Rammage Question 4 a64

airetam_storm

I read in some of the skickys that pc3200 pc3700 are good 4 overclocking on a64s but someone else told me the higher the rating the better 4 overcloking on all systems
Whos right?

BeatFreak

Problem with A64's is they don't like to be overclocked, they generally only do about 200mhz on air and not a whole lot more on H2O or compression cooling. So your better off with some nice low latency PC3200 or 3500 (if you can get it) and even if you find your ram is holding back your OC just loosen the timings on the ram and it should cope with the increased bandwidth. Problem with high bandwidth ram is you generally have to trade off the bandwidth for tight timings and so you need to find a happy medium

airetam_storm

how do i loosen ram timings?

OfflerCrocGod

BeatFreak wrote:

Problem with A64's is they don't like to be overclocked, they generally only do about 200mhz on air and not a whole lot more on H2O or compression cooling

What? Sorry BeatFreak but I have to disagree ( and I doubt I'd be the only one ) Athlon 64s can be OCed very nicely it's just that to get good OCs you can't just kick the FSB up and leave it at that, you need to tweak the HT speeds and it's multipliers and mess around with RAM ratios maybe even increase the HT ( VT or VLT voltage ) chips voltage ( if you are lucky enough to have a MB that can do that ) you afto figure out how far your HT bus will go before breaking etc... In short Athlon64 OCing is different from normal OCing but once you've got the hang of the tweaks you can get good OCs out of the Athlon 64.

Jammer

i have PC3200 and have a 400mhz overclock. could probably get more if i upped the voltage a bit more.

my ram is set on a divider of 5:6...running at 166 [hence 197mhz with the overclock] so my ram is actually underclocked (rated at 200mhz). If i had of bought PC3700 (i think its 3700) i could be running my ram at 1:1 with the chip. Its not too much of a performance loss to worry about. I didnt know i would be getting watercooling when i was buying the ram.

Col_Loki

What? Sorry BeatFreak but I have to disagree ( and I doubt I'd be the only one ) Athlon 64s can be OCed very nicely it's just that to get good OCs you can't just kick the FSB up and leave it at that, you need to tweak the HT speeds and it's multipliers and mess around with RAM ratios maybe even increase the HT ( VT or VLT voltage ) chips voltage ( if you are lucky enough to have a MB that can do that ) you afto figure out how far your HT bus will go before breaking etc... In short Athlon64 OCing is different from normal OCing but once you've got the hang of the tweaks you can get good OCs out of the Athlon 64.

Yea things have changed for the better with the new steppings, they still dont overclock as much as the P4's do but when you consider the MHZ's are worth more on the A64 it works out pretty simular.

And definetly agree with Offler, the A64 can be akward to overclock on ..... but it has the added advantage of downwardly unlocked multiplier and no real performance loss by running the Ram out of sync with the CPU.

I would agree with Beat that the A64 is better with tight timings, its a gaming CPU (an excellent allrounder but thats its best side) and tight timings means more performance in games. They are known for getting pretty decent FSB (HTT) speeds with very low timings also ............

Jammer you would try upping the HTT mhz more and dropping the multiplier and still use the 6:5 HTT:RAM divider........ so you could run your Ram faster?

Jammer

Col_Loki wrote:

Jammer you would try upping the HTT mhz more and dropping the multiplier and still use the 6:5 HTT:RAM divider........ so you could run your Ram faster?

would the performance gain warrant a trip to the bios? Would the difference be noticeable? If i loosen the timings could i get it to 237mhz? Its pretty decent RAM afaik

I have read that uping the voltages to 1.8V is safe enough if you have decent cooling. I'm not so sure. I've read that if the AMD64's get into difficulty, they atuomatically lower the multi themselves and run at speeds belowe 1GHZ untill its fixed....I dunno though, i seem to have gotten a decent overclockable chip, dont want to fry it

Col_Loki

Well if you were to use the 10.5multi x 248mhz HTT that would give you 2.6ghz and running the Ram 6:5 would run your Ram at 206mhz.......

Or pushing it a little more 10x260mhz, 6:5 = 216mhz on the Ram. Ie find what speed she can do with tight timings and work out the HTT and Multi and Divider to keep the 2.6ghz but run the Ram faster......... if you get what i mean!! (might have to drop the multi to 3x, but that should be fine).

Jammer

Col_Loki wrote:

Well if you were to use the 10.5multi x 248mhz HTT that would give you 2.6ghz and running the Ram 6:5 would run your Ram at 206mhz.......

Or pushing it a little more 10x260mhz, 6:5 = 216mhz on the Ram. Ie find what speed she can do with tight timings and work out the HTT and Multi and Divider to keep the 2.6ghz but run the Ram faster......... if you get what i mean!! (might have to drop the multi to 3x, but that should be fine).

Genius

Jammer

wont boot over 240FSB. The northbridge is passively cooled, maybe thats why.

I have it at 240 x 11 now, which is 2640mhz....a nice and even number.

That brings the RAM up to 200mhz...i also tightened the timings to 2-3-3-5, and everything seems to be in order.

Col_Loki

Did you try with the HT @ 3x ? The board should do 250mhz and over, did you also try the 10x (i know its a long shot but my multi's on the NF7 are wierd like that, ie higher FSB with different multi's).

ViperVenoM

bitch i cant even get past 237fsb no matter what i do...i see water cooling is gonna be closer than i thought :eek:

Col_Loki

What stepping do you have Venom?

Jammer

everytime i boot with 3x i end up having to clear the Cmos...i did it there about an hour ago, never again!! I have to take out my sound card and mess with the 'plumping' to get at the cmos jumper!!

i'm at 240 x 11 now, the ram is at 2-3-3-5....think i'll stay where i am

440mhz on an AMD isn't too bad!!

Col_Loki

i'm at 240 x 11 now, the ram is at 2-3-3-5....think i'll stay where i am

Yea well thats pretty damm decent right there anyway!! Odd about the 3x doing that, it normally helps things along.

ViperVenoM

stepping...hmm ive only heard that term used on the cpu crap that u find out in cpu-z or something...

my ram has decide to screw up on me now though..i tried 240x10..put the timings back down to 2.5-4-4-8 ...nothing..cleared the cmos and now it will only do 230

so im stuck at 2.5-3-3-5 @ 230fsb @ 2.65v...i reckon my airflow probably stinks though..the front fan of the thermaltake case..its right behind 2 doors..how the hell can it suck any air in unless i leave the door open all day showing the crappy insides

so its 230x10.5 for me at the moment...the more i read the more im tempted to go for watercooling..then ill stick the cpu voltage up and see what that can do..id rather have 230x12 or something than 250x10 so the cpu is more important to me ...bah i tell you...id never heard of overclocking last year...now im obsessed! :eek:

airetam_storm

I'm prob missing something but HT on AMDs?

Jammer

not hyperthreading

airetam_storm

What does that one stand for?

Everything in computers has to have at least two meanings :mad:

BloodBath

Hyper transport. It's not the same thing at all.


BloodBath

grimloch

what does hyper transport achieve?

OfflerCrocGod

grimloch wrote:

what does hyper transport achieve?

It increases the amount of bandwidth available to the CPU and memory so that the communication channels between them are not clogged ( thereby becoming a bottleneck ). A switch in the middle of all these chips routes traffic around ( it's a point to point packet switched network ). It's kinda like PCI-e. CPU wants to talk to RAM it sends packets to the HT switch which then sends them on to RAM, and vice versa. The CPU can also talk to the PCI devices using this switch. They talk back to it using the switch. Meaning to increase the amount of bandwith between these devices you increase the HT speed ( it doesn't like that, that's why ppl at first could not OC the Athlon64 properly the HT switch is not good at OCing )

airetam_storm

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

Meaning to increase the amount of bandwith between these devices you increase the HT speed ( it doesn't like that, that's why ppl at first could not OC the Athlon64 properly the HT switch is not good at OCing )

Howd they get around that?

OfflerCrocGod

airetam_storm wrote:

Howd they get around that?

You lower the HT multiplier ( you know the x3 x4 x2 value in BIOS? ) The base frequency is 200Mhz, by the way if anyone thinks that pushing the HT speed as high as possible will increase performance that would be wrong so don't bother ( it's much faster as it is - think about the difference between ATA-100 and SATA-150, doesn't matter cause HDD can't saturate ATA-100, as of yet ) The speed of the HT bus between the CPU and the RAM is worked out by the FSB and the divider ( hence just simply pushing up the FSB will also OC the HT - which doesn't like it and therefore will fail the OC )