores are going to work. Although that's by no means the end of the torture testing / vetting that will occur.


Almost forgot, we are running a 512GB SK Hynix SSD drive for this build...


It was fun doing something a little different and building a system with only spare parts. Means you usually have to get a little more creative with your tech solutions. Stay tuned for OC results and further upgrades...

 

[storm-chaser]

Initial performance results in bone stock form...





Edit: That last CPU z screenshot says 799MHz, but it throttled up to 3.4 turbo for all of the above tests... and remains at 3.0GHz for the most part at idle / low load. Just a blip then it clocks back up.

 

[zenlaserman]

Sweet. I recently upgraded a family member's workhorse Athlon II X3 machine to take a Phenom II X6 1045T (95W) we found cheap on eBay. Slapped CPU in, installed Win10 on SSD, and she's happy. Quickest 10 y/o computer I've seen, anyway!

I find it interesting your 960T only scores 21.8K in CPU Queen (6K lower than my QX6800) but you have nearly 3x higher PhotoWorxx score. Anyway, you weren't kidding, that 960T is kind of a beast. Looking forward to seeing your unlocked+overclocked numbers!

 

[storm-chaser]

Sweet. I recently upgraded a family member's workhorse Athlon II X3 machine to take a Phenom II X6 1045T (95W) we found cheap on eBay. Slapped CPU in, installed Win10 on SSD, and she's happy. Quickest 10 y/o computer I've seen, anyway!

I find it interesting your 960T only scores 21.8K in CPU Queen (6K lower than my QX6800) but you have nearly 3x higher PhotoWorxx score. Anyway, you weren't kidding, that 960T is kind of a beast. Looking forward to seeing your unlocked+overclocked numbers!

So I just made up some ground on CPU Queen. See results below. OC adjustments have been made and I'm pretty happy with the results overall. Overclocking has been set static at 3.5GHz across all six cores. This is a very conservative overclock but you have to keep in mind, I'm building this with old parts. With only an old 450 or 500 w PSU, and a 225 w TDP GPU, I am playing conservative on this one in terms of CPU clock speed. This is especially important because this will ultimately be my retro gaming rig, to play older FPS games, etc and even some newer games to max it out just for fun, so for reliability sake I am keeping it toned down (against my better judgement lol). The processor is capable of 4.0GHz but for benching only and only reliable for about an hour, according to some torture tests I've run with it in that configuration. Plus I have to pump lots of voltage to it and can do without the extra heat. But there are plenty of other ways to get more performance out of a Phenom II than just clock frequency alone!

I think if you factor in the massive performance gains on this OC it's pretty easy to tell this CPU has a great potential in terms of cost/performance ratio. In fact, I will make the statement that a Zosma 960T or Zosma 970 BE OEM has one of the highest performance threshold increases (or average performance gain by orthodox overclocking methods) across all levels of all CPUs, percentage wise from stock to OC. That would actually make for an interesting benchmark competition.... hmm I will keep that in mind.

(compare and contrast with stock runs)

AIDA64 CPU Queen Benchmark


AIDA64 PhotoWorxx Benchmark:


Down to 49.2 ns on memory latency... getting closer! The later Phenom II has a sick memory controller that responds very well to overclocking, as you can see the results here are radically different than performance in stock trim. For air cooling, typically 3000MHz is the limit on the CPU-NB but going sub zero or chilling, you can go higher. My record on air is 3121MHz if I remember correctly. And I did that in the dead of winter with the computer outside on a table in front of my room, with the wires connected through the window.





MSI RX 5700 XT Gaming X Specs
Once I get my antialiasing dialed in, I will post some FPS numbers. In regards to Crysis 2, I have the graphics settings maxed out on ultra @ 1080p and I'm averaging almost 200FPS. Not to shabby for a rig with a 10 year old processor!

 

[biffzinker]

I’ve got two of the 960T. The one I bought back when they were for sale, and the other is from @Norton that got it from @newtekie1 or the forum member (don’t remember had the wile coyote avatar.) The one from Norton unlocks to a six core but the one core has a cache issue if the clockspeed is to high. The one I bought only unlocks as a five core. Causes an instant lockup during Windows booting.

 

[storm-chaser]

I’ve got two of the 960T. The one I bought back when they were for sale, and the other is from @Norton that got it from @newtekie1 or the forum member (don’t remember had the wile coyote avatar.) The one from Norton unlocks to a six core but the one core has a cache issue if the clockspeed is to high. The one I bought only unlocks as a five core. Causes an instant lockup during Windows booting.

Yeah I'd say its usually about 50/50 chance that you can unlock and then if that works, another 50/50 shot that the hidden cores are stable. At least that's been my experience.

 

[storm-chaser]

Still working on getting the Latency down to 45 ns.

I swapped in a Biostar A880GZ motherboard in place of the Biostar TA970. Older chipset but has better overclocking features and config options in the BIOS.

Paired with the G.Skill ripjaws kit, I can run the TRFC at 90 ns (as opposed to 110 ns on the TA970). This resulted in a drop of about 2 ns.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

Wouldn't 5700XT be severely bottlenecked with that CPU in most games?

 

[storm-chaser]

Wouldn't 5700XT be severely bottlenecked with that CPU in most games?

Of course, yeah. But it's still a really decent gaming rig. I can play most titles, including some recent ones with the graphics settings maxed out and still not seeing much of a bottleneck. It's right near the limit but holding it's own in titles like Crysis 2, Crysis 3, Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4. In other words, the system as a whole still functions at a high enough level to enjoy the gaming experience, even with some newer titles.

Here are my rig's vital statistics when playing Battlefield 3:

Getting 200FPS peak and about 175FPS average



Correction: Im not sure if these results are from Crysis 2 or Battlefield 3. I will have to go back and check.

 

[storm-chaser]

I just purchased a Biostar TA880GU3+ motherboard. Going way back to my first 970 BE rig, I found that this board does super well in terms of memory latency and has decent overclocking options in the BIOS. It was reliable for me back in the day, so I am going to replicate that setup as much as possible.

In addition to the new motherboard, I also ordered a Phenom II 1090T CPU and five Phenom II 960T processors. So I can have my cake and eat it too. Hoping to be able to do some binning with these and perhaps get one to go 4GHz on all six cores.

If all else fails, I have the 1090T to throw at it. I should be able to get 4.0GHz all core overclock if it's a good chip.

Updates to follow.

 

[zenlaserman]

TBH, I thought you'd be shooting for 3.8 or higher from the get-go. My brother and a few friends of mine had 1090Ts back in the day, and 4-4.3 wasn't too hard. Ofc, they were dealing with prime silicon from the get-go, and those CPUs ended up well over 200w. Monstrous performers back then!

I always wondered how an old Thuban would perform if it was shrunk to 14/12 or even 7nm lithography. How tiny would it be? LOL

Edit: regarding your overclocking, I forgot to add, the numbers shown @ 3.5GHz on your 12V rail scare me!

--------------------------

Wouldn't 5700XT be severely bottlenecked with that CPU in most games?

"Bottleneck" gets thrown around far too often in this forum, IMHO. Everything has a bottleneck. Speed Limit signs are bottlenecks. HDDs are bottlenecks. x86 is a bottleneck. Needing to use your hands for a PC is a bottleneck. Using a forum for conversation is a bottleneck.

Doesn't matter. If it works, it works, regardless of how old it is, IMHO.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

"Bottleneck" gets thrown around far too often in this forum, IMHO. Everything has a bottleneck. Speed Limit signs are bottlenecks. HDDs are bottlenecks. x86 is a bottleneck. Needing to use your hands for a PC is a bottleneck. Using a forum for conversation is a bottleneck.

Doesn't matter. If it works, it works, regardless of how old it is, IMHO.

Way too philosophical, not practical enough.

Not every piece of hardware is perfectly tuned to one another perf-wise in most PCs, but there is a difference between card working at 95% and 50-60%...

It is relevant for many potential buyers who think they can just slap a top-end GPU into their aging rig and call it a day.

This is clearly not the context here (nvm the CPU is EOL for years), but it's still interesting what kind of bottleneck this pairing will create, as not many bother with such experiments.

 

[Gloomie]

This is pretty cool

And actually very close to what I built just a few days ago! I was also randomly browsing my stash of old hardware and found an Asus Crosshair IV Formula paired with a Phenom 1090T. I had been about to build a htpc / gaming pc to be plugged in my TV for a while and was bored enough to actually build it last weekend.

The specs ended up with:
Asus Crosshair IV Formula
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
24gb 1600mhz DDR3-RAM
XFX Radeon HD 7970
Some random old Kingston SSD 240gb and some random old 500gb Seagate HDD

I was expecting I could game on it somewhat, but its quite amusing how well stuff runs on 10 year old hardware. System feels snappy and responsive too. Obviously I can't play stuff at 4k & max details, but lighter games like WoW, Diablo III & such seemed to run just fine at 1080p.


Edit: Maybe I'll post a few pics later from my project too (don't mean to hijack the thread though)!

 

[storm-chaser]

TBH, I thought you'd be shooting for 3.8 or higher from the get-go. My brother and a few friends of mine had 1090Ts back in the day, and 4-4.3 wasn't too hard. Ofc, they were dealing with prime silicon from the get-go, and those CPUs ended up well over 200w. Monstrous performers back then!

I always wondered how an old Thuban would perform if it was shrunk to 14/12 or even 7nm lithography. How tiny would it be? LOL

Edit: regarding your overclocking, I forgot to add, the numbers shown @ 3.5GHz on your 12V rail scare me!

--------------------------



"Bottleneck" gets thrown around far too often in this forum, IMHO. Everything has a bottleneck. Speed Limit signs are bottlenecks. HDDs are bottlenecks. x86 is a bottleneck. Needing to use your hands for a PC is a bottleneck. Using a forum for conversation is a bottleneck.

Doesn't matter. If it works, it works, regardless of how old it is, IMHO.

The silicon in this current 960T does not make for the best overclocking with this chip. It can go higher but requires a substantial jump in voltage and with weak VRMs on the mainboard and an old power supply I don't want to push it. 3.5GHz is the sweet spot.

For some reason the pics aren't coming through for me at this time. Tell me more about this 12v rail voltage because I must have missed that.

I should probably go out and get a better PSU now, especially with a 225w tdp GPU.

 

[storm-chaser]

This is pretty cool

And actually very close to what I built just a few days ago! I was also randomly browsing my stash of old hardware and found an Asus Crosshair IV Formula paired with a Phenom 1090T. I had been about to build a htpc / gaming pc to be plugged in my TV for a while and was bored enough to actually build it last weekend.

The specs ended up with:
Asus Crosshair IV Formula
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
24gb 1600mhz DDR3-RAM
XFX Radeon HD 7970
Some random old Kingston SSD 240gb and some random old 500gb Seagate HDD

I was expecting I could game on it somewhat, but its quite amusing how well stuff runs on 10 year old hardware. System feels snappy and responsive too. Obviously I can't play stuff at 4k & max details, but lighter games like WoW, Diablo III & such seemed to run just fine at 1080p.


Edit: Maybe I'll post a few pics later from my project too (don't mean to hijack the thread though)!

By all means, you can post your pictures here.

 

[zenlaserman]

One of the pics you had posted showed the 12v reading@ 11.5xx. Thubans are def power hungry when juiced up!

Way too philosophical, not practical enough.

Not every piece of hardware is perfectly tuned to one another perf-wise in most PCs, but there is a difference between card working at 95% and 50-60%...

It is relevant for many potential buyers who think they can just slap a top-end GPU into their aging rig and call it a day.

This is clearly not the context here (nvm the CPU is EOL for years), but it's still interesting what kind of bottleneck this pairing will create, as not many bother with such experiments.

My philosophy comes from my experience with practicality. I've long used very old stuff to do modern-day tasks - whether it's cars or tools or PCs. I have a Pentium 3 1GHz with X800XT and a QX6800 with a RX570 here in my garage, both of which run and have a job to do, doing those tasks just fine. Neither GPUs are running at top speed, the X800XT is way newer than the Pentium, on AGP 4x and the RX570 is on PCIe v1.0. Are bottlenecks present? Indubitably. Does it matter? Not in my actual-use scenario. Heck, I once ran a Pentium 1 200 with a PCI slot X1300 for giggles. I run mostly old software, my older hardware runs it fine. My 570 is underclocked and undervolted, even. The newest game I run on that rig is GTAV on PC, and my QX6800+570 can manage it fine even at summer-setting 3GHz.

Besides, you speak of top-end, well people seeking the top-end experience tend to not use 10+ y/o CPUs!
Top-end ceases to be top-end rather quickly.

 

[QuietBob]

In addition to the new motherboard, I also ordered a Phenom II 1090T CPU and five Phenom II 960T processors. So I can have my cake and eat it too. Hoping to be able to do some binning with these and perhaps get one to go 4GHz on all six cores. If all else fails, I have the 1090T to throw at it. I should be able to get 4.0GHz all core overclock if it's a good chip.

It may prove difficult to reach those high clocks without resorting to LC. Those high-end Phenom II chips had very low thermal ceiling. In my experience they've been prone to crashing above 60 deg C when oc'd and loaded.
Anyway, good luck on your quest! I've got a running Phenom II X4 rig with a healthy overclock on it, so it'd be interesting to compare the results

 

[storm-chaser]

It may prove difficult to reach those high clocks without resorting to LC. Those high-end Phenom II chips had very low thermal ceiling. In my experience they've been prone to crashing above 60 deg C when oc'd and loaded.
Anyway, good luck on your quest! I've got a running Phenom II X4 rig with a healthy overclock on it, so it'd be interesting to compare the results

I have a 965 that does 4.1GHz daily. But it's only a Deneb quad core, and I really like to run at least six cores. Two processors, 24 cores and 48 threads is preferable, but at least six at the bare minimum seems to get the job done ok for me.

In my pride (lol) I don't foresee any problem hitting 4.0GHz with at least the 1090T, most Phenom IIs with decent silicon will run this number no problem (like you said, it's more cooling than anything else). Cant hurt to have the NB clocked to 3000MHz either! But it will add more heat.

I am aware of the low thermal ceiling and I've been warned about that before. Over the years I've had at least a couple hexacore chips that hit 4.0GHz on a chip never overheated and I only had a hyper 212 on there to cool it. Case had pretty good airflow, though.

If you'd like, you can run the AIDA64 full benchmark report. This is my basic go-to benchmarking suite. When I get the new chips I will post some reports here as zip files and we can compare and contrast.

 

[storm-chaser]

So I have some good news and some bad news.
Good news first --- the New 1090T hexacore chip runs a 4.0GHz overclock like a champ with rock solid stability (voltage is a little high for testing - it can be lowered slightly from this setting)

Now for the bad news - I can only run the CPU-NB at 2800MHz, any higher and it just wont post.
So the quest continues to find a hexacore chip that runs at 4.0GHz with a 3.0GHz CPU-NB speed.

Hoping one of the five 960Ts will be able to do this for me.

 

[biffzinker]

Now for the bad news - I can only run the CPU-NB at 2800MHz, any higher and it just wont post.

You're in better shape then I was with the two 960T that don't exceed 2600MHz. Both can overclock to 4 GHz if I disable the defect core out of the two turned off by AMD.

 

[storm-chaser]

You're in better shape then I was with the two 960T that don't exceed 2600MHz. Both can overclock to 4 GHz if I disable the defect core out of the two turned off by AMD.

What's the max safe voltage I can run on the CPU-NB? I thought it was somewhere around 1.4v but can't be sure...

 

[dont whant to set it"']

If you do come across a core unlockable 900T series , expect it to be super leaky , I'd say better stick to a true hexa core for that.

On the 3GHz or higher NB clock front , the motherboard is the main factor.

I've dabled with a multiplyer locked Thuban and the motherboard made a world of a difference . 330MHz baseclock easy and stable with 10 minutes worth of bios tweaking spanned across a couple POST's.

Mine even did 3GHz HT/NB/Cores , it was some high end Asus Crosshair fx790 or fx890 series chipset.

 

[delshay]

@OP

I just started tracking Phenom processors on what modern games it can run. Whatever game runs on this processor, there is a good chance it will work on the 939 Platform (which I am on). There's a few videos on YOUTUBE showing your processor running modern games. This is a good place to start, to see what's compatible with Phenom processors.

As of typing this I'm about to see if "Baldur's Gate 3" works.

I do have the top of the line Phenom, but not sure if it's still working as the memory MOSFETS burnt out & I don't have a spare AM2+,AM3 motherboard to check if processor is still working. (Phenom II 1100T)

 

[storm-chaser]

If you do come across a core unlockable 900T series , expect it to be super leaky , I'd say better stick to a true hexa core for that.

On the 3GHz or higher NB clock front , the motherboard is the main factor.

I've dabled with a multiplyer locked Thuban and the motherboard made a world of a difference . 330MHz baseclock easy and stable with 10 minutes worth of bios tweaking spanned across a couple POST's.

Mine even did 3GHz HT/NB/Cores , it was some high end Asus Crosshair fx790 or fx890 series chipset.

Yeah I get what you are saying there on the motherboard being a key factor. I specifically chose the Biostar TA880GU3+ because it overclocks very well with the Phenom II (I know this isn't a mainstream choice in this kind of scenario, but I've had really good luck with it in the past. Since one popped up on eBay last week, I had to pull the trigger. This board was rock solid reliable for me for nearly 9 years when running an unlocked 970 BE 4.0GHz hexacore. I was able to hit 3122MHz on the CPU-NB with that chip. For daily use the cpu nb was throttled back to 3000MHz, but still the motherboard doesn't disappoint. Also, it has excellent memory tuning options, as seen below I was able to get my latency down to 35.5 at one point. I think in this case, the CPU is simply not readily able to go to 3000MHz reliably.

This was one of my better overclocks on the old 970 BE rig, I hope to at least match it. That's part of the goal here. As you can see I was able to push the NB on this chip pretty hard with this exact mainboard. This is air cooling.

 

[storm-chaser]

Getting geared up for the binning process (five 960Ts). I set up another AM3 system for this purpose so I don't have to dismantle my main Phenom II rig every time I want to bin a CPU. I used a Biostar TA970 motherboard, 8GB kit of CL7 ram and SSD. And NVidia GeForce 710 GT.

Im running the stock, AMD heat piped cooler, which is actually rated to handle an 1100T (stock only, no torture tests). This will make it much easier to swap CPUs, since I have the Hyper 212 on my main rig and that takes a bit of time to remove. Once I find a good CPU that is confirmed to go at least 4.0GHz in the test rig, I will then take that and swap it over to the main Phenom II rig with my TA880GU3+ to see what more we can extract from it in terms of overclocking performance.

Pics of the Phenom II "binning" rig I just assembled: