On 25/11/2011 12:08 AM, Paul wrote:
You don't need anything too fancy.

In your case, you're "Driving a Cadillac". You have multiplier
control, so issues about accidentally overclocked RAM are a non-issue.
You'll need to use some VCore, to get to use more steps.

Yeah, I know, I'm really pleased that this particular processor came
down in price so nicely.

Basically, the process as I see it, is to "draw a speed versus VCore
voltage graph".
Raise the CPU speed in tiny steps. Boot to your OS (the tiny steps are
important to not outright crashing the OS immediately).

I run Prime95 for testing. I gradually inch up the speed, until I
see an error in Prime95 in five to ten minutes. Then, I have a "data
point".
I bump the voltage a bit, and retest. If it's stable, move up in frequency
again, until it becomes slightly unstable and throws another Prime95 error.

Yup, I'm using the Stability Test inside AOD, it looks like it will
actually stop the test once it finds an error and report it. And the
error will show up within 10 minutes, so no need to run an 1 hour or
longer test.

Unfortunately, if the AOD stability test finds an error, it's already
too late, and the operating system is just moments away from instability
itself, so it will need to be rebooted. So after the reboot, I just
increase the voltage another 0.05V and usually it's stable. I've now
gotten it stable at 3.6GHz base/3.7GHz turbo. Overclocking it through
the AOD has the advantage that you can leave the BIOS settings at
completely stock, and the overclocking only takes place once the AOD
service starts up in Windows, and you can just disable the service or
just load the default settings in the service to get back to original.

I might try to overclock the Turbo speed next.

Also it looks like it's not necessary to shut off Cool'N'Quiet or C1E
states with the AOD utility, as was suggested by one of the sites I
looked up. So you can still keep a nice and cool system while idle, but
you have a higher maximum.

Yousuf Khan