AMD Athlon 64 x2 6400+ Black Edition 3.2Ghz OC to 3.5Ghz

[Riot550]

Personly im quite disapointed... I think its my motherboard that let me down.

System:
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 x2 6400+ Black Edition AM2
MOB: MSI K9n neo v3
RAM: 4GB Kingston 667MHz DDR2 (Matched Sticks)
PSU: Thermaltake TR2 470watt
GFX: BFG Geforce GTX 260 OCX Maxcore 896mb
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Big Typhoon VX
Cooling Paste: Arctic Silver 5
HDD: 2x Seagate 80gb 7200rpm 1x Seagate 320gb 7200rpm

Anyway

I managed to achive 3.6Ghz but it was unstable and crashed trying to load windows. 3.5Ghz was stable and i ran a benchmark useing 3D Mark 06 (Not to see if it had improved anything mainly just to stress test it) CPU went up to 52 degrees max point way below shutdown temp and iv got my shutdown temp at 70 degrees most ppl have it set at 90.

Anyone else think it was my motherboard that limited me to only a 300Mhz stable OC? or would it be my RAM?

Anyway i took a few pics in different programs of the OC here they are:

My Computor:

CPU-z:

Core Temp:


Thank you for reading

 

[trents]

You shouldn't be disappointed. The A64 X2 6400+ was binned high, i.e. already clocked from the factory at close to what it's architecture would allow for a maximum frequency. Most people were struggling to get .2 ghz over stock in their overclocks with air. You got .3.

 

[QuietIce]

to OCF!


What speed is your RAM running? Did you turn it down to 533 MHz before pushing the clock? If not then you've got the RAM ~10% overclocked. Some sticks will do that, some won't.

Your vCore is pretty low for that speed. I take it adding more didn't help?

Trents is right about this being the "normal" high-end for that CPU. That isn't an Athlon II or Phenom II you're overclocking. 3.5 GHz is pretty good and 3.6 GHz is the highest I've ever seen one - even an FX. You shouldn't feel at all bad about that OC.


Lastly (for future reference) 90°C is waaaay too hot for any AMD system. When you say "most people" you must be including the Intel Crowd in there. However, 70°C is an OK setting for that processor. I ran my Opty 165 at ~62°C for about half a year before I could get it under water ...

 

[trents]

When you say you got a max stress test temp, what do you mean by "stress"? Around here we use either Prime95, Linx, or OCCT. These programs actually stress the processor cores to virtually 100% workload. We don't consider a setup to be stable until it can pass one of these for at least 1 hr. without throwing errors, BSOD, locking up or restarting. However, it is handy to know that near max temps (within about 2 c) will be achieved after about 10 min of running one of them. Have you used one of these tools this way to establish max temps and stability? Just running a video game is not enough.

Also, could you post the "Memory" and "SPD" tab from CPU-z? They will tell us what your memory is rated at and what you are running it at.

 

[Riot550]

My RAM is 667Mhz standard but i have had the RAM oc'd sins i bought its at 800Mhz. I did clock the ram back down to its standard setting for the OC so it was at 667 for the OC not 800 think in the end the ram was running at 730mhz with the oc. The ram was unstable at 800mhz - 3.5ghz so i clocked it to 667 - 3.5ghz and it was stable.

I dnt know about these stress test programs i will try them in future when i do oc's but still running 3D Mark 06 test the gfx and it has cpu tests in it it ran 3 cpu tests when evaluateing my pc and my pc stayed stable thru them. Got a bit hoter as i said but was still stable.

 

[trents]

Believe me, the CPU test in 3DMark06 will not come close to stressing the CPU like Prime95 or OCCT!