okay so, I decieded I wanted to get the head room I hear so much about in my CPU, saying the AMD 64 3700+ san diego core can get up to FX-55 speeds stable with even stock cooling, now I am not even hoping for that much, but anyways I tried upping it slowly and couldnt even bust an extra 10Mhz FSB out of the damn thing... it would lock up on post, I am pretty new to overclocking and tried turning up my RAM Voltage a lil then my CPU voltage a lil at a time as well to try to even stable it out at 10Mhz above... and nothing, then I read on about memory controllers and such, and dont really understand the concept, been reading tons of walkthroughs, still doesnt really make out all that sense, I mean I am getting that they both effect eachother alot in overclocking, but I dont know what im missing, I have the DDR400 set at 400Mhz and running stock timings? I am not sure what people mean by "loose"or "relaxed" memory timings? and I dont really know what peope mean by the HTT 3x I dont think I saw HTT in my BIOS, and not sure what i means in some of the walkthroughs, and what is memory dividing? I know I sound like a total noob, but I am trying to get a lil more power out of this machine, my specs are listed in my sig... also I was wondering what to use to OC my video card? I tried Coolbits but it wouldnt work, dont know if its cause of windows 64bit or what, but it doesnt seem to like me... anyways hope someone can either give me good info, or point me in the right direction. thanks.
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Overclocking For The Lose
- Thread starter ruin97140
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Chances are that its was locking up and not booting after your OC due to the pci and pcie clocks, you should lock them at 33.3mhz or 33.33mhz for pci and 100mhz for pcie, set them to that and you will probably get more than just a 10% lockup.
most of all, do some more reading up about overclocking and its affects.
loosening and tightening of ram means:
If you had 1 gig of ram and its specs were pc3200/400mhz with timings of 2-2-2-5, well the more you overclock your ram, the more you want to loosen ( make the numbers that are in 2-2-2-5 go up) the ram timings to say 2.5-3-3-5 or similar, basically, the faster you overclock your ram, the higher the numbers you want, as it will be more stable running like that.
Loosen = numbers get higher, i.e 2-2-2-5 becomes 2.5-3-3-5 or whatever.
Tighten = numbers get smaller, i.e. 3-3-3-6 becomes say 2-3-3-6 etc.
As for coolbits not overclocking your nvidia vid card, that i cannot say as i dont use xp 64, so i cannot comment on whether coolbits works in win xp64 or not, i should think it would work, but dont quote me on that.
most of all, do some more reading up about overclocking and its affects.
loosening and tightening of ram means:
If you had 1 gig of ram and its specs were pc3200/400mhz with timings of 2-2-2-5, well the more you overclock your ram, the more you want to loosen ( make the numbers that are in 2-2-2-5 go up) the ram timings to say 2.5-3-3-5 or similar, basically, the faster you overclock your ram, the higher the numbers you want, as it will be more stable running like that.
Loosen = numbers get higher, i.e 2-2-2-5 becomes 2.5-3-3-5 or whatever.
Tighten = numbers get smaller, i.e. 3-3-3-6 becomes say 2-3-3-6 etc.
As for coolbits not overclocking your nvidia vid card, that i cannot say as i dont use xp 64, so i cannot comment on whether coolbits works in win xp64 or not, i should think it would work, but dont quote me on that.
Erasmus354
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Eclipse wrote a really good AMD overclocking guide. It used to be stickied in the AMD section but for some reason got kicked out of the sticky section. I would suggest you go searching for that thread, it will basically walk you through step by step what you should do in determining your max overclock.
yeah i love that guide. helped he a boat load
heres another one
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=795444.
heres another one
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=795444.
Erasmus354 said:
http://eclipseoc.com/index.php?id=6,9,0,0,1,0
It'll guide you until you've found your max stable overclock.
well I dont wanna use the dividers, I hear it causes slow down... I am just curious, if I have my Chip like at 250 FSB and my RAM is running at 200Mhz Frequency, is my CPU doing better? or the same as running it stock at 200Mhz FSB? I just dont think my RAM can handle a big increase in Mhz I have tried a bunch of diffrent ways and it doesnt want to budge even with Volts increased. My RAM just doesnt want OC past 200, I mean I can get my CPU up to 260FBS easliy... so just curious if this head ache is over?
ruin97140 said:
If you run a divider, so that for example if your HTT (A64s don't technically have a FSB) could be set at 240, you could run a 5/6 divider and your RAM would still run at 200mhz. On A64s, memory speed isn't really a big deal as it is on P4s. Make sure you read the guides thoroughly though, as it explains everything.
If you consider overclocking a headache, I'd suggest you either take some aspirin or stop. You'll still need to do proper stability testing after you've found your settings.
I cant find memory divider in my BIOS... I have read that others are having the some problme so im guessin I cant use it... yay lol and I dont think I get any performance boost from having my CPU way up and my RAM staying the same, cause I just ran some benches and bleh nothing... well I guess ill just keep my GPU OCed and let it ride till I do another build, cause for the most part this thing isnt budging...
well here is what I can get, I dont know if it will give me extra performance though as I am confused on what to do with the situation, when my ram is on AUTO this is what it gives me, but when I set it, it wont do shit... so confused here are some screens..
kill4killin
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Straight up, its your mobo man. The A8N series by Asus, in my experience and my roommate's experience and a buddy from high school of mines experience, just is flat out the worst motherboard you can get (unless you go with ECS or PCchips 
). I have never been able to figure out why the A8N series does not overclock well, but I recently have come to think its the PCI and PCIe controllers. Make sure you lock them at 33.3Mhz and 100Mhz respectively. If that doesn't do it, you sort of have a little room where you can up the PCIe speed by 1 or 2 mhz to try to improve stability, but in general you want to keep it at 100mhz unless your really having stability issues early on.
If you want a good OC then i recommend getting a DFI mobo before all the 939 ones are gone off the market because of AM2.
). I have never been able to figure out why the A8N series does not overclock well, but I recently have come to think its the PCI and PCIe controllers. Make sure you lock them at 33.3Mhz and 100Mhz respectively. If that doesn't do it, you sort of have a little room where you can up the PCIe speed by 1 or 2 mhz to try to improve stability, but in general you want to keep it at 100mhz unless your really having stability issues early on.If you want a good OC then i recommend getting a DFI mobo before all the 939 ones are gone off the market because of AM2.
Arcygenical
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I, as well as lots of online review sites, will refute this statement
I have that board (it's busted, and sitting under my chair right now, it blew a mosfet) and was able to overclock it SIGNIFICANTLY. With an X2 3800 it would post at 285FSB.*******
The problem with your ram running over stock speed simply boils down to more than one thing... A) you're running with FOUR sticks of ram! This is BAD for overclocking (at least the RAM, it has little impact on core speeds) and B) you're not running the best RAM in the world anyways (no offense or anything). IT"S OK though, keep reading.
When overclocking an Athlon system, it's all about core speed. The trick is getting your RAM to work at a good speed (with dividers) while getting the core speed high.
In your case, the "Ram divider" is under "CPU config" (NOT jumperfree settings!) and is something like "Dram frequency". You can choose either DDR400, DDR333, DDR300, DDR266 etc. (I think).
Running at 250 x 10, with the DDR333 divider on will be SIGNIFICANTLY faster than running at something like 220 x 10 without a divider. Core speed matters more than RAM speed. Even though your running your ram at 200mhz, it's still getting like 6gbps of bandwidth over the main BUS, as the memory controller is on the CPU's die (and not on the NB like in intel systems).
Ram speeds *really* dont make much of a difference. Ram timings also make very little difference. The change between 2-2-2-5 and 2-3-3-7 in my case (both at 240 x 10) was less than .3 seconds under Super Pi Mod, and resulted in an extra 1 fps with Oblivion (outside in a battle...).
Anyways, in your situation, if you run the DDR300 divider, your RAM should be just under 200mhz... Right on spec. Or you can leave it on auto, and let your motherboard do it for you. I would recommend running on Auto, as it's working fine...
What benchmarks are you running that dont show any improvement?
kill4killin
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Well, then I don't know why because, every time anyone I know and have tried to help overclock on one, its always been more difficult than on any other mobo iv ever done it on. I must say though, I have never used the SLI one, but I would imagine it would be similar to the Delux and E versions.
kill4killin said:
The board isn't difficult by any means to overclock, it's just that it isn't as flexible in terms of voltages, the max HTT it'll do, or the amount of RAM settings available. You've still got more than enough options to overclock your processor with.
kill4killin
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quadnad said:
(not to sound rude but) then id like to know what i was doing wrong to try to get it to go further than 210mhz FSB on my roommates computer and further than 220Mhz on my old one because I did everything and then some that i did to my DFI board and my DFI board is able to go to 350 with the right RAM dividers.
kill4killin said:
Your board probably isn't posting beyond that because you're running your RAM at the same speed as your HTT, and apparently it can't handle it. In that screenshot you had the right idea: you were running your proc at nearly 2.9 ghz with a 261 HTT, and while you should manually set the proper divider, apparently the Auto setting has done the divider for you, because your RAM is only running at 206 Mhz.
Did you actually follow Eclipse's guide to finding the max stable speeds for your HTT, processor, and RAM? If you did, all you need to do is look at your max values and find the best way of getting there.
(cf)Eclipse
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all boards vary bro.. kinda like cpus, video cards and ram. no two systems are the samekill4killin said:
and imo, asus = anus
(hides from the flame from the guys who like asus)
Arcygenical
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Eh, i'm not an Asus fan... I hate them cuz of the QC of their products! BUT they do make black PCBs, and that's all I care about .
As for Kill, did you put a RAM divider on when tryng to pass 210 or 220FSB? I mean, it's in a different section of the BIOS (It's under CPU configuration, NOT jumperfree configuration)...
.As for Kill, did you put a RAM divider on when tryng to pass 210 or 220FSB? I mean, it's in a different section of the BIOS (It's under CPU configuration, NOT jumperfree configuration)...
kill4killin
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I never tried changing the RAM divider on it because it was RAM that on another mobo i proved could go to 250mhz with out problem.
Arcygenical
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Yep, see, the board is a nice overclocker, if you get a good one.
My first A8N reached 304FSB stable, my 2nd reached 285FSB and my third reached almost 295.
Each board is different.
My first A8N reached 304FSB stable, my 2nd reached 285FSB and my third reached almost 295.
Each board is different.
well I have it at 255 X11 (2.8GHZ) and my memory divider cutting it to 200.9 Mhz 2-3-2-6 and my computer runs just fine, and games just fine, but it will only run for like an hour and a half on SP2004 and Prime95... I am guessing I should worry and try changin it up?