good AMD CPU for OCing?

Cold Dark Shadow

[H]F Junkie
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im new to the whole OC thing but i want to give it a shot.

I have a mobo (asrock K7S8XE) that will take up to a 3200+/400 but i dont want/cant fork out the cash for the 3200+ chip.

what would be a good CPU that i can get to OC to match a XP3200+ on air cooling thats less expencive?
What kind of cooling would i also need?
 
Good bet on not wanting to fork out for a 3200+. It's silly to do so, in my personal opinion. Most Barton 2500+'s will get there if you tinker enough, and many will do it readily.

BUT, the chip you will want to get is an Athlon XP Mobile. They are Barton chips made to run at 100mhz FSB with high multipliers for the same clock speeds as their desktop counterparts, but with much lower voltage settings.
Thus, run the chip anywhere between 1.65 and 1.8 volts and you will be looking at a minimum of 200x11 (depending on what chip you buy)

Most people opt for an XP-M 2400, 2500 or 2600. The lower the voltage rating the better. Shop around and find out what is in your budget.

But note that this might not be a simple Plug 'n Play operation. I don't have an XP-M personally so I'm not 100% sure whats involved, but it may require some tweaking to get your board to register the appropriate Vcore you want. Do some research before buying.
 
If you can change your multipliers and voltage in your bios then get a mobile. I have a 2400M that runs @ 2300 in one machine and a 2600M that runs comfortably @ 2500 in the one I am typing this reply on. They fold nice, too :)
 
warmod and the l12 mod is somtimes neccisary as well but not til you get up there in clock speed
mobile bartons in general run in any good motherboard
 
I had my 2500 + running at a 200 FSB as obosed to the 166 ... onl bad thing is i had it running async with the ram which makes it perform worse ... i would grab some ddr 400 and overclock your 2500+ up to 3200+
 
The 2600 mobile is the best choice in chips right now. You will be able to run at well past 3200 (2.2G) speeds with no problems at all as long as your bios supports even half assed OCing. Im running my 2600 M at 2.6G 1.85V right now and still have plenty of room to play with. For a 100 buck chip you really cant complain :D
 
Well if its running now you can go into the BIOS and check it out or if not you can check the manufacturers website for the specs.
 
nope i dont have it running right now, i do have the manual for the mobo, would it say in there anything about OC?
 
heres what i found in the manual:

"although k7s8xe offers stepless control it is not recommended to preform over clocking, when the CPU frequency of the k7s8xe is set to preform OCing other clocks such as PCi AGP and memory will also be OCed proportionally Frequencies other then the recommended CPU bus freq. may cause instability of the system or damage the CPU"

Does that mean i cant OC or is it just warning me against it?
 
READ THE EDIT AT THE BOTTOM FIRST:

Its their way of saying " If you screw up dont come whinning to us" lol.

What they are saying is Ram is tied to FSB ( front side bus ) speed. IE: if your FSB is 200 your ram will be running at 400mhz ( double FSB speed to get ram speed). You can still up the multipiers to get faster CPU speed. For example my cpu is running at 2.6G based on 200 FSB and 13 X multiplier so 200 X 13 = 2600 or 2.6G Up the FSB and you up the CPU speed but since ram speed is tied to FSB as well you have to make sure your ram can handle any additional Speed. For instance try to run at 210 X 13 and your ram will be running at 420mhz. Most decent DDR400 ran can do 420 without problems but some cant and as you raise FSB higher the more chance that your ram wont like it.

This is all based on your ram running in sync with your FSB. at a 1:1 ratio. If you change the ratio the ram will run poorly. You can run the ram at 5:4 ratio or whatever your BIOS allows. IE if FSB is 200 running at a 5:4 ratio your ram will run at 160 ( or 320mhz). This is usefull if you are overclocking your FSB past 200 and you get to the point where it is not stable you can try running the ram at 5:4 or even 4:3 to make it run slower and see if that makes it stable, if it does then you know it is your ram limiting you and not the CPU.

THEN there is also your ram timing. USually something like 2-3-3-11 or 2-3-3-6 or something. The lower then numbers the better but if you raise the number to say 2.5-3-3-11 the ram will be slower but more stable and able to handle Overclocking better.

About getting it all running at the highest stable OC possible and there is a lot of little tweaking of different things to try to eak out that extra little bit of performance.

The above stuff is all very general and all numbers are just examples ( except my actual numbers on my machine). There is a lot of info at diff sites like Overclockers.com and a huge amount of info to sift through here on the [H]ard forums.

In conclusion: the best AMD CPU for OCing is the XP mobile series especially the 2400+ 2500+ and 2600+ with the 2600+ Mobile being the best of the breed. They can all be very easily Overclocked well beyond 3200+ speeds.

EDIT: I went to asrocks site and read the PDF of the manual for the K7S8XE board and it is not looking too good. First off the manual doesnt have much info in it. IT says CPU frequency can be adjusted by Jumpers or manually but has no listing of what the adjustment range is. There is absolutely no mention of any way to adjust the multipliers on the CPU. The ram can only be adjusted as 2T,2.5T, 3T and so on. No adjustments beyond that. This is by no means an enthusiast board. It is not made or designed for overclocking. I really dont know what kind of OC you can expect out of it. I would expect it to be in the 200X12 range ( 2.4G ) but that is just a guess with the very limited info on hand. It uses a SIS chipset which I have no experience with. a change to a Nforce 2 chipset board, preferably a Abit or Asus brand would be a good bet to get the most out of the mobile chip and give you much better sound etc.
 
dont forget DFI... :p
it took water cooling to get 2.6 ghtz on your 2600? :rolleyes:
 
Ryugi- my watercooling is jsut starting out . I have had to stop as Im waiting for a Zalman NB cooler to replace my stock one thats crapping out, also waiting on a set of mosfet coolers, southbridge cooler and Voltage control cooler to help with a Voltage droop problem Im having. Once thats all in place Im expecting to hit 2.8 rock stable.
By rock stable I mean Prime95 + UT2004 together for 24 hours. Prime95 by itself is not enough anymore to guarantee stability. This is a gaming rig so it has to be 100% stable.

P.S. if it isnt stable its got no business being in my sig. lol.
 
i do 2.6 ghtz with no modifications on nothing but a slk-800 with the 70mm fan that comes with the fx-53.. i need better memory/to sink up my mobo to do higher, i added a 40 mm fan to my nb heatsink.. as well as arctic silvering it
isnt 100% stable at 2.6 ghtz tho.. i belive south bridge is at fault.. it gets scalding hot at 2.6 but at 2.5 its fine.. im not complaining... 2.5 ghtz @ 1.76v :p :D
 
ryuji said:
warmod and the l12 mod is somtimes neccisary as well but not til you get up there in clock speed
mobile bartons in general run in any good motherboard


I did the L12 on mine, but whats the warmod? Where can I get info? Got a link?
 
K.. I just don't see the point of changing the startup voltage if I am already able to pump 2.1v into my cpu through my NF7-S... :confused:
 
i apologize if anyone pointed this out...but the guy said he read in the manual that there weren't any PCI/AGP locks, so that could seriously kill any chances of OCing....getting a new board is ur best bet...

i'm thinking about a mobile...2600-M with my watercooling sounds nice :p
 
MeTaSpARKs said:
K.. I just don't see the point of changing the startup voltage if I am already able to pump 2.1v into my cpu through my NF7-S... :confused:
the deal is that it starts up at 1.45v and then gets changed to 2.1... booting up at 1.85v and then going to 2.1v could be easier on the thing and get a few mhtz on fsb outa it
 
i like my motherboard.. and nobody can deny that dfi sisters get really high fsb.. more so the nf7 in most cases (on a dfi forum typical fsb when using bh-5 or simmalarly fast(in mhtz) is 250-260 mhtz fsb)
 
A7N8X, NF7, AN7, or DFI Ininity/lanparty would be the only bouards I would get if I was planning on OC'ing an AXP. Really depends on your memory. If all you have is cheap pc3200 or worse and you don't care about pushing it past that 200 mark, go with the Asus A7N8X. If you want highest FSB possible, go with the DFI, and if you want the best mix of cpu OC and FSB, go with either abit board.

I personally got the Abit AN7 because it supports vdimm over 2.9 and I didn't wanna mod again, and the cpu voltage is far more stable above 1.8v than the DFI boards. I've been exceptionally happy with it, highest cpu OC I've hit was 2.8ghz, but I needed to put the rad next to the AC for it to go that high. Was stable tho, I highly recommend the mobile 2600.
 
lanparty will do 3.1 or 3.2 vdmm.. dont remember.. i dont got bh-5 voltage probs can be fixed with mosfet cooling
 
If you decide to go with an NF7-S be carefull cuzz there is an NF7-M, NF7-S2 and a few others that are scaled down versions of the NF7-S 2.0 .

Abit has a hugely successfull flagship enthusiast board in the NF7-S 2.0 and then they name a cheaper scaled down version the NF7-S2...I luv Abit but geez thats bordering on criminal.

Just be carefull u get the exact board recomended. Close to the same name can be miles away from what you want. That goes for any Brand of board.

By the way for all u A64 guys out there Abit just announced release of the first NF8 board.
 
ryuji said:
the deal is that it starts up at 1.45v and then gets changed to 2.1... booting up at 1.85v and then going to 2.1v could be easier on the thing and get a few mhtz on fsb outa it

Have you done it on yours?

You have to cut some bridges on the chip and thats it? I'm a little confused as to the procedure...

Thanks for your responses
 
MeTaSpARKs said:
Have you done it on yours?

You have to cut some bridges on the chip and thats it? I'm a little confused as to the procedure...

Thanks for your responses
i havent done it, i run at 1.7v so far.. getting lower as it burns in :D
ill pump it way up when i get around to buying a si-97
i havent done any mods to my cpu.. i poped it in my mobo and it overclocked it to 2.5 ghtz with little effort it will do 2.6 but it seems to be a little flaky about 13x and memory wont go past 200
 
NF7-S + 2600M is a killer combo. Honestly I think 2.6ghz would be attainable on very mild air cooling, possibly even stock cooling :confused:

Only thing is that after 2.6, you're hitting a tall, hard wall really fast. I can't get over 2.85 with a WC setup, and yet I can get 2.75 with really good aircooling. I would expect a minimum of 2.6 out of a 2600M.

Train
 
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