Athlon 64/XP overclocking guide

[jjcom]

its just alittle...bascily what is at the beginning of this guide, a genral over view of parts in the computer and some on memory timings...

jjcom

[reject]

ah i think i know is it this?

[jjcom]

thats nice to know as well, but I was refering to the stepping code on the CPU it self...but thanks Lanparty I forgot about those screen shots that include the .6 and 2.6 etc versions of the CPU

jjcom

[jjcom]

Cool my first sticky! Thanks who ever did this

*UPDATE* a few added things...fixed a few mistakes on the RAM section. added more to the "thankyou" at the end
jjcom

[reject]

downloading now
you called me lanparty

[jjcom]

lol all I saw was the avitar...sorry. O'well. ok reject what do you think?

jjcom

[IvanAndreevich]

Checking it out right now. Why .doc? Why don't you make it HTML?

Quickly looked through it - seems like you are trying to cover everything Try more in-depth approach IMO. You need more than 1 author to cover all of it

[jjcom]

Checking it out right now. Why .doc? Why don't you make it HTML?

Quickly looked through it - seems like you are trying to cover everything Try more in-depth approach IMO. You need more than 1 author to cover all of it

I chose .doc since pretty much everyone will be able to view it. I guess I'll look into putting .html files on my webspace.

Yeah i know its simple. Its just so new people can get the basic idea. yeah so far I've been the only one writting, just gotten idea from Saaya and a few others and ran with it...can you give me a few expambles of what I need to cover in more detail? I don't think I'll do much more with the history part tho...I think thats been covered enough.

jjcom

[G|-|oST]

Its just so N00bs can get the basic idea.
jjcom

Noobs??? This is xtremesystems, not [H].

So you are the expert then? Writing a guide on OC'ing mostly outdated CPU's? Hmmm... You recently upgraded to an NF2,
a platform most of the people here have moved on from some time ago, and yet here you are writing guides on A64 OC'ing.

If you care to learn, here is an example of what a well written guide looks like.

If you are going to write a guide of any sort, you can at least give a little more credit/respect to the people who might be reading it.

[jjcom]

I just wrote something that someone new to overclocking would understand and walk away from knowing alittle more than what they did before. Something simple, thats what Saaya and I talked about from the beginning. They're new people to XS who don't know awhole lot about overclocking so I wrote something that would help them.

And I'm not saying that I'm an expert, and I don't believe I ever said I was one, if so let me know. I dont own an Athlon 64 true, but that doesn't mean that I haven't done my research. I included the AXP because if someone who is new to overclock wants to test it out, they can do it on a low cost machine. And that thing about most people having moved on from...well...I can't afford to move on to the A64 and still have some money saved up.

jjcom

[Karnivore]

Noobs??? This is xtremesystems, not [H].

So you are the expert then? Writing a guide on OC'ing mostly outdated CPU's? Hmmm... You recently upgraded to an NF2,
a platform most of the people here have moved on from some time ago, and yet here you are writing guides on A64 OC'ing.

If you care to learn, here is an example of what a well written guide looks like.

If you are going to write a guide of any sort, you can at least give a little more credit/respect to the people who might be reading it.

No noobs?? LOLOL, where you been?? you actually think everyone who posts here is an automatic Guru?
Regardless... I really see no point in diss'ing his efforts, He has already asked for others input, so if you feel you CAN DO BETTER, or want to add something constructive PLEASE do so.. Otherwise don't post in the thread...

[jjcom]

lets see...you told me learn how to write a guide...thanks...I did look at that and did think it looked good tho. But thats not the look I'm going for. That wasn't the point of the guide.

jjcom

[RADCOM]

Nice one JJcom; this is a nicely written informative guide for people like me who are PC aware but not experienced in the dark art of overclocking. Thanks.

[jjcom]

EDIT:...that was meant for another thread...no idea how it ended up here :S

jjcom

[reject]

ok i forgot i had it, but read it today and its good
this is a really useful thing not only for nopobs but also if you want your friend to oc this ciomputer, you can just send him this. or noobs at gaming forums
keep it up man

[MailmaN87]

Thanks mate, I needed this... A64 is so diffucult to overclock . Things was much easyer back in the good old days.

[shadowing]

Great guide!! I needed help. It's pretty good. But I'm still reading. Good job!!

[jjcom]

thanks...I had a thought about using google or something and making this guide avilible in german as well. Whats your thoughts and can I do this or is there something aginst this...like using google to translate your work or something

jjcom

[shadowing]

Probably. I'm kinda stuck here... What should the multi. usually be for NC? And for the FSB, when do you know to unlock your RAM timing?

[jjcom]

The New Castle has different multipliers for different models.
Socket 754:
2800 9x
3000 10x
3200 11x
3400 12x
Socket 939:
3000 9x
3200 10x
3500 11x
3800 12x

First, try to up the voltage to your RAM, up to 2.8v is safe and I don't think any RAM will lose its warenty if thats what your worried about. So say your RAM's rated for 2-3-2 @ 200mhz, you increase the FSB keeping the RAM running 1:1 to something like 210mhz...you fail mem test. Then try giving it up to 2.8v, if it works then keep pushing the FSB. Lets say it fails then you need to look into loosening the RAM timings. So then you would try 2-3-3, if that works then again keep pushing the FSB. If it fails then try doing 2.5-3-3 if that fails, well then I wouldn't be pushin' the RAM since you'll just kill the preformance. So up to 220mhz or so 2.5-3-3 once you break that then 3-3-3 maybe alright, but it depends on the benchmarks. Otherwise you might just be killing preformance by loosening them too much. For me, the "sweet" spot is 218mhz dual channel 2.5-3-3-10 with 2.8v. I have yet to push is, but that should happen tonight...dang I want to see 3600mb bandwidth in Sandra...anyway I hope that helps. Maybe I should start adding responces like this to the guide. Like have a FAQ like section with people posting Questions like that and then it has my responce like I would type on the forum...sounds good. I might work on that this week end as well.

hope I helped ya!

jjcom

[shadowing]

Yeah, it helped. I have an Athlon 64 3400+ Newcastle. What should i put the multiplier as? Should the RAM timings be loosened whenever it doesn't boot? And how do you set up a RAM divider? Thx for answering these questions.

[jjcom]

12x should be the multi for stock. If the computer doesn't work than it could be RAM timings...the best way to find the max on your RAM is to drop the multi down to 9 or 10 on the processor then, set the HT multi to 3x and start pushing the FSB up about 3-5mhz at a time. Then let it go through a pass of memtest if it works up it another 3-5mhz. That way you know for sure that its the RAM thats holding you back. After it starts to fail, lower the FSB by 3mhz and let it go through something like 6hours of memtest, chances are you've found the max or near max of your RAM. If you want to push it farther than you should up the FSB by 1mhz and then see if it passes mem test for 6hours or so. test 5 I believe is a good test to allow loop. Prime95 can also test memory, just set it so it uses more memory and let it run for awhile something like 8hours. 3Dmark 01 lobby and just letting any of the 3DMark series loop will also test stabilty.

RAM divider's would probly be with either the CPU settings or the RAM settings. 6/6=1:1 then you've got the other options, depending on the board it may say things like 6/5 or it might say DDR333, just depends on the board.

jjcom

[shadowing]

Thanks for all the info so far. I would however like to know what's HT and if you know what Memclock value is. Sorry, if these questions are kinda stupid... But thanks for all your help.

[jjcom]

HT= Hypertransport bus. Its your FSB time what ever you HTmulti is. keep that number under 1000 and you'll be fine. mem clock value...? not sure if i know what you mean there. You mean where it says something like DDR400 or DDR523 or something along those lines? If thats what you mean, it just shows what the speed your RAM is running at.

jjcom

[shadowing]

Thx for all your help. Now to go overclock my processor and hope it doesn't go to death.

jjcom, your guide is really good. Hope you keep it up!!!