X2 3800 (AM2) Overclocking

geordiepaul

geordiepaul

geordiepaul

Associate
Joined
7 Mar 2005
Posts
124
My spec is as follows...

ASUS M2N32 Deluxe
Athlon XP X2 3800 AM2
Leadteak 7600GT Extreme
Geil DD2 6400 Ultra
Enermax Noisetaker 370w PSU
Arctic Freezer 64 CPU cooler.

I have set my RAM up as DDR800 with 4-4-4-12 2T with a voltage of 2.1

I can't get it any higher than 2.2Ghz (2.2 x 10) now I haven't increased the voltage to the CPU well I have tried and it still crashed but I didn't try it much more as I increased to to 1.4 and CPU-Z was saying it was 1.44 which seemed a but too much for my liking. I did have it at 2.5Ghz (normal voltage) and it was priming fine but I couldn't get it stabe after a restart.

Can anyone give me any pointers as to which direction to go? I have seen this spec at 2.4Ghz (2.66 x 9, 2.4v)

screen.gif
 
I think you first need to lower the HyperTransport multiplier.....(to 4x, for example)..... as there can be all sorts of issue by having the overall speed @ over 1000MHz :rolleyes:

Next, I guess you have a pretty decent overclock on the RAM there already - not sure you will get that much more out of the chips.....although some reports of 1000MHz have been around.

Anyway, the key is to isolate individual components of the overclock, so now you should try putting the RAM on a divider (no real performance impact on AMD setups :)) and try pushing for more on the CPU......
 
Ok, I've dropped the memory from DD800 and it's stable at 2.3Ghz. I have read that I can up the voltage on the RAM to get the speed back as my PCMark is now lower even though the CPU is faster! :-(
 
Hi there,

I have more or less the same setup ... m2n32sli, 6400 Geil and 3800x2 AM2.

So far I have managed 2500MHz STABLE (Prime95 10hrs). This is setting CPU voltage =1.5, DDR volts=2.25, CPU freq=250, memory freq=667, 4-4-4-12-2T etc , The HT setting you are looking for is under Chipset settings CPU<-->NB HT Speed and mine is set to 4x. The HT bus is hence 250x4=1000MHz, Mine crashes at anything above 1100.

I have booted windows at 2700MHz but it was not stable. I am wondering how high I can set my memory voltage... ummm thinking of 2.4V (max. specification volts is 2.3).

PC probe and CPUz always reports 250mV more than the BIOS vCore.

Any tips appreciated as I would like to get 2700 or 2650 but the RAM performance seems to drop to 7000MB/s!!!! (Use Si-soft Sandra for memory bandwidth test, I get around 8500ish. I could set 5-5-5-15 timings I suppose and try DDR800 taking me with the CPU freq to 1000MHz memory speeds!!!!

Anyhow hope my latest stable settings at 2500MHz give you a starter.

Jules
 
As for temperatures (PC ProbeII) at 2500MHz .... idle 36 and 57C under load (full power testing under Prime95 torture test).

Be interesting to hear of other peoples temps. I am just using stock cooling.

Jules
 
Personally I would not use Ai Booster , I removed mine from the startup. I just alter manually in the BIOS then run tests in windows. I am personally looking for a 24/7 STABLE setting NOT a suicide shot ie 1.6Volts CPU at 2800+ speeds!!!! I am prepared to take a little risk on shortening the life of the CPU by running higher volts as I will probably be replacing the CPU next year anyway.

If you want you CPU to last a long long time then I would keep the volts below 1.5 vCore.
Jules
 
Cheers for the info. I have not had to change the HT yet and it's running happily at 1174Mhz.

I have an overclocking document from NVidia and it mentions that it's fine to overclock HT thingy to well above 1000Mhz! Which I was surprised at!

Currently running standard voltage and it's runs fine at 2.35Ghz but I want the memory running faster so I might increase the voltage on that.

What PCMark05 score do you get? My increases are only slight since having to drop the memory back!

Yeah I'm not keen on AI Booster but it's nice for trial and error approach but it does seem to stop NTune working which has some nice feature for overclocking GPU including PCI express setup.

Might want to change from stock cooling....I've got an Arctic cooling freezer 64 and my temps are spot on at the moment. 28-30 idle and 38-40 under load! I don't know what that would be if I increased the voltage!
 
Well I've seem to hit the overclocking wall. Whenever I set anything over 2.5GHz the system seems to reset the CPU back to 2GHz!!!! What is going on here is it some sort of protection mechanism???? Can I turn it off???

Should I activate AMD Live and/or CoolnQuiet???

Is there a max CPU temp. built in somewhere??? Just that at 2.5GHz (1.5V sure can lower that on further testing), I get load temps of 57C.

Jules
 
geordiepaul...... When you hit 2500MHz tell me what you idle/load temps are for comparison. It will tell me whether I should get any more cooling.

Jules
 
Will do! I read somewhere on here that the temp should be kept below 50 degrees! So that might be something to sort out?!

I'm at 2.4Ghz with standard voltage and temp haven't changed at from 2Ghz
 
Just ran PCMark05 ...... scores 6091. Is this good or bad???? Oh that score is at 2500MHz. Have not yet figured out how to get beyond that.

Jules
 
I get 5582 PCMarks at 2.4Ggz! Only have a 6600GT GPU though which will be the difference for me!

Try knocking your RAM right down to rule that out as the problem. I had to knock mine down to get past 2.25Ghz

What PSU do you have?
 
That is not a bad score considering I've got 2x7900GTX!!! Anyhow figured out what is going on with the system resetting itself to 2GHz at higher frequencies. Reading the mobo manual says that if the system is unstable then it will revert back to default settings(2GHz). So the solution???? I dunno ... its not the memory as mine will definitely work at DDR880 speeds and possible DDR920. Its not the HT bus. What I suspect is the PCIe bus speed as they say in the manual that PCIe speed=CPU freq (250MHz) so I will investigate that I think. Temperature wise I am sure I am okay for 2.6GHz anything over that will require some serious cooling.

If you are stuck with low RAM performance because you cannot get the "sweet spot" frequency due to CPU mult. and CPU freq. then try lowering the 4-4-4-12 settings to 3-3-3-9 in steps ie.... 3-4-4-11 etc [not tried this myself yet]. Be prepared though to have your case open and know about how to clear the CMOS (changing a jumper for 10s or whipping out the CMOS battery for 10mins). For me changing the command rate from 2T to 1T crashed my system (had to reset CMOS).

2.4GHz eh ... getting there. Still at 2.5GHz myself and very stuck there!!! That cooler of yours from what I have read is no more effective at cooling than the stock BUT it is 10dB quieter. At some stage I will have to address the noise level of my system as it is starting to do my head in! All my fans are on max. for the time being until I stop tinkering around with the overclocking stuff.

Jules
 
PSU (forgot!) ... mine is a Hiper R-580. 580Watts. I did some calcs a while ago and I think the supply is ok for the task. (Biggest unknown was my Motherboard power consumption which I just left a guestimate of 60-80W for!!!) If it is a lot higher than that then I am probably on the edge of my power supply capabilties.

I left 100W margin for overclocking GPUs and CPU each.

Jules

PS.... Just tried playing around with the memory settings 3-4-4-11 etc nothing worked.
 
Last edited:
How did you check your memory worked at those frequencies?

I'm gonna try and get mind above 2.4 hopefully without changing the voltage! But we'll see! Gonna try and get the memory sorted by increasing it's voltage too!

I would recommend the Freezer 64 it's cheap and does exactly what it says on the tin! Dunno whether you noticed the pic at the top 19 degrees - though it's not like that all the time!
 
Managed to get a genuine 2.6GHz out of mine now!!! How stable it is I don't know but seems ok so far. Will do some Prime95 later. I just went back to basics turned down HTx and CPUx and turned down the memory to DDR400. So effectively I was just overclocking the FSB. Went up to 300MHz no prob. Then I tried some real processor testing at 9x multiplier(CPU).... 9x290 worked! 2.61GHz but 9x300 did not (I noticed the CPU temps were very high 60C!) so thats the THERMAL LIMIT OF my cooler/cpu 2.7GHz. Anyhow backed off Vcore to 1.49V then cranked the memory back up to DDR667. Running SiSoft Sandra I get 9300MB/s for memory bandwidth and 6399 in PCMark05. The temps are a problem and Prime95 just failed!!!.... OK time for more volts.

Also I set the following....
Fixed the HT frequency to 200MHz
HT multiplier=x3

I'll list them later.

Jules
 
I tend to now use Prime95 (large FFTs) to test the memory as it shows up errors quicker than memtest.

Jules

Looking like it's now running stable at 2.66GHz. Prime95 2hrs and running ..... Find out in the morning whether this is ok. Needed 1.58V though which is on the high side. Am I killing my CPU???? I only need it to last till the first 60nm AM2 chips come out!!!! Temps under load are 56C Max sits around 54-55 under load generally ocasionally showing 56.

Will post full BIOS settings once I have established stability. For those who are interested in "STEPPING" it is reported as =2 in CPU-z.

What does stepping mean???? mine =2 is that bad/good.

I should also mention that I did use Artic Silver 5 to replace the TIM material on the stock cooler.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom