"Upgrade" to athlon 64

[justakid]

Last night I finally upgraded to an Athlon 64 3200+ Venice, now sitting at 2.4Ghz from a Sempron 3100+ Palermo at 2.6Ghz. Kinda blah though, seems like my Sempron was a faster folder and had lower super pi times. I'm still have to do gaming benchmarks and stuff, but I also upgraded to a x800pro from a 9700pro... ao I guess I'll have to pop my old one back in. Boo... my poor folding numbers...

 

[Hito Bahadur]

Sounds about right. Your gaming will probably be a wash because of the higher bandwidth offsetting the lower processor speed. FAH isn't affected that much by memory bandwidth in my experience. I Like my little S754 Sempron.

 

[roftranspo]

i just made the jump to a64 (got me a S475 3700+) right before i started folding...i likey

 

[smileyscout]

My idea on upgrading is simply not to do it. Save up your cash for a while and purchase a top of the line system. Then, (barring any quantum leaps in computer tech) you'll be good for almost 3 years and not have to be constantly upgrading parts which were already medicore when you bought them. I've dumped way too much money into keeping my old P4 2.4 (not even 800fsb) up to speed for games when I could have just saved the money and bought a top of the line Athlon FX system.

I can't talk too much though. I had a Athlon 64 3000 system with a BFG 6800 GT OC AGP (it was a nforce 3 board) that I traded a dually 1.7ghz Xeon box that uses RAMBUS. Little did I know 400 mhz fsb Xeons are almost worthless and compatible cheap memory was seriously hard to find. The machine does manage to crank out 2 units a day though.

 

[justakid]

My idea on upgrading is simply not to do it. Save up your cash for a while and purchase a top of the line system. Then, (barring any quantum leaps in computer tech) you'll be good for almost 3 years and not have to be constantly upgrading parts which were already medicore when you bought them. I've dumped way too much money into keeping my old P4 2.4 (not even 800fsb) up to speed for games when I could have just saved the money and bought a top of the line Athlon FX system.

I can't talk too much though. I had a Athlon 64 3000 system with a BFG 6800 GT OC AGP (it was a nforce 3 board) that I traded a dually 1.7ghz Xeon box that uses RAMBUS. Little did I know 400 mhz fsb Xeons are almost worthless and compatible cheap memory was seriously hard to find. The machine does manage to crank out 2 units a day though.

I got a pretty good deal on the stuff though, so not really complaining too much. $200 canadian for a athlon 64 3200+ with a zalman 7000cu, sapphire x800pro, and a asus a8v rev2. Plus now I basically have another computer, hehe... more folding...

 

[Heliocentrical]

Last night I finally upgraded to an Athlon 64 3200+ Venice, now sitting at 2.4Ghz

Cool.

Tell me about your oc'ing methods. I couldnt get the system in my sig past 2.35ghz. FSB is set at 235 and ram is running at 235mhz stable. I tried running my ram at 200mhz while raising the FSB to 240 but I got the dreaded blue screen. My temps are 43c-45c at full load. Any advice?

Fold on!!!

 

[Viper87227]

Sounds about right. Your gaming will probably be a wash because of the higher bandwidth offsetting the lower processor speed. FAH isn't affected that much by memory bandwidth in my experience. I Like my little S754 Sempron.

Eh? Assuming he got a 754 3200+, memory bandwith would be the same. He made no metion of a new motherboard. Really... it wouldn't be an upgrade at all. The only benefit an A64 has over a Semp would be more cache, which doesn't mean much in the way of perfomance. That 200mhz will offset the difference that double the cache would make.

 

[justakid]

Cool.

Tell me about your oc'ing methods. I couldnt get the system in my sig past 2.35ghz. FSB is set at 235 and ram is running at 235mhz stable. I tried running my ram at 200mhz while raising the FSB to 240 but I got the dreaded blue screen. My temps are 43c-45c at full load. Any advice?

Fold on!!!

I just followed the steps from Eclipses guide over in the Amd forum.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=888001

Hrm... seems very odd that you can't get past 2.35Ghz, mine was prime stable at 2.5Ghz. I upped the voltage a bit to 1.5 and i'm currently testing for stability at 2.6Ghz.

Try setting a differnt memory divider, sometimes boards have little quirks with certain dividers.

 

[justakid]

Eh? Assuming he got a 754 3200+, memory bandwith would be the same. He made no metion of a new motherboard. Really... it wouldn't be an upgrade at all. The only benefit an A64 has over a Semp would be more cache, which doesn't mean much in the way of perfomance. That 200mhz will offset the difference that double the cache would make.

Upgraded to 939. Got a Asus A8V rev2 with the deal.

 

[Viper87227]

I just followed the steps from Eclipses guide over in the Amd forum.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=888001

Hrm... seems very odd that you can't get past 2.35Ghz, mine was prime stable at 2.5Ghz. I upped the voltage a bit to 1.5 and i'm currently testing for stability at 2.6Ghz.

Try setting a differnt memory divider, sometimes boards have little quirks with certain dividers.

It's not odd at all. Overclocking is hit or miss by nature. Cooling and Hardware play large factors, as does luck of the draw. It is not like every 3200+ Venice is going to overclock the same. Some chips are better than others. Stepping is sometimes a good indicator of a quality chip, and sometimes an overclock can be estimated based on stepping. Still, the fact that your CPU and his CPU clock different is totally normal, and is part of the OCing game... just as there are some 3200+ Venice chips that will do up to 2.8.

 

[justakid]

It's not odd at all. Overclocking is hit or miss by nature. Cooling and Hardware play large factors, as does luck of the draw. It is not like every 3200+ Venice is going to overclock the same. Some chips are better than others. Stepping is sometimes a good indicator of a quality chip, and sometimes an overclock can be estimated based on stepping. Still, the fact that your CPU and his CPU clock different is totally normal, and is part of the OCing game... just as there are some 3200+ Venice chips that will do up to 2.8.

2.35Ghz does seem a little low for a venice though... Keep playing around with it and see what you can do. "He who try's most in the game of overclocking wins". Plus it's fun as hell to play around and tweak stuff