Overclocking

The motherboard I purchased, the Asrock A88X Extreme6+, has a plethora of overclocking features, better still it works with Asrock's overclocking software so you can do it from the comfort of your desktop, in Windows.

So I fired up the tuning tool, allowed it to run its own tests and determine the best overclocking values for the CPU... it now has my system running at 4300 MHz (4.3 GHz) up from the base clock of (I believe it is) 3.7 GHz.  I have also optimized the fans and the average temperature for my system (when not gaming or doing something else heavy) is 45C.  Warmer than I want, but not horrible.  Fans DO ramp up a good bit when doing anything CPU intensive.

I had been running the system at 4.0 GHz...  I thought I was pretty bold at that point (given that these 28nm CPUs from AMD are not baked into performance silicon, since this size is all new for AMD and it has helped them cram everything, GPU-wise, onto the chip with the CPUs).  But if Asrock thinks it can get away with another 300 MHz, then who am I to argue?!

The system has been pretty stable and I played a couple of games to see if it would cause a BSOD, but it worked fine!  The added 300 MHz DOES help with single CPU performance and multi-CPU performance so I am pleased with it, so far.

One thing I am noticing, all of a sudden, is a high pitched, fluctuating whine.  But I have NO idea where it is coming from.  A fan?  A graphics card (fan)?  Or is it my APU cooler?  I just cannot tell.  It doesn't bother me if I am wearing my headphones, but without it I can definitely hear it, even tho' it is very faint.

The system is about a year old now... so all the fans and disks are "older" components, and it could be those and not the new components.  OR... it could be a new component that is being stressed by the overclock.  So difficult to know.

Anyway, going to run her at this speed for awhile to see how she holds up!

[edit]

Just should note that the overclock has improved, for example, JBOSS startup times by up to 2 to 3 seconds.  Not bad.  On par, if not better, than my FX-8350 and my old i7.

AMD Catalyst 14.1

The new (beta) driver is out.  I have not yet tried using it with BF4, but it has been stable for daily use.  I've played Skyrim and Civilization V with it and it seems to run smoothly.  It is probably a placebo effect, but Skyrim seems to suffer fewer stutters.  Could be frame pacing?

Overall, my system has been quite stable for about a week now.  There have been several minor application crashes (Windows Logon User Interface Host and the Search Indexer) that have not affected anything else.

The dust seems to have settled...  BIOS update, driver updates and new RAM seem to have done the trick!

[edit]

Including the overclocking, and new RAM...

Old Windows assessment score[s]:

CPUScore              : 7.6
D3DScore              : 8.5
DiskScore             : 7.4
GraphicsScore         : 8.5
MemoryScore           : 7.6

New Windows assessment scores[s]:

CPUScore              : 7.7
D3DScore              : 8.5
DiskScore             : 7.4
GraphicsScore         : 8.5
MemoryScore           : 7.7