amd sempron 3000

Hey guys first post
well iv got a amd sempron 3000 and im new to overclocking iv got my sempron stable at 2.3 from 2 and its got the barton core.asus a7v600-x mobo and a stick of basic 3200 512 ram.

now on to my question

well in my bios settings it gives me the option to chage my multiplyer from 12 on, but from what iv read semprons multiplyers are locked some im kinda confused about this,so is it possible to unlock the multiplyers?(like they do with the 2500 bartons)

also cpuz says that my cpu multiplyer is 12 so there must be somthing wrong with the bios and cpuz also says that my cpu is a amd athlon mp wich it is not and i have the latest bios.

so guys/girls any of you willing to flex your mental muscles to help me with my problem?

ps my goal is to overclock my cpu to 2.5ghz

What kind of cooling are you using? If it's the stock fan that will hamper your ability to overclock to 2.5 Ghz. You will probably want some aftermarket cooling if you want any really good OCs out of that chip.

When you say you can use multipliers from 12 on does that 12 and up or 12 and down? I have not heard anything about unlocking semprons but it may be possible, someone else would have to share their knowledge about that.

For the CPU-Z problem showing your CPU as a Athlon MP, have you got the latest version of CPU-Z? I know that CPU isn't new so it should be supported correctly but it's always good to know that your problem is not your application version. If you have version 1.29 then you have the latest build. If you don't have version 1.29, go here and get 1.29 near the bottom of the page. CPU-Z showing your CPU as an Athlon MP is most likely not a BIOS issue so I wouldn't worry about that.

When you change your multiplier in the BIOS do you choose the option to save the settings and exit or do you just exit? I don't mean to make it sound like you don't know what you're doing but I'm just covering the basics.

well it gives me the options to change the multiplier up and down but iv only tried uping the multiplyer not down

i do have the latest ver pf cpuz and on my other mobo(wuch i fried) cpuz whould show my cpu as the proper sempron it is

and i do choose save and exit changes in the bios

thanks for the help so far

well i just tried lowering my multiplier and there is no video out put to my monitor
after reastart so i think the multipliers are locked both ways but im not sure

All Socket A semprons are locked. Changing the multi won't do anything.

can i unlock them the same way you whould unlock a athlon? or is it possible to unlock it at all?

ps.the best i can overlcock it is a 195 fsb and 1.8v at 2.339ghz(anything over 195 becomes unstable) is there any thing i can do so speed it up?

I would imagine the only thing you can do is to get better cooling so that you can up the Vcore and get a higher stable overclock. But it's probably not worth the money or trouble of getting better cooling if you already have an aftermarket HS.

You can't unlock the multiplier in the BIOS but there are software utilities for VIA chipsets that change the multiplier in Windows. But I suspect you're pretty much maxed out though. Going for 200 times the default 12 multi might be all you can do without throwing money at the project. 2.4GHz isn't shabby at all! That's where I'm at with 218x11.

Try raising the vDIMM a little and Memtest. Seems like you should hit 200 with 2.7v. (And I bet you don't need that much vCore, maybe more like 1.7-1.75)

Be careful raising the FSB gradually from 166 to 200 because you need that sixth divider to kick in at 200, otherwise your AGP and PCI buses are too high and will corrupt hard disk data or cause a no-boot situation. At 166 the fifth divider kicks in to give a stock PCI freq. of 33MHz and AGP of 66MHz (166 divided by 5 = 33). Once you get to 180 those buses are at 36/72 and as you go higher you're in for trouble! That's why people like the nForce2 chipsets - they lock the PCI/AGP buses at the proper frequencies while VIA lets it float proportionally with the FSB.

The sixth divider at FSB 200 of course gives you 200/6 or 33MHz PCI and 66-67 AGP - and that's why you want to jump right up to 200 and memtest and get it stable before you jeopardize your hard drive and it's data!

When you see people saying to gradually raise the FSB in small increments they're talking about nForce boards not VIA!

BTW, welcome to the forums and to overclocking!

thanks alot for the info i had a nforce 2 board but i fried it so im now stuck with this untill i see if i can warrenty the board

right now my v core is 1.8v and thats the max voltage my mobo will support.can i some how unlock the voltage settings?

ps.what is the max voltage for the sempron?

athlon chips can take 1.9v safely with good cooling and as long as temp is below 50C.

some ppl do take their athlon pass 2.0v with their wc setup.