A guide to Athlon overclocking!

[+dave164 Subscriber¹]

Well the amount of threads on Neowin now about ?How can I overclock my Athlon? and ?How far can my CPU go with this?? is really annoying me, so im making a guide to stop myself from writing paragraphs upon paragraphs on how you overclock your athlon.

Guide Source: Xmodding

Basically I?ll answer a few questions and words first:

1. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING THAT YOU MIGHT DO TO YOUR COMPUTER, OVERCLOCKING IS YOUR OWN PERSONAL ACTIONS AND IF NOT DONE PROPORLY CAN RESULT IN MAJOR HARDWARE FAILURE

2. This guide is a general guide mostly based on Athlon 64?s, overclocking is basically the same for the rest of the Athlon series.

3. We cannot predict what your chip can do, it depends on quality of the core, the hardware and the cooling that you have.

4. What temperatures are dangerous? Well for A64?s, 60c load is the absolute most, my old 3000+ Clawhammer once spiked to 60c and I couldn?t get past post and my BIOS said bad cpu temperature, etc.. 30-40c is normal idle for it, I?ve seen many 25c ? 30c and personally if its any higher than that idle, get some airflow or better cooling!!!!

Its helpful to start off with decent hardware and cooling to overclock with, I don?t mind threads being made on thiMainnges a lot.

Main

Well with all that said and done, and providing you have what you need heres the primary information to overclock your cpu:

1. To start off with you need to get into the BIOS, this is where you control everything your computer does more or less. You do this usually by pressing the Del key when you?ve restarted / started up. Usually your prompted at start-up saying which key to press to get in.

2. Turn off Cool n? Quiet and any cooling methods you have set in your BIOS such as this and Q?fan control.

3. With the majority of s754 boards especially the ASUS dont have pci/agp locks so you cant go as far as you would like. The DFI s754 boards do i believe. All s939 boards do as far as i know. Set the AGP / pci locks at 33(pci)/66(agp). I have heard that when people have increased there CPU Frequency there agp has auto moved from 66 to a differnt number, so they set it to 67 and it stayed there.

4. Go to the section which is named either Jumper free settings, advanced chipset features, or sometimes can be completely different, that?s what I can remember.

5. In that section there should be a bit called CPU Frequency that is set to 200Mhz. This is what you raise when you want to increase the clock speed of the CPU.

6. I recommend raising this by 5Mhz at a time, this is infact about 50Mhz for the actual clock speed (to find out what it is for you times the CPU Frequency by the multiplier of the CPU.

7. Exit and save, see if you can get into Windows, if so run a benchmarking program such as 3DMark03/05 or SiSoft Pro 2005. If the computer doesn?t crash or you don?t get any artefacts then you can class it as stable.

8. Keep repeating processes 5-6 untill the computer crashes, you cant get into windows, doesn?t go past post, or games randomly freeze. At this point you can plaTimings timings and voltages.

Timings

To take your CPU further it helps to have RAM with the timings 2-2-2-5 or RAM that can take big voltages.

1. Go to Advanced options again; there should be some options to change your memory settings. If there isn?t any try pressing ctrl + f1.

2. Change the timings to 2.5-3-3-7 at the lowest if you have timings default at 2-2-2-5. If you don?t have 2-2-2-5 or close you may as well stop reading this and go to the next section on upping the voltage

3. When this is changed up the CPU Frequency bit by bit more like in steps 5-6

This should get you furVoltageis less strain on the RAM.

Voltage

To get the RAM & CPU further it?s sometimes ok to raise the voltage on the chips. For RAM otherwise stated I wouldn?t go over 2.7. I know my OCZ Platinum Rev2 can do 2.8 and it says on the OCZ site it can do 2.9, so check out what other people have been able to do. Also for the Athlon 64s I wouldn?t go over 1.6 / 1.65v, My Clawhammer could do 1.7 onRAMI wouldn?t advise anyone to do that.

RAM

To raise the voltages of the RAM it could be called RAM Voltage, DDR Voltage or vdimm, I haven?t seen anything else yet. You should be able to set it to 2CPU or even higher on the DFI motherboards.

CPU

To raise the voltage of the CPU is could be called vcore or CPU voltage. It goes up by .025 so 1.4, 1.425, 1.45, 1.475, etc.. Like I said above don?t go over 1.6/1.65 with the A64?s unless you have pHTling! But even then it can fry your chip.

HT

Sometimes the CPU can have to much strain on the HT so lower it from 5x (1000Mhz for s939) or 4x (800mhz for s754Aditional Notice Mhz for s939, 600Mhz for s754)

Aditional Notice

Athlon 64's have integrated memory controllers, thus they do not have frontside buses. So getting the very best RAM is not needed as memory bandwidth does very little to actual performance. The lower the latencies the better is it king in the A64's, so it's ok to use a divider!

--

dave164

Edited July 17, 2005 by dave164

[saxondale.]

awesome, i will keep looking at this when i overclock, im sure the sempron wont differ that much with overclocking

[+dave164 Subscriber¹]

Yeh you just have to concentrate with keeping a ratio of 1:1, i didnt include that as if you have pc3200 or over with the a64's it keeps a 1:1 as default.

[saxondale.]

Yeh you just have to concentrate with keeping a ratio of 1:1, i didnt include that as if you have pc3200 or over with the a64's it keeps a 1:1 as default.

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add something about agp/pci locking

[Cyrilix]

HT

Sometimes the CPU can have to much strain on the HT so lower it from 5x (1000Mhz for s939) or 4x (800mhz for s754) to the step below (800Mhz for s939, 600Mhz for s754)

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I think what you're meaning to say is...never have the HT go above 1000 MHz, or else you might not have a very stable system. If your HTT clock is 200 MHz, you can leave it at 5x for 5x200=1000. If you've overclocked your HTT to 250 MHz, however, then you should go for 4x. Any more overclocking and you might want to consider 3x.

[+dave164 Subscriber¹]

(Y) Thanks yeh, i dont really know much about the HT part

[mikeboy]

great guide! Very detailed! good job man, you have really helped me, one thing I didn't quite get, I am going to buy OCZ 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 500 (PC 4000) Dual Channel Kit System Memory, its timings are 2-2-2-8 at 3.3V & 2-3-3-8 at 2.6V, you suggest not to go any higher than 2.9, but the guide says that the 2-2-2-8 timing are at 3.3v, how will this work?

[gwai lo]

try to add in:

Athlon 64's have integrated memory controllers, thus they do not have frontside buses. So getting the very best RAM is not needed as memory bandwidth does very little to actual performance. Latencies are king in the A64's, so it's ok to use a divider. ;)

[+dave164 Subscriber¹]

great guide! Very detailed! good job man, you have really helped me, one thing I didn't quite get, I am going to buy OCZ 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 500 (PC 4000) Dual Channel Kit System Memory, its timings are 2-2-2-8 at 3.3V & 2-3-3-8 at 2.6V, you suggest not to go any higher than 2.9, but the guide says that the 2-2-2-8 timing are at 3.3v, how will this work?

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Yeh i was just quoting for some bog standard RAM, usually it cant go above 2.9v, but the higher DDR ram needs the volts for the power. Make sure your motherboard can support the required voltages to get the most. But if the minimum that that RAM needs is 3.3v for full timings it shold be ok up to 3.5v about. But dont quote me on that, also you can get OCZ DDR Booster which is a little thing you put in your RAM slot and you can control the voltages manually and take them above what they are in the BIOS. But again, the DIMM might not be able to take it, and on the OCZ DDR Booster page they have a list of most motherboards its tested on and the voltages they could take.

dave164

[Martyn]

Nice guide (Y)

[chconline Veteran]

Oh yeah, you should know that the socket has nothing to do with PCI/AGP locks, it's the chipset that count. Generally Via has no PCI/AGP locks while nForce has much better overclocking options.

[+dave164 Subscriber¹]

Yep, i understand that, on nforce3 now and its much better (Y)

[paikia]

:punk: nice article! really helpful

[Sensayshun]

Can we just add a bit about any intel systems mainly celerons and P4's. As that would then cover most of the people who come and bug us about it. Not jsut the athlon people.

Unfortunately not many of us know anything about any of Intels chips :pinch:

But yes, thanks Dave, should keep the overclocking section a bit cleaner.

[Caleo Global Moderator]

Can we just add a bit about any intel systems mainly celerons and P4's. As that would then cover most of the people who come and bug us about it. Not jsut the athlon people.

Unfortunately not many of us know anything about any of Intels chips :pinch:

But yes, thanks Dave, should keep the overclocking section a bit cleaner.

586227216[/snapback]

Read the title... "A guide to Athlon overclocking!"

There's a guide to P4 overclocking here: https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=345952

[Sensayshun]

^Yes but that guide has been added just now at my request.

And this thread was put here so as to move traffic away from the overclocking and pc modding section. I was asking for a guide on P4 overclocking so that we can post one here also so as to move more unneccessary traffic away from us.

[scapaboy16]

hello i got a amd athlon 64 3000+ ==> 1.81 GHZ @ 2.2 GHZ

if i go see now in everst ultimate ( www.lavalys.com) than shows my pc that i got a amd athlon 64 3500+ i got the cpu frequence on 243 mhz normaly is it on 200 mhz

but it's very slow some times some times it dont start up i switch it of and switch on again and its good look at the picture

what must i do for running my pc very good on 2.02 ghz ? amd athlon 3200+ cpu type === i do it with a amd athlon 64 3000+ socket 939

the pics are in dutch beceause i'm belgian

Edited August 13, 2005 by scapaboy16

[+dave164 Subscriber¹]

scapaboy16 your running the FSB at 243 as the multiple is 9x, 243 x 9 = 2.2Ghz What is your vcore?

To run your PC at 2.0Ghz just lower your FSB to 223.

Sometimes the PC can restart / be slower as its "unstable" have you done benchmarks, etc.. a decent way to fix is raising the vcore a bit or by adjusting ram timings.

Could you send a screenshot of CPU-z?

[scapaboy16]

hello dave here are pics of cpu-z

[scapaboy16]

hello dave where can i do benchmarks ? and i wanne go buy a new selfmade pc witch parts do you recommed ?

[saxondale.]

Futuremark will do benchmarks

[scapaboy16]

where can i find futermark ?

[oddcrap]

Very nice Dave! Don't know if you remember me from MSN but, if I run into any problems while putting my PC together I'll IM you :D

[Monkeh]

Dave, you might want to add a dedicated section for RAM dividers.

Not everyone has RAM that can push much further than 200mhz.

[mr_demilord]

Maybe you can add, Cool 'N Quiet.

If you enable it, then the motherboard sends idle signals to the CPU, so when the pc is idling the cpu gets cooler.

When I enabled it my temps dropped 15 degrees celcius.

from 45 to 30 idle state "AMD Athlon 2000 XP Palomino" :ninja: