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AMD Athlon 2.8 64 X2 Overcklock limits

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VeRDe

Registered
Joined
Sep 5, 2010
Location
Greece
Hi.

It is the first time i write on your forum. so welcome me!:bday:

I have an outdated desktop computer ( i dont need something more) light overclocked for over 3 years with great stability.

Specs:
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 64 5600+ 90nm technology, running in 1.360V, FSB278.4 X 11.5multiplier producing 3.200Mhz core speed.

RAM: Corsair Dual Channel DDR2 2048mb, DRAM Freq 533.6hz(533x2=1066), FSB DRAM CPU/6, 5-5-5-18-22-2T (no overcklocking at all) :shrug:

MOBO: Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4

Graphics: ATI(or AMD? :D) Radeon HD 2600 PRO 512MB, overclocked via Rivatuner to Core:700hz, Memory:470hz.

CPU fan: Thermaltake MAX ORB.

My question is, do you think that i have reached the limits on overclocking with this hardware or i can do something more.

the truth is that i dont know the way to overclock RAM. any time i tried it i lost the stability of the system.

about CPU, i think i have made the best i can but i would like to hear your more experienced opinions. do you thing i have any room for further overclocking?

do you think that in any step i have to raise the volts or the opposite?

Thank you.
(Sorry for my bad English)
 
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We can help you overclock the ram well enough but the first question to answer is if you have already reached your max CPU speed. To help answer that question it will be necessary to load your processor to 100% for at least 10 minutes and capture some core temperature readings. Basically, overclocking is limited by processor core temperatures. Please read the following information I have assembled for newbies, do what it asks and then post back to us:


Welcome to Overclockers Forum!

We enjoy helping others with their questions and with problem solving their issues.

We would also ask, however, that you take some preliminary steps that will make this a lot easier for all of us:

1. Please put your system information in your “sig” so that it displays with every post you make below the post dialog. This will give contributors a quick and easy means of referencing information about your system components. Please include information about:
a. Your CPU make, model and speed
b. Your motherboard make and model
c. Your CPU heatsink/fan (HSF) make and model (OEM stock? Aftermarket?)
d. RAM (memory) make, model and speed
e. Case make and model, width of case (side to side on a tower case), placement and number of cooling fans
f. Power Supply (PSU) make, model and watt rating.
g. Operating system installed
h. Ambient (room) temperature of the computing environment
i. Any other relevant info you think we might need

How do I put this stuff in my “sig” you are probably asking about now? It is simple:

1. Locate the “user cp” button at the top of the OCForum desktop user interface. It is right below the “Reviews” button in the blue tool bar. Click on the “user cp” button.
2. You will see “Your Control Panel” options at the left hand side of the screen now.
3. Under “Settings & Options” choose “Edit Signature”
4. Enter the requested information
5. Click on “Save Signature” below the edit window
6. That’s it! You may repeat the above process to change the info as you may make system changes

Download and install the following freeware programs that will be used to test settings, temps and stability as we problem solve together:
1. CPU-z (reports information about your hardware and its settings). The program interface displays info under several categorical tabs. For our purposes there are three tabs that are important: “CPU”, “Memory” and “SPD”. We will probably ask you to capture images of the info displayed by these tabs. How to do that is described below.
2. HWMonitor (reports info about your temperatures and voltages)
3. Prime95 (stresses the CPU and all its cores at near 100% capacity). Needed to test for maximum CPU/core temps and to test for stability as you test different settings. It is handy to know that after running Prime95 for 10 min. your will be within about 2c of what your max temps would be when running the stress test for a much longer time. This “10 min.” test saves time in preliminary evaluation of various system setting changes you may make as you experiment. The first time you run Prime it will ask you if you want to “Fold” or “just stress test”. Choose stress testing and the “Blend” option. Monitor your temps with HWMonitor as you run Prime95. It is recommended with newer AMD processors to not allow the core temps to exceed mid 50s C. Intel processors are safe at higher temps than that, 70c or so.
4. A “screen capture” program that will enable you to capture images of the programs above so we can “see what you see”. Windows Vista and Windows 7 have an excellent screen capture tool that comes bundled with the OS called “Snipping Tool” that is located in “Accessories”. It’s a good idea to put it in the quick launch area of your task bar for ready access. If you are using Windows XP you can download freeware screen capture programs for this purpose. The one I use for XP is “MWSnap”.

Please run these programs upon request, capture images of them to your desktop and upload the captured images with your posts. To upload the images with your post:

1. Go to the “Message Window” and choose “Advanced”
2. Go to “Manage Attachments” located below the message window under “Additional Options”. A window pops up to enable you to browse for the image or images.
3. Select “Choose File” button to browse for and select the image file or files to upload.
4. Click “Upload”. You can upload up to three at a time.
5. Close the “Manage Attachments” window.
6. In the message window, type in any remarks you wish to include with the images.
7. Click on “Submit Reply” to post the images and your comments
8. If the images fail to upload it will be because you exceeded the file size limit. You will need to break the upload into more than one post or reduce the size of the images. There are freeware “file downsizer” programs available. The one I use is called “PIXresizer”. Please make the images large enough to easily read the text they contain but not so large they eat up a lot of screen viewing area. This may take some experimenting on your part.

Thanks for your cooperation!
 
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1) i cant create signature.
2) Prime95 64bit after one minute says for the second core "1 error" "FATAL ERROR" "Rounding was 0.5,expected less than 0.4" and stops the test for this core.

the other core no problem for 11 minutes.
Max Temp 58oC the first minute. the rest was relaxed (with one core testing).
Tortune test on blend mode.

th_hwm.png


more info about my PC:
PSU 670w
Room temperature 27oC
Medium Case with 2+1(PSU)+1(CPU) fans.
CPU fan as i said Thermaltake MAX ORB

as you said first i want too see if i reached the max cpu overclocking. i think there is a lot of work to do as i dont know if i choose the best FSB/Multiplier or the optimal voltages and how i will combine all this on a RAM that need definitely stability.

I need your knowledge and experience.
 
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The core failure and your high temps indicate your current overclock is too aggressive for your current settings and/or the cooling ability of your heatsink/fan (HSF). You will need to set it back until such time as you could acquire better cooling. Your processor will require higher voltage (vcore) to make it stable and higher voltage will just make more heat. 58c is already pushing the upper limit. Your ambient (room) temperatures are pretty high and not helping the situation. You might try removing the side of the PC case an directing the air from a large window fan into the open case and see if that helps. High processor temps can be caused by poor case air flow.
 
hmm.. i have those temps on CPU for more than 3 years and i didnt have any stability (crash/blue screen) problems so far.

ambient temperature is high as here in Greece we have very hot summer every year! :D

1) this "error" on prime95 means that CPU is not stable? i didnt have problems so far!
2) you think voltage is good? sometimes i think that i may have to lower them to reduce heat. do you think that this will lead to stability problems?
3) do you think that FSB with Multiplier could set with diffirent way to increase overall performance?
4) if CPU is ok, can we proceed to RAM o/c?
 
:welcome: to OCF!


Here's a thread you might want to read through - and hopefully it'll translate correctly! If you're familiar with your BIOS and how the components relate to each other then you can jump to the cheat-sheet in post #26. :)

It's a lot of information but going through the tests in order will determine the limits of your hardware. Once you've got that (and be sure to record that information!) then we can look at what can be done with the system to get it running better - if possible. Luckily summer is almost over so maybe those room temps will go down.

If you have any questions about what you're reading just post back. Language may be a problem but I'm sure we can figure it out together ... :)
 
If you're computer has been stable in the way you use it for that long then that is the most important thing. It might be the case, however, that you are on the margin of stability and that if you were running more demanding applications it would prove to not be stable. Prime95 is designed to put a maximum amount of heat and stress on the CPU (and memory as well) to ensure that it will function reliably under the most demanding real world applications. In the overclocking community, Prime95 is a standard tool. Most of us do not declare that our overclock settings are viable until we can pass Prime95 testing on all cores for at least 1 hour.
 
Hi again.

i have some news. i knew i had overdone it with voltage.

in first prime test i had those BIOS settings:
DDR2 +0.025v
Northbridge +0.025v
Southbridge +0.025v
CPU +0.05v (normal 1.3v-manual 1.35v)

i reseted to normal south and north bridge voltages and lowered CPU to +0.025v (1.325v)

i ran again Prime95.
this time took 3 minutes to see the same message (FATAL ERROR) and the core max temps were 51oC in 3 minutes (the previous time i had 58oC in one minute!)

i knew it that voltage needed reduction. :clap:

but still i cant pass this test!!! :cry:

QuietIce thank you. i will read carefully everything and i hope that i will learn some new things. then i will come back to this topic with my new (thats sure!!) questions!!:thup:
 
Reducing the NB and SB voltages did not likely have any effect on the improvement as they are both other chips on the motherboard. Reducing the vcore reduced your heat and that helped with stability. It brought your temps down to an acceptable range so that CPU core temp was no longer the problem, i.e., not the thing that caused Prime to fail after 3 minutes. Now, the limiting factor (the one causing Prime to fail) is probably low vcore. You need more of it but that brings too high temps. This all still points to need for better cooling. Do you have any case fans moving air in and out of the case itself? You only mention the PSU fan and the CPU fan.
 
i have 2 on the case (small). the one is on the side between CPU and Hard Disk and a second that pulls out air from the back.

i still cant understand what kind of error is this. i dont have any real stability problem so where is the problem?

i increased ram voltage but no effect. still error message!

far from all this i have a important question to do. my multiplier is very high from stock standards. do you think that is better to start overclocking from zero level with the "stock" multiplier?

do you think that with this way i will achive better stability with best performance?

i have heard that increasing multiplier actually you dont have better performance and the best overclocking is with the lower multiplier. do you agree?
 
If you don't think its a problem then I guess its not a problem. Then why have you come to us for help?
 
No! i think it is a problem! i just asked what kind of problem is.

As i said from first post. I NEED your help!
 
In one word, "heat" is the problem. You will not be able to make your cpu completely stable (to pass Prime) at its current overclock settings - much less at a higher overclock - until you can ad more vcore and you can't do that until you take away more heat and reduce the temps. I think you need better case ventilation (more powerful fans or more of them) and for sure a more powerful CPU HSF. This may not be practical for you without considerable expense.

Let me challenge you to do something. Set your cpu speed and vcore to stock levels and then run Prime. See what results you get with stability and what core temps you get. If I were you, I'd give your vcore one small bump over stock and leave it there. I would then start running Prime95 tests for one hour, starting with the stock CPU speed of 2.8. If it passes the Prime test I would increase the CPU speed in small increments until it failed t he test and then I would set the CPU speed back to the last one that was stable.
 
Just a minute. I noticed something in your first post that caught my eye. Your fsb is at 278? Please take a pic of the CPU-z tab "Memory" at your current overclock settings and upload it. I'm wondering if you are trying to run your ram too fast and need to start it at a slower speed to compensate for the fsb increase. If you started your ram at its rated speed and then began to increase the fsb, pretty soon your ram would be running too fast.

When you use the fsb to overclock, not only do your speed up the cpu but you speed up the ram as well. So to compensate for that you start the ram at a slower speed in bios and clock up toward its rated speed.

Is your cpu the "black edition" with unlocked multiplier?
 
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Hehe. i've realized the same some minutes before!

and hear how the things are! my stock FSB is 200 and multiplier 14! i can reduce it and not increase Multiplier!

yes its true i was running with FSB 278X11,5= 3200Mhz!!

before check it i thought that my multiplier is bigger than stock! but it was lower!!! :eek:

sorry but i overclocked it 3 years before! i couldnt remember! :screwy:

i started overclocking again with Multiplier 14 and i will inform you soon. i'm reached 3080Mhz each core FSB220x14 and passed Prime95 10 minutes test with max temp 51oC and Vcore stock (1.3v)
 
Please install CPU-z and run it to give info of your hardware and its settings. Very helpful little program. Upload screen shots of the tabs: "CPU", "Memory" and "SPD" with your next post please.
 
Please install CPU-z and run it to give info of your hardware and its settings. Very helpful little program. Upload screen shots of the tabs: "CPU", "Memory" and "SPD" with your next post please.

those info you see on first post are from CPU-Z.
If i upload now you will not see anything interesting. you will se my new settings.

if you still believe that will help you, inform me and i will upload them! :salute:
 
Yes, I would like to see them please. They are helpful to spot potential clues in problem solving. What operating system are you using?
 
Windows 7 64bit

in this setup in bios i have increased +0.025 RAM +0.05 CPU and prime95 is stoping in 2 minutes for the previous error message.

do you think more voltage needed?

th_cpu.png th_memory.png th_spd.png
 
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