AMD64 4000 Overclock - Results and Questions!

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Hello everyone! I have been off work due to illness, giving me lots of time to try and overclock my new system! It's been an interesting experience, I think my motherboard is a bit quirky! Here are my specs:

AMD Athlon64 4000 CPU (San Diego core)
Gigabyte K8N Pro-Sli Motherboard
G.Skill 1GB DDR LA PC4800 (2x512MB) Dual Channel Kit
akasa 460W PSU

I think that's all you need to know hardware wise. Let me quickly tell you a few things before the screenshots. In order to achieve the current stable overclock, I had to reduce my HT multipier to X2. Anything else above caused boot problems and BSOD's. I am using a divider to keep the memory at DDR400 standard, so I can run the tightest timings possible (including T1 CMD). Although no program reports my CMD setting as T1, I have forced the setting to T1 in the BIOS. Memory benchmarks taken before and after would suggest T1 is set, as SiSoftSandra reported quite a boost... VCore has also been increased to 1.55v.

Well, here goes...

CPU Info:

Memory Info:

If you look at the picture above, CPU-Z reports my memory to be operating at a frequency of 190.3. The bios however reports the memory to be operating at exactly 400. Therefore:

190.3 x 2 = 380.6

Close enough I guess, but is this normal? Does CPU-Z report the frequency more accurately? Or could it be the divider? Any further information on this would be greatly appreciated

Anyway, I digress. Back to the screenshots... see next post.

 

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SPD Info:

I included this screen as part of my investigation due to the memory timings and settings not corresponding with what they should be. Is this an error within CPU-Z, or is my Motherboard not detecting the correct settings properly? Anyone know what they should be, in terms of TRC and DRAM Idle Timer? People with exactly the same ram seem to have their TRC at 128 clocks. Is this normal? My ram is supposedly capable of 5-2-2-2 at stock DDR400, so I have set that manualy and let SPD detect the rest. Would really like to know why it doesnt match up though.

Sorry for the long post, only two more

Memory Benchmark:

If I run everything at stock with tightest memory timings, I get arround 5989MB/s in the above benchmark. It is interesting to note that despite having the memory running at stock DDR 400 frequency (according to the BIOS), I have lost a few hundred megabytes since the overclock. According to CPU-Z, my memory frequency is running at 380.6... arround 20mhz less than what the BIOS reports... If this is true, then I guess that explains why my SiSoftSandra score has dropped a bit. If loosing 20mhz can really make that much of a difference?

So, in a nut shell: (for those who always skip to the bottom)

BIOS Settings:

HT WIDTH = 16 | 16
1T/2T DRAM TIMING = 1T

HT FREQUENCY RATIO = 2X
CPU FREQUENCY = 242
K8 CPU CLOCK RATIO = X11
CPU/DDR CLOCK RATIO = 2/1.66 (divider I'm guessing)

CAS = 2
TRAS = 5T
TRCD = 2T
TRP = 2T
TRRD = 2T
TRC = 11T (SPD default setting - correct or not?)
TRFC = 14T (SPD default setting - correct or not?)
TRWT = 4T (SPD default setting - correct or not?)
TWR = 3 bus clocks (SPD default setting - correct or not?)
TWTR = 2 bus clocks (SPD default setting - correct or not?)
TREF = 200mhz, 7.8ms (SPD default setting - correct or not?)
READ PREAMBLE = 5.5ms (SPD default setting - correct or not?)
ASYNC LATENCY = 7ns (SPD default setting - correct or not?)

SPREAD SPECTRUM = DISABLED

CPU VCORE = 1.55 (is this entirely safe?)

Resulting Overclock:

2664.2

Thank you all for reading

 

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Now prime95 stable for just over two hours

 

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Ok... what an informative post that was

Maybe someone else can try and answer some of my questions or maybe offer some constructive criticism?

 

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No overclock is stable, not even 210 HT, unless I use a vcore of 1.55... am I missing something?

Put everything back at stock now. Managed to get the CPU up to 2.7Ghz stable but I'm worried about breaking stuff

It would appear that some people get great overclocks using this motherboard, some don't...

 

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Thank you for trying to help

Memory voltage is at default, since I'm not trying to push my ram past it's default operating speed, I didn't think it was necessary...

I managed to hit 2.7Ghz but the HT multiplier still woulden't go higher than X2. VCORE was set to 1.55v and I was using the same divider as before, so the memory was only overclocked a little bit...

I don't know. Seriously scratching my head here... wondering if it's worth it, as my system runs fast anyway. Just wish if I knew it was my motherboard causing me problems or perhaps my lack of overclocking skills / knowledge... although I thought I had it all sussed

 

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Latest update:

CPU is running at 2.7Ghz now but I had to whack the voltage up to 1.65
Although various software reports 1.616 volts... interesting. CPU temperature peaks at 40degc full load. Is that alright?

I'm not using any dividers this time, HT multiplier is set to X2 and HT frequency is operating at 225.

Memory timings are set to 2-3-3-8 1CMD 2-Way Bank Interleave. Using default voltage setting.

Think i'll let it burn in for a while. Memtest ran for 2 hours with no problem, gotta love this G.Skill stuff! SiSoftSandra benchmark reports 6573MB/s

HT multiplier won't budge from X2 though...

 

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Does raw HT speed really matter that much? I only increase it to increase the overclock of my CPU or RAM.