Amd overclocking help

W

Wired

New Member
This is my first time overclocking so i know the theory but its not working right. I have 3800+ athlon x2. with stock cooling i was able to run at 2200 from 2009 with any problems. i went out and bought a nice thermaltake cpu cooler and dropped my temps by 15 degrees. when i try to up it any higher it saves in my bios but when i boot up it drops down to lower speeds, so i check my bios again and they stay where i set them but once again when i boot up it runs at lower speeds.

any help would be great, like i said im new at this
 
Ok so i bumped up to voltage more and it works now. i thought it was supposed to not boot up if the voltage was to low but now i know it defaults to lower settings.
 
Technically speaking, running the CPU out of the recommended voltage range by the slightest margin is enough to cause damage. If you're not willing to risk possibly breaking something, don't OC.
 
Technically speaking, running the CPU out of the recommended voltage range by the slightest margin is enough to cause damage.
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Technically speaking, the damage (if any) caused will be so insignificant that by the moment it starts affeting the reliability/stability of the chip, it would've been upgraded long ago. Only extreme voltage bumps are something to worry about (and even out of those some are caused by overheating rather than the voltage itself).

Generally, if you're using air cooling, all you need to do is to make sure the temps stay below limits - the temperatures start getting way too hot before you manage to kill the chip by overvolting, unless you totally ignore the temps and push on when the heatsink is starting to melt.

Also, is your chip 65nm or 90nm (CPU-Z will tell you)? If it's 90nm, you can safely up the voltage up to 1.5v, as those can take volts (and temps) better than never 65nm chips. My Sempron runs at 1.4v stock, and its rated to handle 1.45v, so if you chip is 90nm you can go somewhere around 1.45 volts without worrying about a thing, 1.4 if you want to be extra careful (read=wuss :P), most 90nm chips run at 1.4v (or around) stock (this goes for bot Intel and AMD CPUs).
 
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Oh and one thing I forgot the mention, you need to lower the HT link multiplier - OCing the HT link makes things go crazy (may well be limiting your OC). In your BIOS settings, find the HT link multiplier and lower it a notch.

What is you current HT link multiplier/speed?
 
hackapelite said:
Technically speaking, the damage (if any) caused will be so insignificant that by the moment it starts affeting the reliability/stability of the chip, it would've been upgraded long ago. Only extreme voltage bumps are something to worry about (and even out of those some are caused by overheating rather than the voltage itself).
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Well, yeah, in this case I doubt he did. But the risk is always there, as soon as you start running things out of spec. Small voltage jumps minimize the risk--that extra .125V (or whatever his motherboard lets him do) is a lot less likely to break shiny parts than jumping it up half a volt at a time. I was simply opining that OCing involves assuming a risk.
 
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