Getting A64 to 2.6GHz

T

torvalds

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 28, 2004
Messages
211
I just got the following...

3800+ Athlon 64 (venice)
MSI Geforce 6800GT
1 GB Corsair pc3200XL (2-2-2-5)
Asus A8N-E

The athlon is 2.4GHz at stock , I have it at 2592MHz at the minute. Its stable at this but if i go on step higher which puts me to 2616Mhz doom 3 crashes running the time demo. I assume other things will crash but I was just using doom. I thought upping the v-core would have let me go a bit higher but it deosnt seem to help. These extra few mhz really give me a good boost and I would love to get stable over 2.6GHz.

So im hoping that a more experienced overclocker could help me out. Is there any way to get over 2.6GHz or is that as high as it'll go?

The cpu is running at about 54*C.
 
You can try running something to test your ram (MemTest). When overclocking your processor, you also overclock your ram. Going to far can cause your ram to become unstable (the cause of DooM 3 crashing?).
If the RAM is the problem, you can do one of three things things.buy RAM rated for a higher speed, up the voltage on the ram and hope it works ok, and/or change the memory ratio.
Power supply also makes a BIG difference, a good one can improve your OC dramaticly.
 
Unknown-One said:
You can try running something to test your ram (MemTest). When overclocking your processor, you also overclock your ram. Going to far can cause your ram to become unstable (the cause of DooM 3 crashing?).
If the RAM is the problem, you can do one of two things. up the voltage on the ram and hope it works ok, or buy RAM rated for a higher speed.
Power supply also makes a BIG difference, a good one can improve your OC dramaticly.
Click to expand...

or, just change the fsb ration (or whatever it's called)
 
I agree that it's most likely your ram holding you back in the sense that with an Athlon64, when you up the HTT / FSB on it - you're also proportionately overclocking your RAM as the memory controller (which controls memory speed among other things) is in the CPU and therefor directly affected by clockspeed changes to the CPU (HTT).

If you use a memory divider like 9:10, 5:6, 3:4, 2:3, etc to drop your ram down in speed a little to try to keep it within spec, or at least within it's overclock-able range(s) - that should increase your stability for overclocking the cpu HTT.

torvalds said:
I just got the following...

3800+ Athlon 64 (venice)
MSI Geforce 6800GT
1 GB Corsair pc3200XL (2-2-2-5)
Asus A8N-E

The athlon is 2.4GHz at stock , I have it at 2592MHz at the minute. Its stable at this but if i go on step higher which puts me to 2616Mhz doom 3 crashes running the time demo. I assume other things will crash but I was just using doom. I thought upping the v-core would have let me go a bit higher but it deosnt seem to help. These extra few mhz really give me a good boost and I would love to get stable over 2.6GHz.

So im hoping that a more experienced overclocker could help me out. Is there any way to get over 2.6GHz or is that as high as it'll go?

The cpu is running at about 54*C.
Click to expand...
 
I upped the ram voltage a wee bit and that worked ok at 2616Mhz but then running the benchmarls the scores were badly degraded. Doom was as much as 10fps lower and cs: source was 20fps lower!
 
torvalds said:
I upped the ram voltage a wee bit and that worked ok at 2616Mhz but then running the benchmarls the scores were badly degraded. Doom was as much as 10fps lower and cs: source was 20fps lower!
Click to expand...

CPU-Z screenshots of the main portion as well as the memory tab (and a64tweaker too if you can) will help troubleshoot. Maybe your ram is holding you back?
 
here you go. i cant find a64tweaker anywhere... or at least anywhere that the download will start.

all1jj.jpg
 
It's a longshot but it could be that you're not really prime stable with that voltage/HTT combination and so it may be degrading your doom3 fps. Try upping the voltage to 1.5-1.55 or even as high as 1.6.- 1.65 and see if that helps.

Best measure of stability of an overclock is if you can run Prime95 in-place ftt torture test for 12-24hrs without it erroring, crashing, or locking up.

If you still see a performance drop after that, it's something else (not cpu or ram) causing it.
 
you hafta lower your LDT multiplier to 4x, instead of the 5x you have it at now. Your overclocking the HyperTransport bus past 1ghz, and if you overclock that, some mobos dont boot, or itll be hella unstable. HyperTransport is HTTxLDT, if you have your processor at stock, then the mobo will have 200x5, resulting in 1ghz, you wanna keep HyperTransport under or at 1ghz. If you overclock from 201-250, use the 4x ldt setting, from 251-333, use the 3x multi, and i doubt youll hit over 333. just keep the magic number under 1ghz, and you should see no instability.
 
Dear CCUABIDExORxDIE. I might be stupid but I havent got the slightest clue what your talking about. LDT is?

It seems since the last time I built a pc a lot of termsn have change is FSB now seems to be HTT. Myabe im getting old, I dunno.

Could you please explain that agin in nooberish?
 
torvalds said:
Dear CCUABIDExORxDIE. I might be stupid but I havent got the slightest clue what your talking about. LDT is?

It seems since the last time I built a pc a lot of termsn have change is FSB now seems to be HTT. Myabe im getting old, I dunno.

Could you please explain that agin in nooberish?
Click to expand...

HTT is the clock speed of the communication from the Athlon64 chip to the rest of the machine. It's also a reference for the chip speed (what was and is referred to as FSB in other chips, HTT in that light only refers to A64's).

It's confusing as hell, I readily admit it.

Think of it this way.

HTT in reference to the CPU = FSB. It's what you multiply by the multiplier to get your clock speed.
HTT in reference to the motherboard is the speed at which it communicates with ram, pci cards, etc. This is also referred to as LDT (in order to eliminate the obvious confusion).
LDT Multiplier is the multiplier of the HTT for peripherals which gets you the speed at which it talks to the ram and peripherals directly - and this is the value you want to keep at or below 1000mhz for various reasons.

The oddities like this are unique to the A64's for the current place and time though. It's a small paradigm shift, and easy to wrap your head around once you try :)
 
Ok so how do I change it? I dont even know how it got to where it is now. I assume it goes up along with everything else?
 
its name should be LDT multi, or as a setting liek HT multi. HyperTransport is LDT x HTT(FSB), so if you oc to 250x12, hypertransport is LDT x 250, and you always want HyperTransport under or at 1ghz.so your ldt multi would be 4x. its kinda difficult to get a first. but soon youll have it down.
 
Ok ive looked in my bios (its not on the asus ai desktop program). I see a setting (theres anret that many cpu settings) called "Hyper Transport Frequency" it is set to Auto and the settings for it are 1x 2x 3x 4x and 5x. Is thsi the setting you mean?

If this is the settting then how is it going above 1GHz? Does it just go up with the mem and cpu?
 
Oh and I found a great little tool called snm for running a stress test. Im stable through the whole test until I go up to 216x12 (2592mhz) then it crashes after 9 minutes.

Also it crashes running the first test in prime (a test or something).
 
Well, NForce4 chipsets are usually fine with taking high LDT speeds.

My guess is, your memory is crapping out...you can' just "shoot fot the stars" overclocking and get it right very often. You need to read over some guides. Here's some good reading for you.

My guide:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=847481

Eclipse's guide
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1027479689&postcount=2

If you read and follow the directions thru both of those and still can't get cooperation, then I'll help. ;)
 
Um...

Make your ram run at a lower speed. Run Prime95 (there is no substitute), if it fails at all then your overclock is not stable.
 
Im reading your guide now but your link for clockgen doesnt work. I cant find anywhere to download it using google as everywhere points to the same link.

does anyone know a working link? or if u have it and its small maybe you could email it to me?
 
torvalds said:
Im reading your guide now but your link for clockgen doesnt work. I cant find anywhere to download it using google as everywhere points to the same link.

does anyone know a working link? or if u have it and its small maybe you could email it to me?
Click to expand...

The link doesn't work simply because the cpuid website is down today. Dunno why, but I couldn't get there earlier either.

If it's an NF4 motherboard you can use this link (same as the one from the website, hosted elsewhere but it's NF4 specific).

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/111/images/CG-NVNF4.zip
 
Ok im still following the guide but im stuck again. Ive got the memory speed from clockgen and all i have to do is set my memory to that speed in the bios and run memtest. the only problem is I have no way of setting my memory speed to what I want in the bios. I can change it to 333mhz, 400mhz etc but thats all, I have no way of just changing it to what I want.
 
lithium726 said:
400mhz= 1:1
333mhz= 4:5
266mhz= 2:3
200mhz= 1:2
Click to expand...
Bingo follow those ratios. The fact that you got your RAM into windows at 216 at CAS 2 is pretty good, but that's what's holding you back. Read those guys and make sure you really have a good idea about what's going on before you continue. Also don't use Doom 3 as a benchmark: it's almost entirely dependent on your GPU and therefore doesn't stress the CPU much. If it's crashing that means your CPU is REALLY unstable. Use prime95 (as stated) or a CPU intensive game like HL2.
 
In clockgen my memory dies at 245mhz so I need to go back to 240mhz. 200mhz memory = 400mhz, 166mhz = 333mhz and 133mhz = 266mhz. Dont I need 220mhz? If I change to any of these settings then im going back instead of forward?

What I done today may be silly, i dont know, but i'll tell you all anyway. I put the memory as close to 240mhz as I could (i think 433mhz in the bios). Now i have dropped over 20fps in hl2 and over 10 in doom3.

That was with me following the guide and doing what it said. I ran memtest and it was ok. My cpu was at 2592mhz. So either ive fooked it up with what I done with the memory or I need to up my voltages a bit. Theres every chance in the world that i have done something really silly.

Its late now in my part of the world, ive had a long day so im off to bed, and ill be seeing that fricken bios screen in my sleep, i just know it:(
 
I got new HSFs for my cpu and graphics card so im going to put them on now before I go any further. After that ill try upping the voltages.
 
Make sure you read Eclipse's guide as well. Mine's a good starting point, but his is more in depth with finding the exact limits of each part.
 
Ive hinda gave up now:( I just dont see any logic is any of this. You overclock things and it makes them go slower. I had it running really well at 2592mhz and I should have just left it like that, and I would have if the benefits of going over 2.6ghz were not so good, greedy I guess

Everything is back to the way it was and im still getting 3fps less in doom 3, 10fps less in half life and 400 points less in 3DMark05 than I was when I first installed windows and ran the tests with everything at stock speeds.

I have cleared the cmos twice and it still hanst fixed this:( What could be wrong?
 
torvalds said:
I have cleared the cmos twice and it still hanst fixed this:( What could be wrong?
Click to expand...
You're going way to fast and didn't read up on everything. :confused:
Overclocking is a mechanical art, much like fine tuning a car or bike. There's a million little factors involved and every set up is different. It's best for the overclocker to gather as much information as possible and to go slowly enough to comprehend everything rather than just shooting for the moon.
If things are running slowly its because of instabilities due to the hardware running past its capabilities. Benchmarks mean close to jack, and how many times you run them, whether or not your reboot, etc etc all changes the scores. My suggestion would be to do the following (and it will take awhile, so leave your computer and come back to it):
Test for your RAM's ceiling: Turn down the CPU multiplier to 7 or 8 and the HTT multi to 3. Then, with your RAM in 1:1, and your timings at 2-2-2-5 and your voltage at at least 2.8V, up the frequency 3-5MHz at a time and run a loop of memtest86+ . Keep testing until you get errors, then loosen your RAM timings (try again at 2.5-2-2-5, 2.5-3-3-7, etc.) and see how high you can get with each timing (usually the looser they are, the higher you can go). When you reach say 3-4-4-8 (very loose, wouldnt recommend using) and you start getting errors, thats the max frequency your RAM can go.
Now you test for your CPU's ceiling. Use the biggest divider possible ( 1:2 is good) to get the RAM out of the way and keep your HTT multi at 3. Put your CPU multi at its max. and then start upping the frequency a few MHz at a time (which will be multiplied by the multi). Test using prime 95 (15 min is enough). When you get errors, increase the CPU voltage and try again. When your temps get to high (because of the increased voltage), say, dont go beyond 55C load temp, back off. Then do a stability test. See if it can pass 12hrs. straight of prime 95 (others will tell you more, but 12 is more than plenty for any kind of use, even folding). Then you've found your CPU's max. Now just work out a multipliers and dividers (1:1 is always the best) that allows you the best RAM performance (frequency and timings) that gets you closest to your CPU's STABLE max. Good luck :cool:
 
Whoohooo i got my problem fixed. It was actually a driver issue:) I didnt even touch my drivers but something happened them and made everything go wonkey. Now my scores are actually higher than they were:) (I use them just to know where im at and what has changed etc)

I have my cpu and meory back to stock speeds still so im going to try again when I get off work again. I just put my vid card up to 408/1015 and it seems ok at that but i was just fiddling.

I still dont know how to put the mhz of the memory up 3mhz at a time, like i say I have no such settings in the bios. maybe my mobo is just shit for overclcoking, i dunno.
 
torvalds said:
Whoohooo i got my problem fixed. It was actually a driver issue:) I didnt even touch my drivers but something happened them and made everything go wonkey. Now my scores are actually higher than they were:) (I use them just to know where im at and what has changed etc)

I have my cpu and meory back to stock speeds still so im going to try again when I get off work again. I just put my vid card up to 408/1015 and it seems ok at that but i was just fiddling.

I still dont know how to put the mhz of the memory up 3mhz at a time, like i say I have no such settings in the bios. maybe my mobo is just shit for overclcoking, i dunno.
Click to expand...

put memory up 3mhz at a time using clockgen while running prime.
 
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