Overclocking an Athlon64 3000?

Kintarō Hattori

Hey Guys,

I've never overclocked my processor ever! Not one that I've ever owned, so I thought I might as well bring myself up to date and learn how! I've looked around the net but not found anything concrete or that wasn't overly complicated to follow.

I thought it was just a question of upping the voltage to the cpu and increasing the cpu FSB in increments, but it seems that I'm wrong. I was talking to a mate of mine, who told me that there are about 5 steps in total, to do it properly including adjusting the hypertransport multiplier (didn't know it had one!!).

I have a decent enough Abit AN8-V motherboard which will let me mess around with the settings required. I also have some decent enough cooling and airflow going on, so I think it's just a question of taking it slowly.

I'm not asking you guys to tell me step by step (though I wouldn't complain). If you have any links to how to do it properly I'd be most grateful. I'd just appreciate some quality coherant help.

Dman_15

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28049


all you need right there. It has the basics in 5 steps i think

Kintarō Hattori

Thanks for that. I'll give it a go, though I'll admit it's 50% gobble-de-gook to me! I think I'll be taking things veryyyy easy!

DemonOfTheFall

What stepping is your 3000+ ?
Newcastle, Winchester or Venice ?

Newcastle = good luck with much of an overclock without great cooling
Winchester = probably hit at least 2.2
Venice = 2.7ghz isn't unusual.

Kintarō Hattori

Hmnn I'm not sure, I haven't actually checked as I haven't thought about overclocking up to this point. I suspect it's a Winchester, though I'll confirm that when I get home tonight.

DemonOfTheFall

CPU-Z will tell you.

Kintarō Hattori

Ahh crap it's a Newcastle. Hmnnn I think I can get my hands on a Venice!

DemonOfTheFall

Give overclocking it a shot, it'll be good practice if nothing else. I'd be surprised if you couldnt get a bit of an overclock with your reserator.

Kintarō Hattori

I 'attempted' to overclock it last night, I don't think I got it quite right! Fired up a game of BF2 and it restarted a while after!

I upped the CPU external clock from 200 to 250 and the cpu voltage from 1.5v to 1.525v, perhaps I should have increased the voltage somemore? Also I realised I probably shouldn't have increased the clock so much, but I had messed about with another machine and increased it gradually, but I suspect that was a Venice core.

WizZard

Did you have the RAM on a ratio when you upped the FSB? If not then that would've been overclocked aswell.

Best thing to do is underclock your CPU and test how far the RAM will go. (i.e. set the multiplier to keep the CPU at or below it's rated speed) and gradually adjust the FSB up til your RAM fails memtest (burn an ISO). Then you can see where your RAM tops out. Write down everything, as many settings as possible, and put pass/fail beside them. You'll need this.
You might have to up the voltage to your RAM (Vdimm) also to get it to run at high freqs. Don't go above 2.85v and keep the RAM actively cooled.

When you have found the limit for your RAM, then start the CPU OC.

Put the RAM on a divider, keeping it as close to it's rated specs (DDR400 in your case) as possible. Then up the FSB until your CPU fails SuperPi 8/16M. If it fails try upping the voltage slightly to see if that stabilises it.
Go up in 5MHz increments.
If it's still unstable then drop back by 4MHz, then go up in 1Mhz increments from there until you've found the limit under your current coolnig.

When you've found the CPU limit it's time to see how you can balance the CPU limit and RAM limit against each other to get the best performance for yourself.

As you can see it's a time consuming, but enjoyable hobby.

Caveats:
RAM passing 8hrs of memtest is generally stable
CPU passing 24hrs of Prime95 is considered stable.

For testing use at least 1 full run of memtest to test RAM. Use 8/16M SuperPi run for a quick test of CPU stability.
When you're happy run Prime95 and adjust OC according to results, if needed.
RAM passing memtest does not mean it will necessarily be stable in windows - but it's generally the case.

Kintarō Hattori

Thanks Wizzard for that detailed post! It's much appreciated. OK well I'll go home tonight and try and get the most I can from the Ram, I don't mind putting in the hours. Just keep an eye here for me logging back on with a new Skt A machine or such like, as I'll probably have destroyed my other one!!!

gline

eo980 wrote:

I 'attempted' to overclock it last night, I don't think I got it quite right! Fired up a game of BF2 and it restarted a while after!

I upped the CPU external clock from 200 to 250 and the cpu voltage from 1.5v to 1.525v, perhaps I should have increased the voltage somemore? Also I realised I probably shouldn't have increased the clock so much, but I had messed about with another machine and increased it gradually, but I suspect that was a Venice core.

try doing it in increments instead of a massive jump
also your ram is pretty good, i have the same and it overclocks lovely, it should do 4400 speeds @ cl2.5

Kintarō Hattori

Thanks Gline. With all this quality advice I can't go wrong...........

gline

eo980 wrote:

Thanks Gline. With all this quality advice I can't go wrong...........

let us know how u get on

DemonOfTheFall

Yeah, take baby steps at first. Going from 200 to 250 without any tweaks at all or testing is asking for hassle.

Alkers

I'm trying to do the same myself at the moment. The multi is so low on these it's quite annoying! I'm prime-95ing now @2195 (244*9). The one thing is when I was trying to see how high I could clock my ram I dropped the cpu multi to keep it at around 1800mhz and I had the FSB up to 244. But then when I booted cpu-z showed my fsb @ 244 but my mem. frequency at 228mhz or similar. It then displayed FSB:DRAM as being CPU/8. When I increased my cpu multi to 9 this changed to CPU/9 and the memory is now running @ 244mhz. I didn't change any other settings in the BIOS. How can I set the mem frequency to be equal to the FSB, which I thought was the case in all A64 systems

conzy

Did you set a non integer multiplier?

You have to set an integer multiplier or it will mess up ram timings.......

Alkers

Possibly it might have been 7.5 at some stage, how does that work?

conzy

Its hard to explain, but if you dont use an integr multi, the ram dividers get messed up.

Newcastle CPUs are renowned for being stubborn so dont hope to get to much out of it, If you could get that venice you will get around 2.6ghz which is FX-55 speed;)

Alkers

I'd say my cpu could reach 2.6 no bother but that means getting RAM to 288mhz. ATM I'm getting instability around 238 or so - crappy value RAM though.

DemonOfTheFall

Just use a the 5:6 divider and keep pushing then.

1:1 has no value on the athlon 64 platform. Everyone who says so just thinks so back from the Athlon XP days where anything other than 1:1 killed performance.

Alkers

What would that option be called in the BIOS, I couldn't find any ratios other than the cpu ratio and the HT ratio (as a side note what should this be at and how does it affect performance?) and the ram one seemed to have a mind of it's own.

DemonOfTheFall

DDR Ram speed or something like that ?

Probably in the memory section of the bios. You want to set it at 166mhz. That should be the 5:6 divider

Alkers

Thanks I'll have a look at that tomorrow.

Alkers

Class, now stable at 2.43 Ghz with the ram at 220mhz. Cpu still at stock voltage, how much can I increase it by and what gains would that be likely to give me?

Dman_15

Simona1986 wrote:

Class, now stable at 2.43 Ghz with the ram at 220mhz. Cpu still at stock voltage, how much can I increase it by and what gains would that be likely to give me?

1.5 - 1.55

Wouldnt go past that on air. If you find it takes .1v to gain 100mhz it probably aint worth it

DemonOfTheFall

I wouldn't go over + 0.1v with air. Your temperatures will tell you how much voltage you can use really.

Alkers

At the moment I'm hitting 40 at load. I presume 50 would be ok?

DemonOfTheFall

Yeah, I wouldn't want my chip running over 50 though.

Did you ever find out which core your chip has ?

As long as you can pass an ~8 hour Prime 95 I'd say you're good to go.

Alkers

I'm not the OP, I've a Venice.
Now 18hours stable at 2.5Ghz with the voltage up 6.6%
Very happy!

Kintarō Hattori

Simona1986 wrote:

I'm not the OP, I've a Venice.

Indeed your not! - I found out it was a Newcastle which kinda sucks, but I'm sure I can get my hands on a Venice!

I haven't had a chance to seriously overclock it yet as there has been some serious shizz going on with the GF lately. Hopefully I'll get around to it this weekend, I'm keen to see what can be done! I'll keep you guys informed, thanks for the help!

Goodman Simona! That's quite a serious OC!

Alkers

Sorry for dragging this up again:
Got new memory, rated for 300mhz thinking that I'd be able to run the fsb @ 278 and the cpu @ 2.5 (278*9). Thing is whenever I change the memory to 200 from 166 the pc won't boot. Is this the mainboard holding me back now? Would it be better runninc cpu at 2.5 with the ram at 227 (5:6 divider) or find the fastest FSB I can boot at and have the cpu running at less than the 2.5ghz I have it at now?