Question Recommended settings for overclocking my amd fx8350

Davidino

Commendable
Feb 17, 2022
222
5
1,585
Hi, I just found an fx8350 in my garage and I replaced it with the amd phenom ii x4 970 BE I was using in my backup server/game pc.
I was wondering how to overclock it without having to test a lot. Im not that familiar with overclocking so just a simple overclock would be great. Any recommended suggestions? I dont need to reach my cpu's limit, I just want a simple overclock that will boost my cpu a little bit without having to change a lot of settings.
Specs:
Corsair vs550
Gtx 650 2gb
Amd fx-8350 with stock cooler
Msi 970 gaming
16 gb ddr3 ram (4*4)
 
Last edited:

DavidM012

Distinguished
You aren't set up for overclocking and even if you were. the fx overclock doesn't really do anything significant.

Your power supply, board and cooler need to be a bit more serious, like a quality 850w, at least a 360aio, or 6 pipe air cooler, and a 990fx board - even then many experienced folks on this forum would say they've seen too many boards die trying. The power efficiency of the fx series simply isn't good enough to sustain overclocks. The fx 9590 was too unstable even for 990fx boards, some say.

As to it being 'simple' there isn't really any 'simple' fx overclock. With your 970 board you might increase the voltage by simply 1 notch and it goes out with that power supply.

There is no equivocation here to be clear the FX 8350 will fry your PSU - Here's the PSU Tier list

Tier D: green gray or black label recommended for iGPU system only - system without a discrete gpu

Corsair | Builder CX 2012 <=600W [green-label] / CX-M 2012 <=600W [green-label] - CV <=550W - VS 2017 [gray-label] / 2020 [black-label]

Tier E: Potentially dangerous in multiple scenarios

Corsair | VS 2012 [orange-label]

So the story is, the FX overclock requires too much power for insignificant gains anyway while you would need a premium power supply, cooler and mobo - it wasn't worth it then and it's worth -the square root of No, now.

Even as it stands the 8 core cpu might be too much for that corsair vs at default. As for the Phenom - never overclocked one but I seem to vaguely remember reading something inadvisable about that too.

Next to that - all the FX hardware is old now - the mobo capacitors are aged and might be sub optimal and degraded since they were new. Serious enthusiasts about electronics like overclocking basically renew the capacitors of any electronics they have - but even then would likely not bother with the FX because it simply doesn't do anything even if you can.

I've tried it on games where I was getting a stutter and an overclock didn't remediate it only turning down the settings so might as well not overclock at all. At best the principle improvement is only a slightly faster windows logon.
 
Last edited:

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
Your power supply, board and cooler need to be a bit more serious, like a quality 850w, at least a 360aio, or 6 pipe air cooler, and a 990fx board - even then many experienced folks on this forum would say they've seen too many boards die trying. The power efficiency of the fx series simply isn't good enough to sustain overclocks
No. Everything in that is wrong, except the cooler.

OP absolutely doesn't need a quality 850w psu to OC on a fx cpu with a gtx650 that only requires 400w, and generally has a hard time seeing 300w. That VS550 is plenty big enough, albeit won't get great stability at uber high clocks.

The MSI 970 Gaming is one of only a few mobo's that'll actually support a FX-9590 at full stock clocks, it's Plenty good enough, even Overkill in capacity to OC a 8350.

The only 2 things Op actually needs in order to get any OC on that FX of his are a decent cpu cooler in the 180-200w range (or 240mm AIO) and AMD Overdrive.

'The power efficiency of the FX isn't enough to sustain overclocks'. What kind of horse manure is that? Ppl have had the FX series upto 5.2GHz on a FX-4300, and most FX-8350 tend to have no issues with 4.6-4.8GHz all core, if the cooling is there. The FX-9590 is nothing more than a better binned, 8350 with jumped up internal voltages, literally the exact same cpu, all the Bulldozer FX are the same architecture and build, minus a burned out node on the 6's and 2 nodes on the 4 series.
 
  • Like
Reactions: drea.drechsler

DavidM012

Distinguished
The fx doesn't do anything & the cooling isn't there so it's a waste of energy. I have a 240mm cooler master seidon on mine at this moment and can't go past 4.4ghz without a vCore of 1.35 and Mobo and package temps of 55c under stress which is where I draw the line.

If I want to do 4.6-4.8 well I've never pushed it that hard. The 4350 I did 4.9ghz no probs but the eight core cooked an 850w psu that I had which was not hi quality so that's experience and that was on the bare minimum. PSU went phut and that was that.

If I'm inclined to try that 4.6-4.8ghz I do have another cooler that I could use on it and I can actually mount two coolers since I made a backplate to pick up residual heat on the second cooler to stay within the thermal margins I like - but I don't really want to push my power supply and anyway it didn't do anything for the games I was playing, Elite Dangerous and Battlefront 2 both had glitches and stutters that the overclock simply did not remedy & so if I had to turn down the settings might just as well have turned off the overclock because it wasn't for anything else.
 

Davidino

Commendable
Feb 17, 2022
222
5
1,585
You aren't set up for overclocking and even if you were. the fx overclock doesn't really do anything significant.

Your power supply, board and cooler need to be a bit more serious, like a quality 850w, at least a 360aio, or 6 pipe air cooler, and a 990fx board - even then many experienced folks on this forum would say they've seen too many boards die trying. The power efficiency of the fx series simply isn't good enough to sustain overclocks. The fx 9590 was too unstable even for 990fx boards, some say.

As to it being 'simple' there isn't really any 'simple' fx overclock. With your 970 board you might increase the voltage by simply 1 notch and it goes out with that power supply.

There is no equivocation here to be clear the FX 8350 will fry your PSU - Here's the PSU Tier list

Tier D: green gray or black label recommended for iGPU system only - system without a discrete gpu

Corsair | Builder CX 2012 <=600W [green-label] / CX-M 2012 <=600W [green-label] - CV <=550W - VS 2017 [gray-label] / 2020 [black-label]

Tier E: Potentially dangerous in multiple scenarios

Corsair | VS 2012 [orange-label]

So the story is, the FX overclock requires too much power for insignificant gains anyway while you would need a premium power supply, cooler and mobo - it wasn't worth it then and it's worth -the square root of No, now.

Even as it stands the 8 core cpu might be too much for that corsair vs at default. As for the Phenom - never overclocked one but I seem to vaguely remember reading something inadvisable about that too.

Next to that - all the FX hardware is old now - the mobo capacitors are aged and might be sub optimal and degraded since they were new. Serious enthusiasts about electronics like overclocking basically renew the capacitors of any electronics they have - but even then would likely not bother with the FX because it simply doesn't do anything even if you can.

I've tried it on games where I was getting a stutter and an overclock didn't remediate it only turning down the settings so might as well not overclock at all. At best the principle improvement is only a slightly faster windows logon.
Ive heard about the vs550 orange label not being reliable, but ive never had issues with mine and it overclocked my amd phenom ii x4 970 with the same pc specs to 3.8 ghz. Only difference was the cooler. I used a Silverstone cooler but the fans were horrible. I got an average of 70 °C. Now with the fx and stock cooler I get max temps of 40 °C. I also did stress tests with the phenom build and that was no issue.
 

Davidino

Commendable
Feb 17, 2022
222
5
1,585
No. Everything in that is wrong, except the cooler.

OP absolutely doesn't need a quality 850w psu to OC on a fx cpu with a gtx650 that only requires 400w, and generally has a hard time seeing 300w. That VS550 is plenty big enough, albeit won't get great stability at uber high clocks.

The MSI 970 Gaming is one of only a few mobo's that'll actually support a FX-9590 at full stock clocks, it's Plenty good enough, even Overkill in capacity to OC a 8350.

The only 2 things Op actually needs in order to get any OC on that FX of his are a decent cpu cooler in the 180-200w range (or 240mm AIO) and AMD Overdrive.

'The power efficiency of the FX isn't enough to sustain overclocks'. What kind of horse manure is that? Ppl have had the FX series upto 5.2GHz on a FX-4300, and most FX-8350 tend to have no issues with 4.6-4.8GHz all core, if the cooling is there. The FX-9590 is nothing more than a better binned, 8350 with jumped up internal voltages, literally the exact same cpu, all the Bulldozer FX are the same architecture and build, minus a burned out node on the 6's and 2 nodes on the 4 series.
Ive heard people getting 7.2 ghz with the fx-8350. With the stock cooler my max temps are 40 °C and about 34 °C average. I think thats good enough to overclock it a little bit right. My pc also has amazing airflow: big atx case with 4 fans. With my phenom build I achieved a stable 3.8 ghz with a crap cooler. Without overclocking my av temps were 70 °C, but still I managed to overclock mine safely and stable.
 

Davidino

Commendable
Feb 17, 2022
222
5
1,585
The fx doesn't do anything & the cooling isn't there so it's a waste of energy. I have a 240mm cooler master seidon on mine at this moment and can't go past 4.4ghz without a vCore of 1.35 and Mobo and package temps of 55c under stress which is where I draw the line.

If I want to do 4.6-4.8 well I've never pushed it that hard. The 4350 I did 4.9ghz no probs but the eight core cooked an 850w psu that I had which was not hi quality so that's experience and that was on the bare minimum. PSU went phut and that was that.

If I'm inclined to try that 4.6-4.8ghz I do have another cooler that I could use on it and I can actually mount two coolers since I made a backplate to pick up residual heat on the second cooler to stay within the thermal margins I like - but I don't really want to push my power supply and anyway it didn't do anything for the games I was playing, Elite Dangerous and Battlefront 2 both had glitches and stutters that the overclock simply did not remedy & so if I had to turn down the settings might just as well have turned off the overclock because it wasn't for anything else.
So are there really no benefits of me overclocking my fx? I just think overclocking is really cool. But if it even boosts my performance with 1% Id still do it, because then I can play higher demanding games. The fx nowadays cant really keep up with the triple A modern games unless u overclock it.
 

DavidM012

Distinguished
That's the point you can't with that cooler and it won't do anything for triple a games I tried 4k dsr with a 1060 on battlefront 2 and it stuttered so I had to turn it down. After some research I saw a lot of reviewers were simply using the fx 8350 at default. Definitely said we are not trying the overclock.

You can do 1080p@60 hz on shadow of the tomb raider on it at default but Elite Dangerous hyperspace stutters every time every single jump and nothing I could do besides turn down the settings would eliminate it overclock or no.

7.2ghz cannot be attained on the fx without going over 1.5v and to do that you need sub zero cooling either dry ice or L2n which then necessitates expenses that are practically equal to the cost of a ryzen mobo cpu and ram - here's a current cpu-z bench I ran a moment ago.

You can easily regardez that even a basic entry level Zen 2 has a higher single threaded core score. In other words the expenditure for materials to overclock it exceed the expenditure of an entry level ryzen that exceeds it easily at default speeds.
 

Davidino

Commendable
Feb 17, 2022
222
5
1,585
That's the point you can't with that cooler and it won't do anything for triple a games I tried 4k dsr with a 1060 on battlefront 2 and it stuttered so I had to turn it down. After some research I saw a lot of reviewers were simply using the fx 8350 at default. Definitely said we are not trying the overclock.

You can do 1080p@60 hz on shadow of the tomb raider on it at default but Elite Dangerous hyperspace stutters every time every single jump and nothing I could do besides turn down the settings would eliminate it overclock or no.

7.2ghz cannot be attained on the fx without going over 1.5v and to do that you need sub zero cooling either dry ice or L2n which then necessitates expenses that are practically equal to the cost of a ryzen mobo cpu and ram - here's a current cpu-z bench I ran a moment ago.

You can easily regardez that even a basic entry level Zen 2 has a higher single threaded core score. In other words the expenditure for materials to overclock it exceed the expenditure of an entry level ryzen that exceeds it easily at default speeds.
So basically, its has 0 point to overclock my fx8350 because it doesnt do much and the costs of materials are more expensive than buying a newer better cpu like a cheap ryzen? Question, are the lga1150 cpus still good enough for triple A titles? Im talking about i5-4670+
 

DavidM012

Distinguished
Pretty much. The i5- 4670 is better than it even though it's only a quad core but we are at the horizon where a quad core isn't really enough for the latest and greatest either.

You can do something with it like 1080p and if the board can support a reasonable gpu, but generally FX boards particularly aren't suited to high powered modern gpus whatsoever they will simply burn out the pci-e slot. I have half an eye on the amd 6600 which has a power draw of 132 watts but I'd consider that taking a chance on a fx mobo.

Theoretically PCI-e should be backwards compatible but in practice, the fx boards were designed more than 10 years ago and they don't support anything but the lo end gpus and, anyway hardly utilize their capacity so there's next to no point anyway.

If you're going to play in the lo end then definitely use a six core ryzen at least. The mobos alone will have far better memory, nvme support and at least pci-e 3.0 support too.
 

Davidino

Commendable
Feb 17, 2022
222
5
1,585
Pretty much. The i5- 4670 is better than it even though it's only a quad core but we are at the horizon where a quad core isn't really enough for the latest and greatest either.

You can do something with it like 1080p and if the board can support a reasonable gpu, but generally FX boards particularly aren't suited to high powered modern gpus whatsoever they will simply burn out the pci-e slot. I have half an eye on the amd 6600 which has a power draw of 132 watts but I'd consider that taking a chance on a fx mobo.

Theoretically PCI-e should be backwards compatible but in practice, the fx boards were designed more than 10 years ago and they don't support anything but the lo end gpus and, anyway hardly utilize their capacity so there's next to no point anyway.

If you're going to play in the lo end then definitely use a six core ryzen at least. The mobos alone will have far better memory, nvme support and at least pci-e 3.0 support too.
Would an i5-9500T be good enough for the future? I have a dell optiplex mini itx and I was wondering if I could use the cpu and place it in an atx lga1151 mobo. But atm I dont have the budget for an lga1151 mobo, a high quality psu and 16gb ddr4 ram
 

DavidM012

Distinguished
It will do for the moment but don't expect too much from it. Practically anything is better than the fx anyway. If Intel is burger king & amd is mcdonalds then simply put, it's a cheeseburger with small fries rather than a whopper with large fries and an xl coke or milkshake.
 

Davidino

Commendable
Feb 17, 2022
222
5
1,585
It will do for the moment but don't expect too much from it. Practically anything is better than the fx anyway. If Intel is burger king & amd is mcdonalds then simply put, it's a cheeseburger with small fries rather than a whopper with large fries and an xl coke or milkshake.
What a great day, another person named David lecturing me about the things I like and giving me examples with food
 

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
The biggest issue ppl had with the FX were the temps. There is no such thing as cpu temp but yet ppl are so ingrained by Intel, the 70° is the cutoff and it has to be an actual number they can understand that they ran into trouble. The FX cpus are literally physically built without any means of reading a temp.

Instead, they use a thermal margin that winds down to Zero. Amd Overdrive. It's an algorithm created to take the core loads, voltages, amount of cores, package temp and some other values and come up with a range of heat. So you could run a heavy load with several cores and get a value of 20 or run a light load maxing 2 cores and get the same 20. Doesn't mean you are at 20°, or have 20° before maxed out, simply means 20 and it's plenty above Zero.

So when overclocking, you'd push every core to its max, and hopefully end up anywhere above Zero, the actual number wasn't important, just it's relative placement above Zero. Generally idle was in the 40's, windows working 30's, heavier app working 20's, gaming teens, stress tests in the single digits.

Overclocking is not a cure for stutters. Ever. In Battlefield 4, the 8350 was 2nd best fps, right behind the i7-4790k, and significantly ahead of the i5-4690k, even overclocked, and the results got better after @ 4.0GHz. Some say that was a fluke, but it's really a precursor, BF4 was the first game to leverage cores vs speeds, like more modern games, unlike prior games that leveraged core speeds vs limited cores, which Intel excelled at.

The FX sucked at CSGO, simply because that game is closed, only uses 2 cores, no rollover, so is highly Intel bound, higher IPC rules. And the FX generally had @ 66% of the IPC of a 3rd gen Intel. So gaming experience changed depending on the game.

The biggest problem was the time gap between FX and Ryzen, Intel just got stronger and better between 4th Gen and 9th Gen and FX did nothing, even if gaming experience did somewhat increase as more games followed in BF4 design. But with complexity, and need for IPC gains, that didn't last long. Now most games are open ended, will use 1 master core and as many supporting cores as needed, generally starting at 4 and ending up @ 10, so a 6/12 cpu is plenty good atm, and 4/8 cpus can suffer a little on heavier titles. As long as there's sufficient IPC.

Which makes the 12100 extremely good value for what it is, with lesser cpus making up in thread count a balance, to a point. In simple math, if a cpu had an IPC of 100 and a speed of 3.8GHz, that'd be 380 G instructions per second. A cpu with 50 IPC would need to be at 7.6GHz to get the same amount of instructions per second, same fps. Since the FX is only going from 4.0GGz to 4.6GHz OC, you end up closer to moving from 100G to 150G, not 380G, so relative fps is in the toilet, very little gains seen overall, even with a hefty OC. Simply not enough gains to warrant spending money on other than for a nostalgia project.

Years ago, when the FX was newer and still somewhat competitive to Intel, a jump of 10-20fps with OC was a good thing, but when a modern cpu is starting out 50-100 fps higher than the better OC fps, moving from 100fps to 120fps isn't nearly worth the price of starting out at 150-200fps in the same game, for roughly the same amount of money.
 

Davidino

Commendable
Feb 17, 2022
222
5
1,585
The biggest issue ppl had with the FX were the temps. There is no such thing as cpu temp but yet ppl are so ingrained by Intel, the 70° is the cutoff and it has to be an actual number they can understand that they ran into trouble. The FX cpus are literally physically built without any means of reading a temp.

Instead, they use a thermal margin that winds down to Zero. Amd Overdrive. It's an algorithm created to take the core loads, voltages, amount of cores, package temp and some other values and come up with a range of heat. So you could run a heavy load with several cores and get a value of 20 or run a light load maxing 2 cores and get the same 20. Doesn't mean you are at 20°, or have 20° before maxed out, simply means 20 and it's plenty above Zero.

So when overclocking, you'd push every core to its max, and hopefully end up anywhere above Zero, the actual number wasn't important, just it's relative placement above Zero. Generally idle was in the 40's, windows working 30's, heavier app working 20's, gaming teens, stress tests in the single digits.

Overclocking is not a cure for stutters. Ever. In Battlefield 4, the 8350 was 2nd best fps, right behind the i7-4790k, and significantly ahead of the i5-4690k, even overclocked, and the results got better after @ 4.0GHz. Some say that was a fluke, but it's really a precursor, BF4 was the first game to leverage cores vs speeds, like more modern games, unlike prior games that leveraged core speeds vs limited cores, which Intel excelled at.

The FX sucked at CSGO, simply because that game is closed, only uses 2 cores, no rollover, so is highly Intel bound, higher IPC rules. And the FX generally had @ 66% of the IPC of a 3rd gen Intel. So gaming experience changed depending on the game.

The biggest problem was the time gap between FX and Ryzen, Intel just got stronger and better between 4th Gen and 9th Gen and FX did nothing, even if gaming experience did somewhat increase as more games followed in BF4 design. But with complexity, and need for IPC gains, that didn't last long. Now most games are open ended, will use 1 master core and as many supporting cores as needed, generally starting at 4 and ending up @ 10, so a 6/12 cpu is plenty good atm, and 4/8 cpus can suffer a little on heavier titles. As long as there's sufficient IPC.

Which makes the 12100 extremely good value for what it is, with lesser cpus making up in thread count a balance, to a point. In simple math, if a cpu had an IPC of 100 and a speed of 3.8GHz, that'd be 380 G instructions per second. A cpu with 50 IPC would need to be at 7.6GHz to get the same amount of instructions per second, same fps. Since the FX is only going from 4.0GGz to 4.6GHz OC, you end up closer to moving from 100G to 150G, not 380G, so relative fps is in the toilet, very little gains seen overall, even with a hefty OC. Simply not enough gains to warrant spending money on other than for a nostalgia project.

Years ago, when the FX was newer and still somewhat competitive to Intel, a jump of 10-20fps with OC was a good thing, but when a modern cpu is starting out 50-100 fps higher than the better OC fps, moving from 100fps to 120fps isn't nearly worth the price of starting out at 150-200fps in the same game, for roughly the same amount of money.
Wow, this was very well explained thank you. So if im correct the fx has high speed but not the raw power. And overclocking it would just make it go faster and not increase core strength that much.
 

DavidM012

Distinguished
Yes. Also your i5-9400t is only a six core six thread cpu so not future proof in the way you said you'd like though it has a higher single core score than the fx so a higher IPC and the same multithreaded score so all things not being equal it's stronger cpu for gaming. The multithreaded score is simply the single thread score x no of threads.

So the choices you have at the moment are if you can manage to find an 1151 mobo and ddr4 memory for about $100 you could use the 9500t rather than spending about $100 on a decent cooler to overclock the fx. (Which you could get to 4.8ghz probably, not 5ghz and certainly not 7ghz.). It is however still behind the times.

Also a power supply that's better than a corsair vs which you'll need anyway which will be around $100 for when you decide to upgrade your GPU so $200 so far + GPU later.

If you decide to go for a b660 board and an i3-12100 and some ddr4 memory well kind of opens the floodgates a bit since you might want a little more with a 12400f or something and then if you're gonna do that you might also want to consider a ryzen 5000 series like a 5700x is 30% more cpu than the 12400f.

The point where you decide to buy into the market is pretty much the point you'll be locked into far as upgrades are concerned. Zen 2 & 3 and intel 12th and 13th gen are not now going to have any new cpus in future.

You could also opt for a ddr 5 version mobo if you go with Alder lake (i3-12100, i5-12400) although at the moment ddr5 isn't impacting gaming much. It's pretty much buy a new PC now or fritter odds and ends on getting your 9500t working, and save up for a more or less entirely new pc later.

Your shopping list seems to be, mobo, mem, power supply, maybe cpu and gpu, also maybe an nvme drive if you don't have one already.
 

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
Wow, this was very well explained thank you. So if im correct the fx has high speed but not the raw power. And overclocking it would just make it go faster and not increase core strength that much.
Exactly. The FX was pretty powerful, back in the day, but that's comparing a 5yr old to a 6yr old in the playground. Compared to today's cpus, that same 5yr old is going up against a full grown man. Even overclocking to give it a 6yr olds ability is still chump change in comparison.

The FX 8350 currently holds the world record (afaik) as the fastest cpu at 8.79GHz at 2.064v on LN2 (liquid nitrogen).
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Dark Lord of Tech

DavidM012

Distinguished
13900k beat it by 90mhz (Techpowerup).

*Intel releases the B760 boards and locked cpus this January such as the i5 13400 / 13400F and i7 13700 / 13700F.

The last batch of 13th gen is nearly ready and will change the picture somewhat so giving it a bit of time to explore the market can't hurt.
 

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
8.812GHz - 8.79GHz = 0.022GHz. The score TPU used is from the FX-8370, not the FX-8350, which was 8.722GHz, so realistically the Intel 13900k finally beat up on a record by 22MHz set by a cpu that was released by AMD, 10 years ago this month.

Intel has been claiming to have the fasted cpus for years, they lied. That's been AMD, with more than 1 cpu, for years. Intel can finally be honest about their claims.