Overclocking AMD Opteron C32/G34

[HeyItsChris]

To start out I bought the Supermicro H8SCM-F which will be paired initially with 16 gigabytes of DDR3-1600 Micron Non-ECC ram but will later upgrade to 64-128 gigabytes of DDR3-1600 Registered ECC ram.  Not to mention the CPU(s) I bought are the AMD Opteron 4122 Quad-Core for initial BIOS flashing purposes to get it working with the other CPU I bought, the AMD Opteron 4284 Octa-Core CPU.  I think the BIOS needs to be updated on the Supermicro H8SCM-F before it will work with the 4284 CPU.

 

My question is, how would I go about overclocking this CPU the 4284?  

Later on I'll buy the Supermicro H8SGL-F Socket G34 board to use with the AMD Opteron 6386 SE 16-cores Hexadeca-Core CPU.  I want to overclock these CPU's to get more performance out of them.

What kinds of CInebench R15 multi scores can we guess the 4284 will get & the 6386 SE Single-Socket Configuration?

Thanks

[Avacado]

1 hour ago, HeyItsChris said:

To start out I bought the Supermicro H8SCM-F which will be paired initially with 16 gigabytes of DDR3-1600 Micron Non-ECC ram but will later upgrade to 64-128 gigabytes of DDR3-1600 Registered ECC ram.  Not to mention the CPU(s) I bought are the AMD Opteron 4122 Quad-Core for initial BIOS flashing purposes to get it working with the other CPU I bought, the AMD Opteron 4284 Octa-Core CPU.  I think the BIOS needs to be updated on the Supermicro H8SCM-F before it will work with the 4284 CPU.

 

My question is, how would I go about overclocking this CPU the 4284?  

Later on I'll buy the Supermicro H8SGL-F Socket G34 board to use with the AMD Opteron 6386 SE 16-cores Hexadeca-Core CPU.  I want to overclock these CPU's to get more performance out of them.

What kinds of CInebench R15 multi scores can we guess the 4284 will get & the 6386 SE Single-Socket Configuration?

Thanks

First off, welcome to the forums. I wish I could help you here, but I have no idea about Opterons. I would assume if the multiplier can't be changed then FSB OC would be the preferred method. Off the top of my head @pioneerisloud should be able to point you in the right direction. 

Edited March 16, 2022 by Avacado

[HeyItsChris]

@Avacado Thanks buddy.  Hopefully @pioneerisloud May chime in here if he gets notified about me tagging him.  Maybe I should define the PLL chip on the board & use SetFSB?

[Avacado]

7 minutes ago, HeyItsChris said:

@Avacado Thanks buddy.  Hopefully @pioneerisloud May chime in here if he gets notified about me tagging him.  Maybe I should define the PLL chip on the board & use SetFSB?

Without knowing anything about the chip, that would be my first attempt. Just make sure you are adjusting your RAM and Cache (NB/SB) accordingly. FSB OC effects all three. 

Edited March 16, 2022 by Avacado

[ENTERPRISE]

3 hours ago, HeyItsChris said:

To start out I bought the Supermicro H8SCM-F which will be paired initially with 16 gigabytes of DDR3-1600 Micron Non-ECC ram but will later upgrade to 64-128 gigabytes of DDR3-1600 Registered ECC ram.  Not to mention the CPU(s) I bought are the AMD Opteron 4122 Quad-Core for initial BIOS flashing purposes to get it working with the other CPU I bought, the AMD Opteron 4284 Octa-Core CPU.  I think the BIOS needs to be updated on the Supermicro H8SCM-F before it will work with the 4284 CPU.

 

My question is, how would I go about overclocking this CPU the 4284?  

Later on I'll buy the Supermicro H8SGL-F Socket G34 board to use with the AMD Opteron 6386 SE 16-cores Hexadeca-Core CPU.  I want to overclock these CPU's to get more performance out of them.

What kinds of CInebench R15 multi scores can we guess the 4284 will get & the 6386 SE Single-Socket Configuration?

Thanks

Welcome to EHW!

 

I could be wrong as its been a while since I messed with FSB , but too much adjustment the wrong way can cause issues with the PCI-E Bus and cause issues with devices connected. Just something to talk into consideration. 

[pio]

That particular Opteron chip is going to be basically a Bulldozer or Piledriver 8 core under the hood.  It depends on your motherboard, most of the server boards really don't allow overclocking.  I'm leaning more towards Bulldozer, and the 6000 series being Piledriver, but I'd have to really sit down and compare them again lol.

 

You mentioned SetFSB, you can try that out.  I wouldn't expect to get much higher than like 210-215 FSB with it though before you start having issues.  Like others have mentioned, when you use software to overclock the FSB on these, it raises everything with it including SATA, PCIe, RAM, everything.  With no way to lock the chipset out of the equation, you're not going to get TOOO terribly far.  Not saying its impossible, I used to get 4.5GHz out of my Celeron 352 waaaay back in the day using Clockgen (like SetFSB).  Helped me get the #9 spot world record on hwbot for Opteron 165's back in the day too.   

 

But yeah, I think software is probably going to be about your best bet for overclocking.  Otherwise, just enjoy them for what they are I guess.  The 16 core Opterons you're looking at are most definitely Piledriver based being released in 2012, the Opteron 6386 SE's.  Again, those aren't unlocked so your only option again would be using FSB to overclock them.

 

Pretty rad setup for an FX era build if I must be honest.  I'm really pleased with my FX 8350 still in 2022, I couldn't imagine having double the cores available.  Unless you specifically are requiring that particular build, I'd honestly look towards maybe some Broadwell era Xeons instead of the FX if you're after something with higher IPC but still a server type board.  It really depends on your usages here though too.  A desktop setup might be better suited.  Hard to say.

 

Edited March 17, 2022 by pioneerisloud

[HeyItsChris]

Thanks everyone for the replies.  I'll update this thread when I get my parts in & start building the C32 8-core Opteron system to start.

Thanks again,

Chris

[pio]

5 hours ago, HeyItsChris said:

Thanks everyone for the replies.  I'll update this thread when I get my parts in & start building the C32 8-core Opteron system to start.

Thanks again,

Chris

Looking at your build list in your signature there, with 128GB of DDR3.......I'd almost lean more towards a Broadwell Xeon setup.  You can score two 16 core / 32 thread CPU's for pretty cheap, and the dual Socket 2011 Supermicro boards aren't TOO expensive.  It's what I decided to run in my server setup.  Broadwell has halfway decent IPC, and upwards of 16c per CPU for multithread.

 

If you're more after multithreaded uses though, honestly your choice in Opterons isn't bad.  No offense meant, but the Intels are a little bit faster overall.  It all just boils down to your budget, your intended uses, and well...whatever YOU want to buy.   I was actually looking at the 6000 series Opterons when I built mine.  I don't recall if it was a PCIe lane situation that drew me more towards the 2011 setup, or if it was IPC.  I kind of needed both plenty of PCIe lanes AND the IPC (for game server usages).  Had I gone more for media only uses like my server setup used to be for.....I might have gone the Opteron route.  Server rig before this was an FX 8320 at 4.0GHz, and the one I had before that was a Xeon 1275 v2 (Ivy Bridge 3770 basically, on a desktop board).  Obviously I made a big jump with the dual 2011, but even still I'm noticing limitations.

 

 

[HeyItsChris]

@pioneerisloudThat Dual Xeon rig looks so sick bro.  What case is that, is it 4U Chassis or something?  I'm not terribly familiar with the server chassis but I do know the 1U & 2U are a bit smaller.

 

By the way, I used to run dual xeons x5675s with 48 gigabytes of ram & it scored 1,505 points on Cinebench R15 multi.  I'm sure my Opteron 4386 rig won't touch it on Cinebench but I heard something about the Core's being not the best for integer math or something along those lines.  I'm all about #AMD these days so I wouldn't go #Intel ever again likely.  I'm loving #AMD so much these days.

 

By the way what's the maximum GPU I can run on this H8SCM-F supermicro board?  I hear they won't work with Navi architecture, so I'm stuck with Polaris I guess huh?

[pio]

7 hours ago, HeyItsChris said:

@pioneerisloudThat Dual Xeon rig looks so sick bro.  What case is that, is it 4U Chassis or something?  I'm not terribly familiar with the server chassis but I do know the 1U & 2U are a bit smaller.

 

By the way, I used to run dual xeons x5675s with 48 gigabytes of ram & it scored 1,505 points on Cinebench R15 multi.  I'm sure my Opteron 4386 rig won't touch it on Cinebench but I heard something about the Core's being not the best for integer math or something along those lines.  I'm all about #AMD these days so I wouldn't go #Intel ever again likely.  I'm loving #AMD so much these days.

 

By the way what's the maximum GPU I can run on this H8SCM-F supermicro board?  I hear they won't work with Navi architecture, so I'm stuck with Polaris I guess huh?

Thanks, spent a great portion of my spare income in 2020 on it.    The case is a 4u chassis from plinkusa.  I don't even remember how I found them, but they have all sorts of neat server rack chassis'.  I have two, one with my NAS and a pair of 6 core Xeons I think, and the other one (pictured) has the 16c parts for VM's.

 

You should check out my storage closet.......I have an AMD / ATI build from (almost) every generation.  Not a fanboy mind you, just was the easiest way to accomplish my goal of one rig per generation.   AMD makes some great hardware, they always have.  You really can't go wrong with those Opterons, just know that single core IPC will be a little bit greater on a comparable Intel, that's all.

 

Maximum GPU, well I mean you can try whatever you want in there........lol.  With my FX 8350 setup, I quite literally cannot tell a difference between a 290x, RX 580, or my 5700XT, they all perform the same (CPU bottlenecked).  So I really wouldn't advise going past Polaris anyway really.  I can't say there's NO difference, the 8GB RX 580 performs slightly better than my 4GB 290x, but I feel that's probably VRAM moreso than architecture.  Granted you'll have a lot more cores than I have on my FX rig, IPC will be lower though since you're not at 4.8GHz.  So on games (or tasks that are lightly threaded), you won't see any difference anyway.  Rendering you might see a difference, but again, not sure if anything past Polaris will even work.  I've never tried on those G34 boards.  I wanted one, but yeah never really took the plunge.

 

Either way, should be an incredibly fun project!  I hope to see pictures of that madness soon!

[HeyItsChris]

Thanks man.  Yeah I'm first gonna start with C32 to see what it's all about then build a G34 system afterward. 

 

PS - I added a PCIe USB 3.0 card with USB 3.0 front panel header but the BIOS doesn't detect flash drives plugged into it so I cannot boot from drives plugged in it.  Do you have any experience with this?  The BIOS is from a FM1 socket Gigabyte GA-A55M-S2V motherboard from which I am testing it on.

 

thanks

 

Description:

Specifications:
Type: 2 External USB3.0 Port + Internal 19Pin Header Expansion Card
Chipset: for VIA-VL805 Q6
Bus Modes: PCI-E x1
Compatible Slot: PCI-E x1/x4/x8/x16
USB Interface: 2 External USB3.0 Port + 19Pin Header(2 Internal USB3.0 Port)
Transfer Rate: USB3.0 5Gb/s

Edited March 17, 2022 by HeyItsChris

[HeyItsChris]

Hi.  So I got the Supermicro H8SCM-F board in & it came with a Six-Core 4180 Opteron 2.6Ghz & a copper heatsink free.  I barely paid anything for the board which came with a cpu & heatsink.  Anyway I cannot get the ram to run at 800mhz or DDR3-1600, it's only working at 1333Mhz.  Is that a 4180 limitation?  The board support DDR3-1866 from within the BIOS Setup page.  I'm loving this C32 Opteron though so far but I need to get the 4386 3.8Ghz Eight-Core chip in soon so I can get much better performance in game.

 

[pio]

6 minutes ago, HeyItsChris said:

Hi.  So I got the Supermicro H8SCM-F board in & it came with a Six-Core 4180 Opteron 2.6Ghz & a copper heatsink free.  I barely paid anything for the board which came with a cpu & heatsink.  Anyway I cannot get the ram to run at 800mhz or DDR3-1600, it's only working at 1333Mhz.  Is that a 4180 limitation?  The board support DDR3-1866 from within the BIOS Setup page.  I'm loving this C32 Opteron though so far but I need to get the 4386 3.8Ghz Eight-Core chip in soon so I can get much better performance in game.

 

Yes, your memory speed problem is CPU related, the Opteron 4180 only supports up to DDR3-1333 ECC RAM.  My Xeons are similar, I have a set of Haswell era Xeons in my NAS and they only allow I believe DDR3-1600 speeds?  Might've been 1866.  And my Broadwell setup allows DDR3-2133.  Both setups have the same exact RAM sticks installed, have the same exact motherboards, but only the Broadwell will work with the full speed.  Opterons would do the same, since its still a Supermicro board, and since the IMC is still on the die itself.

 

As to the USB 3 issue you're having with booting from the add on card, I have had a similar problem.  I never was able to resolve it, I just resorted to booting off my motherboard's built in USB 2.0 slots.  In my instance, once OS was installed with drivers, my add on card started working, but my BIOS was never able to boot off it.  There might be a way with editing BIOS's, however that's outside of my areas.

[HeyItsChris]

@pioneerisloudThanks man.  I'm using Non-ECC unbuffered Micron Desktop RAM in the Opteron system now, just 16 gigabytes since it's all I could afford.  I'm building like 3-4 systems all at once on a tiny budget.

 

By the way here's a picture of the setup.  I need to order more parts like a PSU & other parts are on the way like the case.

 

 

 

[pio]

 

Don't even sweat it, we've ALL been there.  It's an illness that we all have, I swear.  I've built rigs inside of cardboard boxes before.  My budget is always tight, that's why I don't have a shiny new Ryzen 5000 series or RX 6000 series GPU.  But man I have a whole bunch of "useless" old junk laying around!

 

Your build looks fine for a tech bench type setup.  I have several setups on my shelf right now that I probably SHOULD try out, just like you have there.  I'm just lazy and don't want to since I ran into a problem with my last build that I've been working on.  I've been working backwards in age, I'm currently working on getting an old Athlon-XP to work, so that's the one giving me headaches lately. -_-  After that one, I have a P3 era Thunderbird to build, and a P2 era AMD K6 to build.  I have Socket 939, AM2, AM2+, AM3, and a couple AM4's built and fully functional.

 

Still super intrigued by those Opteron setups.  I think my little "projects" is why everyone was tagging me earlier.   Been building rigs since the late 90's, but only just now (well in 2020) decided I wanted to actually KEEP one of every gen.  So I'm kind of refreshed on older stuff, but not entirely lol.  I know just enough about everything, but not enough about one thing in particular.

[HeyItsChris]

@pioneerisloudI love that haha me too I love having the experience of every generation, just to feel out the architecture & what not.  I've never built an AM3+ FX-8100 or anything with an unlocked multiplier on AM3+ yet & would love to try it out but it's so much more expensive than going the AMD Opteron route.  

 

Soon enough I'll have the rig in a case & on my way to building the 16-core AMD Opteron which I believe scores nearly 1,000 points Cinebench R15 multi on a single CPU which is really nice.

 

*PS - I'm stoked to compare the architectural differences between Opteron 4200-series "Valencia" (32 nm) & Opteron 4300-series "Seoul" (32 nm).  Were only talking 0.1Ghz difference between the 4284 & the 4386 but they are so f*ing cheap I had to test them all out.  I'll end up building a rig for each individual CPU I bought or I may just build 4 systems with 4386s to sell for fun* 

Edited March 19, 2022 by HeyItsChris

[bonami2]

My 4790k at 4.7 was doing about 950 r15 and 965 at 4.9 i think.

 

If you want to switch to intel the x79 and x99 bundle are cheapppp on Aliexpress. Cheap board but i had two and they worked fine except usb 3.0 driver that are crap.

 

FX cpu do score higher than intel counterpart in integer benchmark of the same years. But most software is floating point. 

 

I remember a video on youtube that the 8350 vs 4770k and the fx was beating the intel while recording and gaming at the same time.

 

Edited March 19, 2022 by bonami2

[HeyItsChris]

Cool dude, yeah these days I only buy AMD.  Once Intel comes out with 3 threads per core is when I'll switch back to Intel.  Until then AMD plans on bringing 3-4 threads per core soon enough.  

 

 

 

[bonami2]

4 minutes ago, HeyItsChris said:

Cool dude, yeah these days I only buy AMD.  Once Intel comes out with 3 threads per core is when I'll switch back to Intel.  Until then AMD plans on bringing 3-4 threads per core soon enough.  

 

 

 

Should arrive pretty fast with intel Big/Little design. Was time since the i7 980 that 6 core was released then 8 core with the 5960x.

 

And amd FX

 

Edited March 19, 2022 by bonami2

[HeyItsChris]

So I have a question about the VGA output on the Supermicro H8SCM-F Matrox G200eW (Nuvoton) WDDM 1.2.  The only driver I could find that would work on Windows 11 x64 was Windows Server 2012 x64 & it only goes up to 1280x1024 & is very laggy video on the desktop.  Is there a better driver available?

 

PCI\VEN_102B&DEV_0532&SUBSYS_BA1115D9&REV_0A
 

 

Maybe I'll try DevID.info

 

 

 

Edited March 20, 2022 by HeyItsChris

[pio]

It's a Matrox 2D video accelerator from like the 1990's lol.  It's going to be laggy.  Look at your DAC speed, 175MHz.  That's like GeForce 2 / ATI Radeon 7000 series from way back in the day speeds.  My AGP 4x ATI Radeon 8500 is clocked at 250MHz / 250MHz for comparison using DX8.1.  Be happy you found a driver that even worked on Win11 lol.  I think mine on my Xeon setups are just using a generic Microsoft Display Adapter driver just because that's all I could find for Win10.  I don't use the video outputs at all though except troubleshooting.

 

EDIT:
Yeah, the Matrox G200 is from 1998 and features 8MB of SGRAM onboard.  It's one of the VERY FIRST 3d accelerators ever, so yeah.....its basically a fancy 2d accelerator lol.  Source where I found date below, the rest of the specs can be found on wiki if you search "Matrox G200".  You're going to be hard pressed to get those to function AT ALL for daily tasks today using modern Windows outside of viewing the desktop and troubleshooting.

Exploring the G200 - Matrox Millennium G200

WWW.ANANDTECH.COM

 

Edited March 20, 2022 by pioneerisloud

[HeyItsChris]

Thanks but according to some people on the FreeBSD (Whatever that means?) forums say it could at least output 1920x1080 16 bit color over VGA.  Also according to Supermicro it has 16MB DDR2 dedicated video memory.  I think it's my operating system causing the issues possibly.

VGA	Matrox G200eW 16MB DDR2

Change resolution to 1600x1200 on integrated Matrox MGA G200e in D2939 Fujitsu motherboard | Page 2 | The FreeBSD Forums

 

I think they use this command line like this, it says in the thread.  However, I wouldn't even know where to begin...

Try these in loader.conf(5):

Code:

screen.textmode="0"
vbe_max_resolution="1920x1080"

 

Code:

           screen.textmode
                     Value “0” will trigger BIOS loader to switch to use VESA
                     BIOS Extension (VBE) frame buffer mode for console.  The
                     same effect can be achieved by setting
                     vbe_max_resolution.

                     Value “1” will force BIOS loader to use VGA text mode.

                     If vbe_max_resolution is not set, the loader will try to
                     set screen resolution based on EDID information.  If EDID
                     is not available, the default resolution is 800x600 (if
                     available).

Code:

           vbe_max_resolution
                     Specify the maximum desired resolution for the EFI or VBE
                     framebuffer console.  The following values are accepted:

                     Value           Resolution
                     480p            640x480
                     720p            1280x720
                     1080p           1920x1080
                     2160p           3840x2160
                     4k              3840x2160
                     5k              5120x2880
                     WidthxHeight    WidthxHeight

Edited March 20, 2022 by HeyItsChris

[pio]

I don't know, mine couldn't do that either.  I believe I was stuck at 1280x1024 with mine.  Running Windows 10.  I just accepted its limitations and didn't need it anyway lol.  I have a 17" 4:3 / 1280x1024 screen attached to the rack anyway since its what I had laying around for the server box lol.  I really really doubt its DDR2 memory onboard, but I suppose it could be.  The originals were 8MB of SGRAM, hard telling what server board manufacturers have done to them over the years.  It's still only 16MB, that's going to be tough to get a higher resolution out of regardless.  Modernized or not, the core is still from 1998.  Didn't know Windows 11 could even function with 16bit color either, Windows 10 doesn't have the option to drop it that low on mine.  You might be stuck with whatever 32bit color options the card allows, or going with a different OS maybe.

 

Not entirely sure, you're attempting to do things I gave up on since I can just toss a GPU in if I need it lol.  Not saying its a bad thing, by all means rock on!  This is how drivers get tweaked, and fixed, even on old ancient systems.

 

On the plus side, if you're using it actually as a server type system, you can RDP into it and get whatever resolution you want remotely without the Matrox being bothered at all.  So there is that.

[HeyItsChris]

Thanks man.  So what is the best GPU do you think this board can support?  AMD in particular.  Also yeah I have pretty well given up on the Matrox.  I'm waiting on a GPU in the mail for the system since i had to RMA my RX 6600 XT & I had to put my RX 480 in my Ryzen 3700X system for the time being.  I plan on turning this Opteron 4386 system into a gaming system.  Right now it has a super-weak 2.6Ghz Opteron 4180 which was surpassed by my other FM1 socket system which has a 3.5Ghz overclocked AMD A6-3670K CPU in it.

 

Would you say the Supermicro board, the H8SCM-F is Legacy non-uefi BIOS?   Is that the limitation why it cannot accept for instance a 6600 XT?

Thanks

[pio]

21 minutes ago, HeyItsChris said:

Thanks man.  So what is the best GPU do you think this board can support?  AMD in particular.  Also yeah I have pretty well given up on the Matrox.  I'm waiting on a GPU in the mail for the system since i had to RMA my RX 6600 XT & I had to put my RX 480 in my Ryzen 3700X system for the time being.  I plan on turning this Opteron 4386 system into a gaming system.  Right now it has a super-weak 2.6Ghz Opteron 4180 which was surpassed by my other FM1 socket system which has a 3.5Ghz overclocked AMD A6-3670K CPU in it.

 

Would you say the Supermicro board, the H8SCM-F is Legacy non-uefi BIOS?   Is that the limitation why it cannot accept for instance a 6600 XT?

Thanks

Yes, its most definitely a "legacy" BIOS.  I know you can get RX 480's and RX 580's to work on legacy systems with some BIOS mods.  Not sure about anything newer than those though, never tried with my 5700XT.........yet.  The 6600XT, yeah that one probably won't work.  Depends fully on how old of a "legacy" BIOS it is really.  I have legacy systems that won't even work with an HD7970.  Others (like my servers) seem to work fine with my RX580's.  I have used an RX 580 in my own server setup which is of similar age (also Supermicro).

 

If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say Polaris is the upper end of compatibility.  But if you're getting another 6600XT back from RMA, there's no reason why you can't try it!  Worst case, it won't work.  

Edited March 20, 2022 by pioneerisloud