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  • edlight - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

    I've found a way to overclock and retain the Power Now/Cool'n'Quiet.

    I let the motherboard do it's Cool'n'Quiet thing but I don't load the AMD driver. I run CrystalCPUID, which lets me set up the multiplier and voltage of each of the 3 cpu steps.

    The voltage setting of the motherboard, for my Gigabyte, has to be on Auto for Crystal to be able to change it.

    The highest Crystal can go with my 1.4v 3000+ Winnie is 1.45v.

    This let me take it up to 3800+ -- a speed of 2.4. 240 x 10.

    So it's running at 1.2 -- 240 x 5 -- most of the time. I set it at 1.2v there and froze it there and p95'd it overnight, as I did to the other 2 speeds.

    For me this is a great compromise between running "cool 'n quiet" and high performance.

    It's only a small percentage speed jump to 2.6, but requires alot of voltage and heat.

    I can't say what the maximum voltage would be for a Venice. Crystal lets me choose higher voltages than 1.45, but it doesn't actually set them.
  • RaulAssis - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link

    Some people reported that the Cool 'n' Quiet feature could work in a OC system. Maybe not all bioses support correct scaling of voltages when the system is OC and the Cool 'n' Quiet feature is turned on.
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link

    With any moderate OC, CnQ is going to cause problems. It dynamically adjusts multipliers and voltages... something that will usually screw up an overclocked system. I would strongly discourage trying to use CnQ with an OC'ed setup. Some motherboard BIOSes actually disable CnQ automatically if you enable overclocking features.
  • mrmoti - Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - link

    If I understand correctly:

    Performance RAM running at DDR400 2-2-2-8 and Value RAM running at DDR400 2.5-3-3-8

    At same OC on the processor, Performance RAM outperformed the Value RAM by 5% to 10%, being the price something between 80% to 100% more.

    So, what's the impact of runnig faster memory at high lateny? Say DDR500 at 3-4-4-8

    Because looking at the table of estimated latencies, (Performance) DDR400 2-2-2-5 has an estimated latency of 46.5, where (Value) DDR400 2.5-3-3-7 has an estimated latency of 49.75, an improve of 6.5% being in the range of 5% to 10% better.

    By the same table, DDR500 3-4-4-8 has an estimated latency of 42.4, an improvement of 8.8% over the Performance DDR400 and 14.7% over the Value DDR400, based only in latencies.

    Can anybody run a benchmark confirming/denying this?

    Being the case that the price of DDR500 with those timings is in the middle between Performance and Value RAM
  • T Rush - Sunday, October 16, 2005 - link

    One of the main focuses of this article seems to be value -vs- performance RAMs when over clocking, but you chose to run the performance RAM at settings where is doesn't perform, shame on you Jarred Walton, very disappointed

    If you look at the settings you used to test the two RAMs at...
    http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/athlon...">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu...niceover...
    ...you see that the MAX speed you where able to run the OCZ Rev2 at was not in it's "performance envelope", as the OCZ Rev2 is one of the worst performers in this speed range http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=256...">http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=256... <OCZ Rev2 at 266MHz, and all the other "performance RAMs" beat it

    But if you look at how the OCX Rev2 does work at much higher speeds, where it does perform...
    http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=256...">http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=256...
    ...you find that it is performing much differently than what you tested at, and would have shown a much larger performance lead over the value RAM

    How did you get this on to Anandtech? How could you show such a bad comparison of value -vs- performance RAM on a site which has always shown so much information about how these RAMs perform?

    I not only blame you, but also the editors for not catching how badly you have managed to make performance RAM look. It is clear you were trying to prove that cheap RAM can falsely perform as well as high-end performance RAMs. If you truly wanted to show what performance RAM can do when over clocking you either needed to run the OCZ Rev2 at much faster speeds, or use a different performance RAM that works well at the sub 270MHz speeds you tested at.
  • JarredWalton - Sunday, October 16, 2005 - link

    This is one set of RAM run through extensive tests on one platform. I've seen the same RAM run faster in some other systems, but not a whole lot. Just because some DIMMs reach DDR636 doesn't mean that all of them do. I could run this RAM at 3-4-4-8-2T timings at DDR600, but it actually ran worse than 2.5-3-3-8-1T with the lower memory ratio.

    What is clear is that I wasn't trying to "prove" anything. I was running some comparison tests with a system using two different types of RAM, and I'm sorry that you don't like the results. What I did prove was that someone one a budget could build a very fast system. An FX or San Diego core with higher quality RAM and a better motherboard would be better overall, but price/performance it would get stomped by this <$1000 setup.
  • T Rush - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link

    I don't find the OCZ Rev2 to be a good example of the high performance RAM everyone thinks it is, as it doesn’t perform well at the speeds you (and most everyone else) use…not compared to other good over clocking RAMs
    Granted some of the other performance RAMs do cost much more than the value RAMs, and even more than the OCZ Rev2, but they would have shown a greater performance difference than the value RAM which in your tests was not able to run any faster than its stock rated speeds or timings
    Your testing shows that running RAM at faster speeds adds very little performance over stock speed value RAM, and that is because the timings/speed relationships of that peculiar performance RAM at those peculiar higher speeds were not good.
    As I said before, all the other performance RAMs beat it, and perform much better at speeds under 270MHz than the OCZ Rev2 does

    Using the right RAM at the right speeds to run the best timings is the true art to over clocking, as RAM timings and speeds can allow the AMD64 to perform at much higher levels when over clocked

    I do not disagree with your results, as that is how those RAMs perform:
    Value RAM only being able to run its rated speeds and timings, not being able to over clock at all.
    OCZ Rev2 running at higher speeds but with such bad timings that it shows very little performance gains unless you are able to run it at CAS 2.5 in the 300MHz range

    I am not a fan of the OCZ Rev2 because of this, but I am a fan of performance RAM over value RAM, even on a budget system.

    If you read clue22’s reply “so basically what the everybody is saying about the value RAM vs. low latency more expensive RAM is that for the athlon 64 it is basically a waste of money (i.e. you only get about 5% performance gain), but usually spend 100% or more money to get the "better" RAM.”
    …and cyptonomicon’s “and its nice to see those ram comparisons. good to see those results on the latest a64 platform and confirm once again that the ram makes only a few percentage points difference”
    …next intellon’s “I understand how/why the memory quality is not too imoprtant (5-9% increase for 100 bucks = not worthy)”

    Clearly by using the OCZ Rev2 you did not show what spending a little bit more for better performing RAM can do. You have shown that running RAM at speeds with timings where it doesn’t perform well is a waste of money, but this does not answer any questions about value -vs- performance RAM
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link

    I've got X2 benchmarks with four different types of RAM in the works:

    OCZ VX
    OCZ Plat Rev2 (TCCD)
    Mushkin Value
    PDP 2x1GB 2-3-2-5-1T

    Other than the fact that 2GB of RAM helps out certain tasks (BF2 load times!), the total performance difference with those configurations is still not huge. With a 3.5V RAM voltage, the VX would do better, but even then the difference isn't above 10%.
  • T Rush - Thursday, October 20, 2005 - link

    for a budget system I would say the socket 754 is better...as the motherboards and CPUs are cheaper...and you can get ClawHammer CPUs with the larger performance 1MB L2 cache
    the only thing you miss out on with the 754 is the dual channel memory mode(which only adds very little performance anyway)...but by over clocking the core:memory speed you can easily match the performance gained by the greater bandwidth of the dual channel mode (this could be why the socket 939 doesn't show large gains from overclocking with the memory 'in-sync'..as it can't use all the bandwidth the faster memory gives)

    with a mid-range system you could pick a 10X multi 3200+ Venice, or even a 11X multi 3500+ Venice(either of those would have a much better CPU multi for overclocking than the 3000+'s 9X multi) which would allow you to keep the HTT/HTL speed at a more reasonable level(270MHz and 245MHz to reach 2.7GHz CPU speed...where a 9X multi CPU would need a 300MHz HTT speed to run the CPU that fast)
    ...but the 3200+ and 3500+ are costing $190 to $250...so for not much more you could have a performance San Diego core on the 939 platform (3700+ 11X multi SD is only $267 now)
    ...so for $80 to $40 more I would go for the larger San Diego core...I would also spend the ~$20 more for CAS 2 RAM (over $90 Value RAM)...thats like just $100...for a computer with much better parts...and say you use this system for 18 months, that works out to less than $6 a month for a using higher quality parts
  • Deathcharge - Saturday, October 15, 2005 - link

    Jarred this was a great article and did come at a great time as i am in the market for buying a bang for the buck system. One thing you didnt mention (although i saw that in the CPU-z screen shots) is the CPU stepping

    http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/desktop/default.as...">http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/desktop/default.as...

    the 3200+ venice core comes in 3 different stepping and i belive the one you used in your article is the E3 stepping which is being replaced with the E6 stepping. Any info on how well the new stepping OC? initial reports from around the net indicate that it doesnt OC very well for some reason would love to read your comments on this.

    Do you know if it is possible to OC to 2500 or 2600O with stock HSF as i would really like to save the money spent on the TT-90 and get a 7800GT (as opposed to x800xl). one final thing would OCZ value VX require active cooling?

    thanks and keep up the good work, really enjoyed reading it and would look forward to future articles
  • Deathcharge - Saturday, October 15, 2005 - link

    also what do you think of opteron 144 or 146? the 144 are very cheap and they OC quite well apprently
  • pmorcos - Thursday, October 13, 2005 - link

    Before I comment, you should know that I have been overclocking for 8 years now and literally overclocked all but one of the chips you mentioned in the beginning of this very good article. The HT multiplier was new to me with my most recent DFI NF4-SLI-DR board so I found that extremely useful and plan to see if I can up my speeds...but I digress.

    I think it would be extremely valuable to TRY to put in words the order with which an overclocker should approach making changes to settings. In other words, which is likely to be the most limiting/critical aspect(s) and from there tweak the others to max the system out.
    It would be interesting to say, for example, that you start with a "safe" power settings (which is pretty obviously the limiting factor). For example, let's say your CPU and memory are rated at 1.3 and 2.8 V respectively. Why not go straight to "safe" settings for the two and tweak from there? It seems that the most useful piece of information that is NOT provided by anandtech or anyone else for that matter is a voltage and temp graph of stability/viability for these chips. It would be simple to take 3 samples (at a cost) of each chip and run the test with "average" cooling and find out what is "safe". For example if running all stock settings but upping voltages to say 2.4/3.6 V in the example above, you might see stability up to 1.65 / 3.1 V with the parts catching fire at say 1.8/3.3 V or stable at temp readings for cpu/memory of 44/47C but unstable above that. Once armed with these two graphs of information averaged from 3 chips tested the rest is very straight forward.

    You simply set the cpu volts to 1.65 and memory to 3.1 V (the safe settings; check real voltages vis bios monitoring) and now you up your fsb and tweak your memory timings and in a few minutes you are running max.

    Why do I think this is more valuable that showing us a graph of your results? Because like many I'm squeemish about upping the voltage on my processor and memory. I'm worried much more about the power-on affects than I am the "long-term" effects.
    In computers, there are no long-terms for an overclocker. An overclocker's comp is 60% hardware and 40% software. Their greatest joy is in posting results on their favorite forum. I want to know that when I hit the power button...that the 1.7V setting does NOT have a 10% chance of blowing my processor.
    My ramblings. Thanks again for another great article from by far the VERY BEST place in the world to find out how computer parts work.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, October 13, 2005 - link

    Thanks pmorcos.

    I'm working on the X2 3800+ OC followup, and I've gone back and done further testing of temperatures and voltages. Chips differ, so the real advice I have on that subject is to test your own chip extensively. I've heard of people doing 2.8 GHz on 1.500V with the Venice chips, but mine won't even POST at those settings. I think 1.65 or 1.70V was required to POST, and even then I couldn't run stable benchmarks without more voltage.

    I will also be trying to cover a bit more of the "how to" process in the next one. Consider this the foundation, and the next article will refine the approach a bit. Your comments on what you'd like to see more of are definitely welcome, though, and I'll try to address the order and approach I take next.

    Concerning another comment: "I want to know that when I hit the power button...that the 1.7V setting does NOT have a 10% chance of blowing my processor." I'm not quite sure I understand the concern or know how to test that. Are you saying that the power on process has more voltage fluctuations and may therefore toast the CPU in the first second? (I haven't had that happen over the past several months of testing this chip and others in overclocked setups.) I must admit that I'm extremely nervous about the 1.850V I used for running at 2.80 GHz, but even then the chip continued to function (for now - heheh).

    Cheers!
    Jarred Walton
  • WhipperSnapper - Thursday, October 13, 2005 - link


    That was one of the best computer enthusiast website articles that I've read in a long time, but perhaps I don't get around too much. I'd like to hear more about the problems that spilled over to other components, such as the SATA hard drive (mentioned in the Final Thoughts) and whether or not the overclocking can be isolated to the CPU and RAM. I also wondered if there was a reason why you guys used a SATA hard drive and not an IDE drive and whether overclocking requires a SATA hard drive. (I don't see why it would.)

    Also, have you guys tried to do any tests using memory stick heatsinks? Do they actually do anything? That subject might make for a worthwhile article on its own--RAM cooling.
  • aptinio - Saturday, October 8, 2005 - link

    bravo! great article. very informative but not too bloated. can't wait to finally upgrade my amd k6-II with 1mb l3 cache on the motherboard! lol!
  • Kougar7 - Thursday, October 6, 2005 - link

    Thank you for the excellent, comprehensive, and very thorough article! :-) It must have taken a massive amount of work and time to complete. It’s answered my recent musings about my own Crucial value ram, which looks much nicer now! It’s also solved a question about OCing with recent AMD 64 chips, amongst also correcting a few personal misconceptions I’ve had.

    I just wish to ask if you plan to include a similar article on OCing with P4s? I personally run a 2.8C (Northwood) @ 3.4 rock solid at the 3.4C’s default voltage, but am now wondering exactly what performance hits, if any, that I’ve taken from having to use a 5:4 CPU:DRAM ratio instead of the previous 1:1, even though I’ve kept it at DDR390 and the timings better than specs.

    I’m planning to bench the differences from a 1:1 ratio, a 3:2 ratio at highest speed I can get (sub-DDR333), my current setup, and finally one other setting where I got the value memory to run 2-2-2-6 timings, to get a more solid idea on which performs best with some solid figures.

    Although the core and the platform itself both have both changed, I’d still be interested in a Intel processor based test! Perhaps instead of a P4, maybe a Pentium “D” OCing article similar to what you have planned with the X2 3800+? ;-)

    I’m very much looking forward to your X2 3800+ OCing review!! You rock :-D Thanks in advance for it!
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, October 6, 2005 - link

    I'm trying to get a socket 775 motherboard that will overclock well with Pentium D 820. Once I get that, I can give it a go. I've also got a Pentium 4 505 and a 540 that I want to run some similar tests on. First, though, I need an appropriate motherboard.
  • clue22 - Thursday, October 6, 2005 - link

    so basically what the everybody is saying about the value RAM vs. low latency more expensive RAM is that for the athlon 64 it is basically a waste of money (i.e. you only get about 5% performance gain), but usually spend 100% or more money to get the "better" RAM. i have to build a couple of systems pretty soon and now i believe that my money would be better spent on 2GB of value RAM vs. 1GB of the more expensive stuff. does anyone know of a test that has been run with 2.5-3-3-8-1t vs. 2-2-2-5-1t? also why does every mid-range/gaming/hot-rod price guide ever recommend the either the samsung tccd (or tcc5) or winbond bh5/ch5 based memory if it has so little effect on performance. finally is it even important anymore (if it ever was) to get matched pairs of memory that are bundled together (supposedly manufactured at the same time)? i was looking at some corsair (had good experience with them in the past) xms3200xl RAM but now i think i should get more of their value select memory instead.

    thanks
  • RupertS - Wednesday, October 26, 2005 - link

    so basically what the everybody is saying about the value RAM vs. low latency more expensive RAM is that for the athlon 64 it is basically a waste of money

    This may not be a general rule.

    It may just be that at this stage of development for GPU's, CPU's and memory, memory has more than enough capacity - it is not the choke point. If GPU and CPU speed were to improve while memory speed stayed the same, you might reach the point where increasing GPU and CPU speed was non-productive for games, while overclocking memory provided large performance improvements.
  • rabbit fighter - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Where was this explained? He said the 3200 was better in the first paragraph and that he would explain later, but I can't find the later explanation!
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Sorry if I missed this in the article. The reason a 3200+ may be better is the 10X multiplier vs. 9X. Sure, the DFI board used worked pretty well at either setting, but there are many boards that won't handle much above 250 MHz CPU bus stably. Needless to say, there's a reason 2800 MHz was only included at one setting. While it still wasn't stable, it would actually run most benchmarks at 10x280. 9x311 wouldn't even load Windows half the time. The extra $50 for added flexibility is also nice: you can try 9x300, 10x270, PC3200, PC2700, etc. to find the most stable, highest performing option.
  • Bakwetu - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Thanks for a great article. I haven't been following the development so carefully since I upgraded last time (with one of the last unlocked Barton 2500+), so this article was a most welcome refresher for me, as I will probably get a x2 3800 rig in the near future.

    Last time I checked using the naked fingertip to smear out the paste was a big no-no. I have always used either a washed razorblade or fingertip in a clean plastic bag. The Arctic silver once sold without silver was a faked, copied product as far as I know. The real stuff in its many forms over the years has definitely shown that it is a good product.
  • javalino - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Frist , great article, Jarred.
    Second, i m an anand fan since i remember (1999-2000).
    Third, Since yours conclusion focus on a dilema about overclock, why spend to much in an overclock symtem(or on a powerfull system) if you target is at games ? (wich is a GPU limited). An 125 bucks , like you said, will be more usefull in a video card.
    My idea is an article, about "Benefits, Costs, and Lessons Learned" about build a system for games. How much will be a performance gain from systems running high end cards ,at high resoltion and configurations ( like 1600 x 1200, and with an extra 4xAA 16XAF), with differents system . A FX VS 64(overclock) VS P4 (over) VS P-M VS AMD XP (over of course), for example. The conclusion will be, how much is "needed" to pay for a decent game machine wich is possible to play all current games(and maybe future) with great image quality and performance.

    Maybe the answer is obvious, go with the best FPS/price option possible, or maybe not.
  • AtaStrumf - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Great article Jarred!!! I really like your choice of value parts and how you criticaly assesed the results based on the bang-for-the-buck. And finally you did away with pages and pages of bar charts, and combined them into line-scaling charts. How long have I been asking for something like that??? Now we can finally see the REAL difference (or lack of it), and analyse results properly, without having to go back and forth between tens of bar charts. Tell Anand to upgrade your graphing engine ASAP.

    I am a little worried about those voltages though. This sure looks like a bad chip to me (OC wise). WAY too high voltages. I would not go over 1,45 - 1,50 V or else you risk screwing up the chip. You see the memory controller on the chip doesn't like too high voltages and though it will still work, the chip will get slower eventually. Hard to explain really but I know my new 2,2 GHz A64 is faster and much cooler than my old 2,4 GHz A64 (same core - Newcastle, same cooer, same RPM, same case, same ...), which I bought from some crazy overclocker (last time BTW). The 2,4 GHz one gave me really shitty results in FAH for weeks. That's the only explanation a have so far anyway. Maybe you can do an investigaion into this -- burn in one A64 Venice at say 1,6V 24/7 for a few weeks and let's see what happens. I just don't have the $$$ and time to take the risk. I'd be very happy to hear from other forum members on this as well.

    Anyway, glad to see at least part of AT is back to the high quality standards we were used to.
  • AtaStrumf - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Or maybe it's the SOI process that is to blame for not taking high voltages too kindly, or maybe both, don't know yet, but I would definitely advice caution goint over 1,5V (default for 0,13 mikron SOI chips). Just think about it, that's already a 15% increase. +10% is usualy max that is still considered safe.

    You just posted that this chip seems to have changed it's behavior (better OC). That may have something to do with the high voltages and it may not be all good. I'd suggest testing it again in a few benchmarks and comparing the results.
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Working on it. I think I ended up benching at 1.850V for the 10x280 setting and then not dropping voltages as much as I was supposed to. I'm a little skeptical that a CPU would get slower, though. Usually, they work or they fail. We'll see.

    My thought on the "safe limit" though: what voltage does the FX-57 run at? Whatever it is, at 10 to 15% to that and you're probably still okay. Good cooling will also help; on the stock HSF, I'd be a lot more nervous going over 1.550V.
  • OvErHeAtInG - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Very useful article - thorough yet concise. And I would like to toss in another request: Add to the test a ULi-based motherboard (such as the recently reviewed ASRock 939Dual-SATA2). How do these Venices overclock when you can only feed them +.05v? As I recall the standard AT Clawhammer was used in that review.

    That would be hugely useful to a lot of us wanting to transition to A64. While the thing to do is probably just get a DFI or other top-end oc'er, what to do for those of us who are not yet ready to upgrade GPUs? On second thought: you could simulate the ASRock motherboard by simply setting the Venices to the lower voltage, on the DFI board, and testing for the max overclock on that. I think that would vary quite a bit from chip to chip, but just to get an idea - how much of a disadvantage is being limited in your voltage? Food for thought.
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    I played around with voltages a bit more last night. It seems like I can hit about 2.40 GHz with only increasing the CPU voltage to 1.40V, though I didn't run all of the benchmarks to fully test that config. I'm not sure if the CPU has changed behavior over the past month, or if I was just too liberal with the voltages initially.

    For the ASRock, that Wes managed to get a 500 MHz OC even with the minimal voltage adjustments is promising. Truth be told, the DFI Infinity seems to undervolt the CPU slightly, so 1.500V actually shows up as closer to 1.455V. If the ASRock is exact with the voltages, or even a bit high, I think a 2.4+ GHz overclock is a reasonably safe bet.
  • OvErHeAtInG - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link

    Thanks for the info, Jarred. I'm sure there's a thread on this somewhere.... :)
  • araczynski - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    i haven't seen a better argument for not wasting money on the 'better' memory in ages.

    with those kinds of 'gains' i congratulate the companies for milking everyone with their markups for the 'higher end' components.
  • intellon - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    I understand how/why the memory quality is not too imoprtant (5-9% increase for 100 bucks = not worthy)
    What I AM unclear about is the cpu itself. Would all the cpu's based on venice hit a same ceiling. Or would a 3800+ reach a higher, more stable, cooler overclock than the 3200+? There is one line that mentions these two cpu's on the first page but no comment on how they would perform when overclocked. Does a 12x help over 9x? Also am I wrong in assuming that you picked 3200+ over 3000+ because of a higher multiplier?
    And like people are asking... how bad/good are the other chips? How'll a San Diego 3500+ fare against a Venice 3500+? They're faster as stock, but can they match or exceed overclock performance of venice?
    Questions questions questions...
    The article was wicked though. I was skeptical about buying a cheaper RAM... but seeing how another $50 is not going to help, I'll save that money for something else.
  • gplracer - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Very nice article. It appears to be well thought out. Thanks for the time you spent on it. I would also be nice to have an article of this type with some of the more popular power supplies.

    I to have had several chips that would overclock such as:
    P166 @ 200mhz lol
    Celeron 300a @ 450mhz
    Duron 600 @ 950mhz
    Athlon 1700+ (DLTC3) @ 2374mhz
    2600+ at 250x10= 2500mhz

    There is no way you could add all of the cpus to the review. I look forward to overclocking a dual core athlon64.
  • PaBlooD - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Great Articule.. thanks for that great work.
    I actually have a A64 3200+ Winchester core with an Epox 9NDA3+ + 512 x2 ocz premier (crap ) and i only can get the procesor to 2150 mhz... i tried with safe memo times.. but nothing..are that bad overclockers the Winchester cores? :S
    (excuse my poor english ^_^)
  • RaulAssis - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link

    Didi you try memory deviders like 5/6 ?
  • yacoub - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    I definitely appreciate all the walk-through of overclocking an A64 system. Very good article. One thing though - the last few pages with the test result charts... the charts make it look like the entire notion of overclocking is rather pointless since all four colored lines are nearly identical in all but a couple tests. You might want to consider a different type of chart next time that gives a -visual- impression of the benefit to better support the written descriptive increases in performance. Maybe some sort of bar chart would have worked better.
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    I felt the visual impression conveyed exactly what I saw: the difference between the 3000+ and 3200+ in overclocking combined with value and performance RAM is, at best, small. I understand what you're saying, and trust me: I played around with the Excel graphs for many hours. None of the graphs really gave a clear picture, unfortunately. Getting four setups with about 9 settings each into a single chart is messy. Having 80 charts is even worse. Heheh.

    If someone can show me a preferred chart style, I'll be happy to change the graph for the next installment. The AnandTech graphing engine really wasn't capable of dealing with this type of data set, unfortunately... but Excel was only marginally better.
  • intellon - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    I guess you could "ZOOM IN" onto the y-axis. For instance: on the last graph HL2 1024x768 4xAA, since the minimum was above 80 and max was below 140, you could set the min and max ranges of y-axis accordingly. or go GNU plot way for a sharper graph.
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Like the 3DMark GPU scores? I really dislike graphs that don't start at 0, because it hides the reality. (That's why I put the extra paragraph on the 3DMark scores noting specifically that they don't start at 0.) I can blow up a graph so that everyone can see the 1 or 2% margin of victory, but what does that really say? Margin of error on several benchmarks is at least 1 or 2%, and in actual use I don't think anyone will really notice even a 5% difference - I know I don't.

    Some people will be annoyed by this, but too many people worry about the last 1% of performance. Not because they can notice a difference, but because they want meaningless bragging rights. Sitting in the top positions in an online game requires skill. Getting 1% higher FPS usually just involves throwing more money at your PC than the next guy. Some people like to do that - sort of like some people like muscle cars. I want a fast computer, but I'm not going to lose sleep because my PC is marginally slower than my friend's, you know?

    Anyway, I may look into a separate graphing tool. Excel looks fine internally, but getting the graphs into image form didn't work perfectly. The text alignment got a little tweaked when I cut and pasted the data into Photoshop.

    Regards,
    Jarred Walton
  • RupertS - Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - link

    Be careful, I think Muscle Car owners are a protected class.
  • probedb - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    I'd just like to say cheers for this. It's made me finally get round to trying to OC my system. I purposely bought a 3000+ and Crucial Ballistix for this but have never got round to trying it.

    I shall give it a go this weekend!!!
  • Lonyo - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    NO, DON'T, UNLESS YOU HAVE SOMETHING BETWEEN YOUR FINGER AND THE PASTE.

    Arctic Silver 5 instructions:
    DO NOT use your bare finger to apply or smooth the compound (skin cells, and oils again).
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Er... I didn't use Arctic Silver. Just the grease that came with the XP-90. I suppose there might be some thermal compounds that would be bad to touch. RTFM, right?

    Anyway, I'm not particularly convinced of the effectiveness of stuff like Arctic Silver. At one point, there was some story about how the AS batches for a while didn't actually contain any silver because the manufacturing company was skimping on costs (unbeknownst to Arctic Silver or their customers). I could be wrong, but I'm half-convinced AS is just a placebo effect. :)
  • poohbear - Tuesday, January 3, 2006 - link

    that wasnt arctic silver, that was another company entirely (name eludes me since it was 2+ years ago)
  • PrinceGaz - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Regardless of the compound, you shouldn't touch it with your finger for the reason stated-- skin cells and grease from your finger will be left on the grease and they act as a barrier that reduces thermal-conduction. The simplest way to avoid this is to put a clean plastic bag over your hand before touching the compound as that will prevent any contamination.

    Regardless of what you say about AS5, numerous reviews of thermal-compunds have shown that compared to the the standard grease supplied with AMD boxed processors, AS5 alone can lower temperatures by a few degrees C. Given how cheap AS5 is compared with a decent heatsink (like the XP-90), it is a very good idea to get some AS5 if also buying a better HSF than what is supplied with the CPU. Using the grease supplied with the CPU or heatsink is a false economy.
  • THG64 - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    From my own experience I would say the BIOS is at least as important as the hardware itself.

    My A8N using 1004 final BIOS can run my A64 3200+ @ 2500 MHz (10 x 250, 1.4125V) and the memory at 208 MHz 1T (2x 1GB MDT DDR400 2.5-3-3-8). There is no chance to get a higher frequency running because I get memory problems at anything above 250 MHz (known as 1T bug). I tested the memory up to 217MHz so its not the limiting factor.

    Over the months I made many attempts to upgrade BIOS to newer versions and had no luck at all. The last version were even more interesting because of the A64 X2 support. No chance to get even up to 250MHz base. Only the reason has changed it seems. I made a HD upgrade in between and switched from a PATA drive to a SATA drive. This made it even worse.

    From 1005 to 1010 the BIOS limited the overclocking to 215 to 220 MHz through reworked memory options. After 1010 the memory isn't the problem anymore or at least not the main problem. Windows is loading until desktop and while the OS is still loading in background the HD LED stays on and the system freezes.
    As mentioned in the conclusion the SATA controller seems to limit the possible o/c.

    If there would be a lowcost PCIe SATA controller I would surely give it a try but at the moment I stay with 1004 and and more or less working SATA drive at 250 MHz.
  • lopri - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Hi,

    I'm currently running X2 4800+ in my rig. I think I can safely OC it to 2750MHz. But the thing is, my RAM can only do 220MHz.. And the mobo doesn't support anything other than DDR400, DDR333, DDR266. (A8N-SLI Premium)

    What are the penalty of running a half-multi? I understand a half-multi won't get you the ideal memp speed, but in my situation I can make up for it by being able to raise the HTT some more. Basically I have following options.

    CPU (Max): 2750MHz @1.475V
    RAM (Max): 220MHz @2.75V (2-3-2-5-1T)

    Therefore, here is what I can do:

    1. 10.5 x 261: This gives me CPU 2741MHz and memory 211MHz. (from CPU-Z reading)
    2. 11 x 250: This give me CPU 2750Mhz and memory 196Mhz. (from CPU-Z reading)

    If I run Sandra I get almost the same CPU score from both settings. But I get a quite bigger memory bandwidth score from the Setting #1. In ideal world (that is, if only the final achieved speed matters), I definitely think the Setting #1 is better. I'd like to know if there is any "inherent" penalty attached to non-integer multipliers.

    Could you help me out? Thanks a bunch!

    lop





  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    At one point in time, the half multipliers didn't really work properly. They were just hiding some behind-the-scenes memory and bus tweaks. CPU-Z apparently doesn't report this properly. Anyway, if the system runs stable in either configuration, take the configuration that performs better. (Run a variety of tests - memory bandwidth alone doesn't tell the whole story.)
  • Sunrise089 - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    How important is that XP-90? I am wondering if you all feel it is necessary, feel it is necessary for long term safety, or really feel the $45 would be better spent elsewhere?

    P.S. - Thanks Anandtech. 3000+, X-800 GTO2, and value RAM costs about $400, and overclocked performs about as fast as a stock speed FX-55, x850 xt-pe, and high-end RAM costing $1000+. Your last two updates alone could have saved someone $600.
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    You can get the XP-90 and a 92mm fan for about $40 shipped, but what's $5? How important is it? Well, I think you could probably get an extra 100 to 200 MHz relative to the retail HSF. I'll be working on testing a few cooling options in a future article. The XP-90 is quieter than the retail fan, but other than that... I'll have to see what difference it makes.
  • da2ce7 - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    When I over clocked my X2 3800+ I got up to 2.6ghz, at 1.45V;
    But What I am really want to know about it the both the “safe” and “generally stable” cup temperatures, a table of temps from below 20ºC to 80ºC, where the core goes up in smoke (well maybe not that), would be most helpful.
  • Crassus - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    First of all, thank you for such a long article. I appreciate the work you put into this. What I'd really like to see in one of the planned articles would be an in-depth coverage of the options an enthusiast-grade mainboard BIOS offers nowadays for the RAM timings (and maybe PCIe) - beyond the standard timings covered in this article.
  • PrinceGaz - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    The finer memory-timings offered by enthusiast mobos are generally vendor specific so your best bet is to check a forum or other site dedicated to your motherboard. For DFI mobos for instance, you can find a thread which gives detailed coverage of memory settings on DFI-Street forums http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2...">here
  • CheesePoofs - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Why stability test with 3dmark (an app that tries to stress teh CPU as little as possible) and pcmark (an ok pc-stressing app) instead of the combo of memtest86+, superpi, and prime95? Seems to me that if you want to find out whether yoru CPU really is stable, you'd want to stress it as hard as possible (which those three will do).

    Also, from what I've read from Zebo's thread in the CPU forums, 2T really doesn't have a significant impact on performance. Could you clarify this?
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    I've seen systems that run Prime95 and SuperPi 100% stable crash under 3DMark looping, as well as under PCMark. I imagine 2.80 GHz will crash under those if I run them all concurrently. My personal experience is that SuperPi and Prime95 only stress a few paths of the CPU, hence the inclusion of benchmarks with 11 different applications that can all fail with an unstable overclock. 3DMark GPU tests are not as demanding of the CPU, but the CPU tests are very demanding IMO. (That's part of why the top scores on the 3DMark ORB never include the CPU tests.)

    2T command rate, as you can see in quite a few instances, really killed performance. Perhaps tweaking other special timings beyond CL, tRCD, tRP, and tRAS might make the impact less, but you could likely tweak the same things with 1T at a lower memory speed. Command rate comes into play on every single memory access, so doubling that delay will certainly have an impact on performance.
  • fitten - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Good answer. Most have no clue as to how a CPU actually works. Ideally, a synchronous circuit is rated at a clock speed that the longest path will function properly (give correct results). There may be 1000s of pathways that can run at higher frequencies but that one can hold it back. Running the clock rate up may cause that one pathway not to be able to meet something like a data setup and hold time on one line (of the 32 or 64) in the data path and now you have an unstable setup that you may not detect. As always with overclocking, a crash is the best result you can get because you know you've pushed too far. Unless you are testing pretty much every instruction with every possible data against a control to compare against (some pathways can take longer depending on the data that it is being operated on), there are many errors that you may not detect... and all it takes is one, out of the possible billions, to make your machine not stable. Sure, it may be a rarely seen case of instruction+data but it exists.

    Programs like the Pi calculators and such do make your CPU work a lot, but the calculations are fairly repetitive and hardly a broad sample of the ISA.

    I'm all for doing whatever you want with your own machine. Heck, I used to overclock all the time, too. I just find all of the lack of knowledge in synchronous circuits... interesting... when people talk about overclocking.
  • Saist - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    for those who read this portion here :

    ****
    Because of the GPU limitation, we're going to be testing at 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. We'll also test many of the titles with 4xAA enabled, which should serve as a reality check. Even with a super fast CPU, many games are going to be completely GPU limited with the X800 Pro when we run 4xAA, especially at resolutions 1024x768 and above. Frankly, we wouldn't bother enabling 4xAA unless you can at least reach 1024x768 anyway.
    ****

    Did anyone else think... okay.. lets stick a Radeon 9600, GeforceFX, or XGI Volari in there so that we actually will be limited? I mean... please. X800 alone goes above what most users have in their systems today. If we are buying "new" components, then yeah, the X800 is on my short list, but how about doing some reviews over hardware people actually have in their hands.
  • OvErHeAtInG - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    If you're overclocking a new A64 Venice... somehow I think you're not still running your XGI Volari for games. Remember bench numbers are really only useful if they reflect framerates you would actually want to play with.
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    The reason I used an X800 Pro is because I feel it's a good match for the chip, RAM, and motherboard. I can toss in a 7800GTX to show what the CPU on its own is capable of, but you can get cards that pretty much equal the X800 Pro for under $200. X800 GTO and GTO2 can match and even beat the X800 Pro.

    I view overclocking (and computer building in general) from a bang-for-the-buck perspective. It doesn't make sense to me to spend $100 upgrading from the 3000+ to the 3500+ if I'm going to be completely GPU limited. $200 on a graphics card is not that much money, when you really get down to it. 180 million transistor chip with 256MB of 980MHz RAM, all mounted on a large PCB? At least I can feel I'm getting a lot of stuff for $200. A CPU is far cheaper to produce (though more expensive to design). Profit margins on CPUs are notoriously high.... Personally, the X800 Pro is a decent card, but I really want something faster these days. Same goes for the 6800GT. But then, not everyone feels that way.
    ---------
    Thought #2 (for Saist): If X800 is above what most people have, other than those buying new computers... well, what about the motherboard and processor? Socket 939 with nForce4 is a more recent configuration than X800/6800 cards. Not to mention Venice has only been out for something like 8 months.

    If you're looking to spend $120+ on a new Venice chip and you've only got a 9600 Pro (or even a 9800 Pro), you're wasting your money on the wrong part (at least from a gaming perspective). A socket 754 Sempron with an X800 Pro would be far better for gaming than a Venice core with anything less than an X800/6800. Outside of gaming... well, graphics don't matter outside of gaming much, which is why Winstones, PCMark, and AutoGK are included.

    Honestly, I'm not entirely sure if you were complaining about the use of a GPU that was too fast, or that it wasn't fast enough. For frequent gaming, I wouldn't recommend anyone go lower than about the X800 GTO these days. 6600GT is (IMO) now relegated to the budget/moderate-gaming setup, as many games are simply unplayable above 1024x768. I really don't like to drop below 1280x1024/1280x960 if I can avoid it. If I've misunderstood your complaint, let me know; if we simply have a difference of opinion... well, there's not much to do about that. :)
  • yanman - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    any chance you can add in benches for 7800GT/GTX? after all, in your discussion you correctly asset that money is much better spent on high spec'd GPU to match the cpu speed that you've managed to overclock to - having used bargain rate ram and venice.

    i have a venice 3000+ clocked at 2686mhz, 7800gt and 2x1gb sticks of average ram (legend/hynix). until i upgraded the ram a few weeks ago i had it running for prehaps a month and a half totally solid with 2x512mb sticks of same type, at 2696mhz (337x8, ram at 225mhz (2:3) 2.5-3-4-7-1T)

    the reason i ask for 7800GT and GTX is 2 fold, so we can see it from an nvidia side too (different cpu scaling maybe?), and also to show the scaling for a top-end card even if only as a reference point. It just seems a bit one-dimensional only using 1 card.

    One last thing, well done to Zebo who made the excellent "Quick and dirty A64 overclocking guide" (used to be sticky in the forums) which I and many people I know used to overclock their venices with.. i'd be stuck without it!
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    I'm planning on doing 7800GTX testing with an X2 3800+ OC article. For gaming, it will perform identically to the 3200+ Venice. Hopefully, I'll be done in the next ~week or so.
  • Powered by AMD - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Do not forget The Athlon XP 1700+ 1.5Volts, DLT3C, mines is OC from 1467 Stock to 2250 Mhz and pretty cool with an old Thermaltake Blower...
    It can ever reach 2450 Mhz but with 1.8 Volts.
    hey, at 2250 Mhz its a 53% OC too!!
    Great article but it will be useful for me only when I need an Athlon 64 :p
  • donkeycrock - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    i noticed that frys is selling x-connect (500 Watts)psu for 25 dollars after rebate. it is extremely heavy, and not many reviews say if they are very good PSU's for overclocking, anybody have knowladge about this PSU.

    thanks
    brad
  • cryptonomicon - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    nice article jarred, and you worded the disclaimers perfectly, bravo.

    and its nice to see those ram comparisons. good to see those results on the latest a64 platform and confirm once again that the ram makes only a few percentage points difference, if that. shelling out all your dough on a good GPU, then buying the lowest model venice, a DFI board, and value ram is the way to go.
  • Googer - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    http://www2.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/Down...">AMD Thermal Grease List PDF
  • RupertS - Wednesday, October 26, 2005 - link

    Interesting, AMD only recommends thermal grease for short term use 'where the heat sink is removed and attached multiple times over a short period'. They definitely do not recommend it for long term use.
  • StriderGT - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Both me, Zebo and many others have clarified long time ago in Anands forum the pointless struggle of purchasing extreme memory parts in Athlon64. Dividers and value ram will do the trick of excellent ocing giving you 95%++ of the performance someone gets with expensive and overvolted ram modules. Nice seeing anandtech come up with an article backing up the threads like this one (http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...mp;threa...

    PS For those owning MSI Neo3 m/bs -and even the rest- I have created back then an excel calculating the actual memory frequency with the various BIOS settings. Enjoy
    http://www.geocities.com/gtstrider/">http://www.geocities.com/gtstrider/
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Yeah, I've seen quite a few threads around the 'net on this, but AT hadn't covered it very well, and I hoped to get something "official" out there. (None of the enthusiast sites have really covered this that well, as far as I could see.) Since I've been fooling around with various AMD CPU overclocks for a year now, I figured others might like to see the possibilities. High-end, high-cost is well and good for dreams, but like most people I live a bit closer to reality. $200 is about as much as I'm willing to pay for a CPU in most cases.
  • andyc - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    So you can basically overclock the 3000 to the same speeds the 3200 can? So it's not even worth it to go with the 3200?
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Well, perhaps. 9x300 requires a better motherboard than 10x270, though most boards than can handle 270 MHz CPU bus speeds will also handle 300 I think. For value overclockers, though, I don't think I'd bother spending the extra $50 on the 3200+, no. Spend it on the GPU instead (if you play games).
  • Mogadon - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Great article Jarred, thanks for putting in all the hard work and time.

    I have one question regarding voltages. As I understand it, you wouldn't recommend running a VCore above 1.65V for a long term overclock. I understand the warnings and possible effects on the CPU with running a high VCore but I wanted to know if this is around the VCore that you would run on, say, your overclocked system?

    The majority of people on the forums here don't really recommend going above 1.55V or 1.6V, i was wondering if you had any comments about this.
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    It's tough to say how things will pan out long-term. 1.650V seems reasonably safe to me, but I wouldn't do it without a better HSF than the stock model. The 1.850V settings made me quite nervous, though. If you can get your CPU to run at 1.600V instead of 1.650V, that would be better, I think. There's also a possibility that slowing down your RAM slightly might help the CPU run at lower voltages. I'd sacrifice 5% to run what I consider a "safer" overclock, though really the thought of frying a $140 CPU doesn't concern me too much. That's less than any car repair I've had to make....
  • cryptonomicon - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    well for most overclocks a reasonable ("safe") increase of voltage is 10-15%. however that is just a guideline, it may be more or less. there is sort of a way to find out: if you work on overclocking to the maximum of your chip while scaling the voltage, you will eventually hit a place where you have to increase the voltage dramatically just to get up the next FSB bump. for example if you are at 2500mhz and 1.6v, then it takes 1.75v just to get to 2600mhz, then you have hit that boundary and should go back down immediatly. when the voltage to cpu speed ratio is scaling consistently, then things are fine. but once the voltage required becomes blatently unbalanced, that is the logical time to stop... unless you have no concern for the longetivity of the chip.
  • Ecmaster76 - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Finally goaded me into overclocking my P4 2.4c. I had been planning for a while but never bothered too.

    So I got bored and set the FSB to 250mhz (I went for my goal on my first try!) with a 5:4 (still DDR400) memory ratio. It works great at stock cooling + stock voltage. I will have to do some long term analysis of stability but since I am building a new system before the years end I don't really care if it catches on fire. Well as long as it doesn't melt some of my newer nerd toys that are attached to it.
  • lifeguard1999 - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    I am running an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor (Venice) @ 2.7 GHz, stock HSF; 1.55V Vcore; DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR. It was cool seeing you run something similar to my setup. I run value RAM and it seems that I made the right choice for me (giving up at most 5% performance). You ran at Vcores much higher than I do, so it was interesting to see the CPU handle that.

    The only thing I would add to this article is a paragraph mentioning temperatures that the CPU experienced.
  • mongoosesRawesome - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    yes, i second that. temps at those volts using your cpu cooler as well as with maybe a few other coolers would be very helpful. also, if you could do a few tests using different coolers to see when temps hold you back.
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    I've got some tests planned for cooling in the near future. I'll be looking at CPU temps for stock (2.0 GHz) as well as 270x10 with 1.750V. I've even got a few other things planned. My particular chip wouldn't POST at more than 2.6 GHz without at least 1.650V, but that will vary from chip to chip. The XP-90 never even got warm to the touch, though, which is pretty impressive. Even with an X2 chip, it barely gets above room temperature. (The core is of course hotter, but not substantially so I don't think.)
  • tayhimself - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Good article, but your Vcore seems to scale up with most of the increments in speed? Did you HAVE TO raise the vcore? Usually you can leave the vcore until you really have to start pushing. Comments?
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    2.20GHz was fine with default 1.300. 2.40GHz may have been okay; increasing the Vcore to 1.40V seemed to stabilize it a bit, though it may not have been completely necessary. 2.60GHz would POST with 1.450V, but loading XP locked up. 1.550V seemed mostly stable, but a few benchmarks would crash. 2.70GHz definitely needed at least 1.650V, and bumping it up a bit higher seemed to stabilize it once again. 2.80GHz was questionable at best even at 1.850V with the current cooling configuration. It wouldn't load XP at 2.80GHz at 1.750V, though.
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    My memory on the voltages might be a bit off. Personal experimentation will probably be the best approach. I think I might have erred on the high side of required voltage. Still, past a certain point you'll usually need to scale voltage a bit with each bump in CPU speed. When it starts scaling faster - i.e. .1V more to get from 2700 to 2800 MHz - then you're hitting the limits of the CPU and should probably back off a bit and call it good.
  • tayhimself - Tuesday, October 4, 2005 - link

    Thanks a lot for your replies. Looks like there is a fair bit of overclocking even if you dont increase the Vcore too much to help save power/noise etc.
    Cheers
  • photoguy99 - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Dual Core was not mentioned -

    Anyone know how difficult it is to get a stable dual-core to 2.8Ghz with water-cooling?

    Easy, difficult, impossible?
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Part two/three will cover other chips. I wanted to get the base overclocking article out, and I will be looking at both Sempron and X2 overclocking in the near future. 2.80 GHz wasn't stable on my Venice, though - not entirely - and it won't even post on my X2 3800+. Your mileage may vary, naturally, but I'm getting about 100MHz less from my X2 vs. Venice. (I'd take the second core over the extra 100MHz any day, however!)
  • MemberSince97 - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Thanks for the detailed explanation and charts. Thanks for the hard work.
  • Nunyas - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    I'm a bit supprised that you guys forgot to mention the overclocking abilities of the venerable Athlon Thunderbirds with the AXHA and AXIA steppings. I had a 1GHz T-Bird with AXHA stepping that allowed me to OC it to 1.533 GHz (53%), and it's documented all over the place with people achieving even better results with the same model CPU. At the time that the 1GHz became a great OC'er it was around $99 and gave you the performance of the then high end Athlons and P4's. Thus, by far a better OC'er than the Celeron 300A.
  • OvErHeAtInG - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Meh, my AXIA 1.2 would do 1.4 or 1.33 sorta stable, with really good cooling, tweaked voltage, and so forth. When I sold it to my friend I had to put it back to stock speeds just so it would stay stable in the hands of someone who doesn't monitor her CPU temperature all the time ;) My "B" Northwood, IMO, is a more stable OC'er. Having said that, I guess others were more lucky than me... but yeah no 300A killer IMO.
  • kmmatney - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    The celeron 300A set the standard for overclocking. It was less the $100 (oem version) and performed better than any stock cpu you could buy, including those costing 3 times more. It really sparked the whole overclocking phenonema. Another good one was the Celeron II 500, which could easily overclock to 800 MHz. I had both of those.

    I had a cyrix 486DX-66 overclocked to 80 Mhz, and an AMD 586 DX4-133 overclocked to 150 MHz, but the celeron 300A was simply unbelievable at the time.
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    I didn't bother to try and include everything, especially where it was only specific steppings of a CPU. (I.e. not all T-birds did a 53% OC, right?) Anyway, I was basically an Intel user up until the Athlon XP era. I went from socket 478 with a Celeron 1.1A (OC'ed to 1.47 GHz) to the XP-M 2500+. The "history lesson" was just an introduction anyway, setting the stage. :)
  • Aquila76 - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    I've been waiting for a reputable site to post OC testing like this. I feel pretty good with the OC I get out of my rig (3500+ Winch @ 2.7GHz, Mem on divider) - thanks to the forums here - and it's close to what you guys acheived. I may swap to that DFI board instead as I know the A8N-SLI is holding me back.
  • Garyclaus16 - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Job well done. I like how the benchmarks showed overclocking for anything 1024x768+ means nothing for games. I was aware the increase was small with high resolution..but an almost null increase in performance kind of makes me want to leave my 3200+ winchester the way it is. Do the venice cores OC better than winchesters?...
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Venice and Winchester should be about the same, though you might get an extra 100 MHz out of Venice (?). You can get higher performance at resolutions above 1024x768, but you'll need a much faster graphics card than the X800 Pro (or a 6800GT) for most of that. It depends on the game being tested as well.
  • Furen - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Actually, Winchesters are pretty bad overclockers. They were even worse overclockers than newcastles and clawhammers back when they came out, which is why the FX-55 was clawhammer based rather than Winchester based.
  • ksherman - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    hmmm... Im running a 3000+ winchester, and ive got it to 2.56GHz... thats quite an over clock if you ask me... you would probably be the first person I have EVER say that the winchesters do not OC well...
  • ksherman - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    is there any performance hit when using memory dividers? I have heard that there is, as the memory and CPU are running on different frequencies... and is it better to keep you RAM @ DDR400, and use dividers or run the RAM @ DDR480?
  • ShadowVlican - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    so i'm guessing basically, A64's prefer low latency than high frequency
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Pretty much. If you think about it, 10x240 with DDR333 setting is actually identical to 12x200 with DDR400 setting. The RAM is at DDR400 in either case. The difference between a 960 MHz HT speed and 1000 MHz HT speed is... well, if you measure more than a 1% difference, I'd be surprised. :)
  • Wesley Fink - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Memory dividers DO make a difference in performance on the Intel platform, where the memory controller is in the chipset and latency is relatively high. Basically, the architecture derives memory ratios with added overhead which can definitely impact performance, and 1:1 memory ratio is best.

    However, the memory controller on the Athlon 64 is on the processor and memory frequencies are derived from HT on the A64, without adding overhead. That means, theoretically, memory dividers should have NO impact at all on Athlon 64 memory performance - everything else being equal (which it rarely is).
  • ksherman - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    well i decided to go for the RAM dividers... upto 2.56GHz, memory using the 5/6 divider (DRAM/FSB) RAM @ DDR466 @ 2-2-2-7 3.3V! was at 2.13Ghz, since I didnt want to use memory dividers. so a nice jump in speed! now I just got to find do some benchies! BTW- I am using a DFI Ultra-D and it is the greatest board I have ever owned! havent done the SLI mod yet, but I dont need to
  • ksherman - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    hmm... guess if i read the WHOLE article... ;-)

    good article though! I highly reccomend the 'Value VX' RAM aka OCZ Value RAM, since when you put enough voltage into it (3.2V in my case) it overclocks like a charm! Im getting DDR 480 with tight timings (not EXATLY sure, but something 2-2-3-8 1T)
  • Garyclaus16 - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    Well,...the article states that there have been performance hits with higher dividers. Best way to find out with yourself is to do your own benches! No two systems will overclock exactly the same, so the best way to figure something out is to try it on your own..
  • Aquila76 - Monday, October 3, 2005 - link

    If your RAM will run stably at DDR480, leave it. I had to drop mine down becase there's some issue with the mobo higher than 250MHz.
  • DonTrowbridg3 - Thursday, October 4, 2018 - link

    2018 checking in. Thanks for all the info and comments. Very helpful in overclocking my FX-60, A8N32-SLI, dual 8800 GTX

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