SOLVED Overclocking an AMD Athlon 64 3200+

[trents]

Crazy, I'd say you've caught on to this overclocking thing.

 

[Crazy_Catz]

Boy, your dram fequency at 260 is high! But if its stable at that, why not go with it. Your HT Link may be okay at somewhat more than 1000. May go 1100. Who knows. Your system has already surprised me!

Yeah, I thought of turning that down, but if its stable, its stable . As for me, I've been way more then surprised with this machine, got waaay more out then I though possible. Also im pretty surprised by my temps, this computer has only two fans,(three with the PSU one) the one on the CPU HSF and one 80mm Tornado taking hot air from the CPU/GPU and taking it out of the case. And my temps are fairly decent.

Crazy, I'd say you've caught on to this overclocking thing.

Hah, guess so. Good to get someone with so much experience with old CPUs right off the bat.

Crazy

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Boy, your dram frequency at 260 is high! But if its stable at that, why not go with it. Your HT Link may be okay at somewhat more than 1000. May go 1100. Who knows. Your system has already surprised me!

Yeah, that's kind of rare.

Now I'm wondering what the revision number on that ram is (on sticker right-hand side, should be something like XMS3200vX.X).

How many volts do you have the RAM at?

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Hah, guess so. Good to get someone with so much experience with old CPUs right off the bat.

Crazy

Oh, you've found more than one of us that is into older CPU's.

 

[trents]

Well I used to have an A 64 San Diego single core but its been years now. Overclocking is overclocking, though. The main difference is that the bios terminology changes over time. Crazy, make sure when you do your new build that you get a Black Edition CPU. They have unlocked multipliers and you won't have to fuss with the fsb/CPU frequency.

 

[Crazy_Catz]

Yeah, that's kind of rare.

Now I'm wondering what the revision number on that ram is (on sticker right-hand side, should be something like XMS3200vX.X).

How many volts do you have the RAM at?

2.5v according to CPUz

 

[Tech Tweaker]

2.5v according to CPUz

No, that's just the Serial Presence Detect settings, i.e. the defaults they are guaranteed to run at which are set at the factory when they programmed the sticks for JEDEC standards, that is not necessarily what they are currently set at.

You need to look in your bios to know for certain what your RAM is set at voltage-wise.

 

[Crazy_Catz]

No, that's just the Serial Presence Detect settings, i.e. the defaults set at the factory when they programmed the sticks for JEDEC standards, that is not necessarily what they are currently set at.

You need to look in your bios to know for certain what your RAM is set at voltage-wise.

Oh, well, it is probably still at that. I didn't change the RAM vltage in BIOS. I can check to be sure when I get home from school though.

 

[Crazy_Catz]

Final Verdict: 2.7GHz!!!! Now those are some speeds

Any higher then that and it would either:
A)Not even try to boot into Windows
B)Would start to boot and then BSOD

Heres the final pics:

DRAM raised even higher(270) but everything seems fine. Probably wont mess with it unless I run into some major problems.

Thanks again for all our help every one! Now I might finally be able to snipe again

Crazy

 

[trents]

Crazy, you might make the hall of fame list in that category of system.

 

[Crazy_Catz]

Crazy, you might make the hall of fame list in that category of system.

Hahah, do we even have that? Would not be overly surprised though. This machine was pretty high end when I built it.(so yes, I have done some builds before, just never really bothered to OC)

 

[trents]

Actually, I think there is an overclockers' hall of fame. I remember seeing it somewhere but I'm not even sure its on this forum. Your system is proof of the fact that if you start with high end components you can expect a high end overclock.

 

[Crazy_Catz]

Actually, I think there is an overclockers' hall of fame. I remember seeing it somewhere but I'm not even sure its on this forum. Your system is proof of the fact that if you start with high end components you can expect a high end overclock.

Yeah, its almost sad that now, you can pay the same price that I paid for this one (around 1.5K) and get a much better machine. So my system is also proof of how fast technology is improving. It would seem as though it is just an oracle of proof.

 

[trents]

Crazy, maybe you ought to think about colling it with LN.

 

[Crazy_Catz]

Crazy, maybe you ought to think about colling it with LN.

About the cooling, I was mounting this extra fan I had in my case(just for alittle extra airflow) and now that Ive been looking at my CPU heatsink, I dont think its stock. It looks pretty fancy to be stock, and the temps seem pretty low. I though it was a stock cooler originally because of the fans sticker. But knowing me I probably just didn't feel like buying a new fan and suck the old AMD one right on top of the heatsink. As for my actual temps, they are looking pretty good at his speed(2.7). With a high of 47 during the few hours that Ive had it at this speed. Most of which has been gaming.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Okay, managed to get my chip to go a little faster, once I finally had the time to mess with it.

Got it up to 2.35GHz yesterday, had to set the voltage to 1.45V in CMOS (though it shows up as 1.42V in CPU-Z and HWMonitor, think I'm dealing with some vdroop issues there). It booted fine at 1.4, but wasn't stable enough to complete any tests on Prime until I took it up to 1.45. It would at least start the first test at 1.425, but always failed after about two minutes.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

I managed to get my Athlon 64 3200+ Venice (socket 939) up to 2.6GHz today, but I just couldn't get it stable.

It would boot to the OS, and even completed a benchmark on MaxxMem at 260FSB, but it crashed when I went to submit it to HWBOT.

I'm fairly certain it can go faster, but I just can't get enough voltage to it.

On a related side-note my Asus A8N32-SLI just can't supply enough power to the processor for some reason, I bumped it all the way up to 1.55V in bios, but it still showed up as 1.50V max in real-time in the bios' hardware monitor, as well as HWMonitor and CPU-Z within Windows; I have no idea why.

It seems more stable at 2.5GHz than 2.6, but still not stable enough to run SuperPi or most likely Prime95 either, as it fails almost instantly when I start a run of SuperPi 1m. Though it hasn't blue screened at 2.5 like it does at 2.6 yet *knocks on wood*.

Also, my board appears to have terrible voltage-regulation problems, at the 1.35V setting in bios it shows up as 1.4-1.42 in HWMonitor and hardware monitor in bios, 1.40 shows up as 1.42-1.44, though the degree at which it veers from the norm lessens the higher the voltage gets for some reason.

Oddly, the idle temps are the same as stock, sitting at 36-38°C.

Anyone have any suggestions on the voltage issues?

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Seems to be stable at 2.45GHz with 1.4375V set in bios (though it shows up as 1.47-1.5V).

Just completed the first run of SuperPi 1m where it didn't crash.

Edit: that wasn't stable enough to get it to run Prime95, neither was 1.475V, fails at 1.5V too.

Now attempting 2.4GHz at 1.4V set in bios (shows up as 1.44-1.46V), edit: that failed too.

Now attempting 2.4GHz at 1.45V set in bios (shows up as 1.47-1.52), edit: just completed test 1 after 4 minutes and still going. Load temps are 48-50°C.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Finally got it stable, 2.4GHz @1.45V in bios. It seems that is the fastest this chip will go and be able to remain stable.

Completed 20 tests in Prime95 over an hour and six minutes, at which point I ended the test.

Load temps were 48-52°C with the stock AMD cooler and AC MX-2 paste, which is not that far off from the stock load temps of 47-50°C.

 

[Catscratch]

Lol, i was trying hard to remember my settings for this chip then I remembered I had New Orleans (940) which could go 2500 with stock voltage. It was 90nm.

2.7 ghz is nice on Venice.