Help! Noob wants to overclock AMD 3200+

Hello, I just went/rebuild from a p4 platform to a current AMD platform. And I want to clock it. My specs are:

AMD 3200+ VENICE CHIP 90NM (STANDARD COOLING FAN THAT CAME W/ IT, SPEED SET AT 2.1 GHZ).
MSI K8N-NEO4-F MOTHERBOARD
NVIDIA’s GeForce 6600 GT
1.25 PC2700 @ 333MHZ (all I can afford now, it was off from my old board).

I know it sound ridiculous but how do I over-clock ? (i.e. what would be my multipliers? Where would I input such changes).What are my limits with the standard fan? There is so much info out there and I wanted a short direct explanation so I don't screw up things. Thanks for your help!

Snowdogg said:

Hello, I just went/rebuild from a p4 platform to a current AMD platform. And I want to clock it. My specs are:

AMD 3200+ VENICE CHIP 90NM (STANDARD COOLING FAN THAT CAME W/ IT, SPEED SET AT 2.1 GHZ).
MSI K8N-NEO4-F MOTHERBOARD
NVIDIA’s GeForce 6600 GT
1.25 PC2700 @ 333MHZ (all I can afford now, it was off from my old board).

I know it sound ridiculous but how do I over-clock ? (i.e. what would be my multipliers? Where would I input such changes).What are my limits with the standard fan? There is so much info out there and I wanted a short direct explanation so I don't screw up things. Thanks for your help!

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The guides/stickies on here offer better help than I can. I will point out that the memory "can" be a big factor. Read about using memory dividers (guessing it defaulted to one anyways) You may be able to rung 2.5 on the chip, but have low mem bandwith. (Lower than ideal) Most people need something that does well over 200mhz on the memory, with the top guys hitting 300mhz.

I know my memory is whats holding me back (without using dividers) and 230mhz mem / 2.3GHZ cpu is my max right now on a 3200.

My Recomendation

Study this it should help then ask questions?

Welcome to the Forums
Good Luck and Good Computing

Welcome to the Forums!

If you're new to overclocking, do not rush with it or you may end up with a dead pieces of hardware. It's not as easy as just to ask "how do I do it"
Best things to do first, is read the forums, they usually helps alot people when they're starting to do overclocking. Example OCForums has many great stickies for cpus, motherboards and memory modules. At this point this sould help you out a bit.

Keys doing overclock on A64 is FSB(HTT), CPU Multiplier, HT Multiplier, Memory divider, memory timings and voltages of course. You may also want to buy another stick of memory to achieve dual channel, DC only in itself boosts performance alot.

First things you may want to do now is:
lower the HT multiplier to 4x
lower the memory divider to 133 or even 100
crank the FSB up!

Low memory divider is only temporare and it's used only to get the most out of the CPU. First you have to find a sweet spot for you CPU, then you can try how far your memory will go and then the last fight. Set them both to match their highest speed they can do. (and yes, this may sound a little too easy, but don't take it like it does)

Oh, btw, you may also want to test your system stability, Prime95 is good program for this and you should let prime run atleast 8 hours for good system stability.


Good luck to you, and if you have more question, go ahead and bring them to us. We will be more than happy to help