very noob overclocking question

[mickey987]

Last night I was going to being my first overclocking adventure. I've read so many 'guides' so I"m pretty sure I know what I"m doing but just when I was going to start, a couple questions popped into my head. I have an A64 3200+ s939 winny btw.

When I want to find my max cpu overclock, where do I start? Should I start from stock clock speed and slowly work my way up? Is it alright if I just skip the first 100MHz? Do I raise my CPU by 5MHz at a time (dont know how I'd do this with a 10x multi..) or my FSB 5MHz at a time, so my CPU jumps 50MHz?

I did use the search feature but it came up with either too many topics or too little. None of them had my answer...

 

[nealio]

Last night I was going to being my first overclocking adventure. I've read so many 'guides' so I"m pretty sure I know what I"m doing but just when I was going to start, a couple questions popped into my head. I have an A64 3200+ s939 winny btw.

When I want to find my max cpu overclock, where do I start? Should I start from stock clock speed and slowly work my way up? Is it alright if I just skip the first 100MHz? Do I raise my CPU by 5MHz at a time (dont know how I'd do this with a 10x multi..) or my FSB 5MHz at a time, so my CPU jumps 50MHz?

I did use the search feature but it came up with either too many topics or too little. None of them had my answer...

Umm you left a lot of stuff out , like what type of mobo do you have, memory, PSU, stuff like that. You can be limited in a couple of different ways, and we need to know what you have to get a better idea of what your trying to do.

there are programs that can raise your speed thru software like clockgen, and its on the fly, so you can raise it and test it out on prime95 to see how stable your system is, when it crashes, that is your max core speed. It just depends on your mobo.

Give us some more info and we'll try to help ya out

 

[mickey987]

Oh right, I thought I still had all my parts listed in my sig.



I have:
A64 Athlon 3200+ s939 winchester
DFI Lanparty UT Ultra-D (first revision i'm pretty sure, flashed to 310 bios)
120gig sata hd
1gb OCZ Platinum Rev 2, the one with 2-2-2-5 timings
480w Enermax Noisetaker
eVGA 6800GT


I guess I should clarify my question a bit further. I've read in a lot of guides and posts that states to slowly raise your "overclock" 5mhz at a time until you've reached a BSOD or something odd like that. Then back it up a couple MHz. What they don't state is whether or not to raise the actual CPU Core clock speed 5 MHz at a time or the frontside bus (HT..or HTT for a64? I forget.. ).

To nealio:
Is the prime85 method accurate? Will prime95 fail before windows crashes? Should I raise the CPU Core clock or FSB in 5mhz intervals, through clock gen?

 

[SpoogeMonkey]

Is the prime85 method accurate? Will prime95 fail before windows crashes? Should I raise the CPU Core clock or FSB in 5mhz intervals, through clock gen?

Prime95 is a good system stability tool. Run small fft's while bumping your cpu speed up. Windows will sometimes freeze before prime fails, just remember your last setting, and adjust voltage,dividers,multi,etc to continue higher.
Personally I like clockgen, as it allows you to adjust everything in windows, and you don't have to do the math

 

[mickey987]

This overclock business is pretty exciting. I got my winny to 2200MHz before Prime95 failed. Max temp was 46* with stock cooler...I hope my winny will do better. (I doubt it will seeing as how it's a CBBID...closest proc with my steeping/week/code got 2.4GHz)

I'm gonna up the voltage a wee bit..hope that helps.



Edit: I set the voltage to 1.375, special to 110% which should give me about 1.5125 volts. This time my prime95 failed at 236 HTT (2360 MHz core clock)...I know my memory can handle this. I got it up to DDR490, 2-3-3-8 timings earlier today, so I should have head room with my memory. Max temperature was at 51*C, room temperatue is 24*C. I was expecting at least another 40Mhz out of this chip Is there anything else I could do? New cooler maybe? ...more voltage?