Overclocking the AMD Athlon64 3200+

A

Altanore

New Member
Oh dear.. another overclocking newb has arrived! :P

Yes, I have never overclocked before. I've been researching and researching and almost understand the basics. I know CPU FSB increases the cpu speed, yet it also increases memory speed. Im just still a bit confused.

I have an AMD 64 3200+ with the winchester core which is running at 2000mhz (So that would be 200mhzx10 since my multiplier is x10.) I have read all of CPU101 and understood the math pretty well. Only trouble im finding is getting the ratio. So in the settings, i know i will have to increase the FSB frequency after decreasing the memory clock to increase the CPU speed, the rest im not sure. Question is.. how do i figure out my ratio? the CPU ratio setting just says startup... however, if i select it, i do see all the different ratio settings like x4... x4.5.... x5.... and so on. Lowest is 4x.. highest is 10x. Would this be the multiplier? Looked at the examples in CPU101.. however, still could not figure out how they got the ratio. I think im missing something.

Included pictures of my bios setting and what CPU-Z is saying. Everything is at default settings. My mission is to get it to 2.2ghz. However, i know not to just jump to that... going to take it a step at a time. I'd be happy if I managed to get the cpu to 2020mhz lol just so i know it's working. Right now, I just want to lower my memory speed so i know how to.. and then start overclocking the CPU.

After i finally manage to decrease the memory clock.. i just increase the FSB 1 mhz at a time or can i do little more at a time? One more question, will overclocking my CPU cause an increase in my PCI express slot? I have no PCI cards so im not worried about my PCI slots.

Thanks in very much in advance for the clarification :)



 
Last edited:
if i select it, i do see all the different ratio settings like x4... x4.5.... x5.... and so on. Lowest is 4x.. highest is 10x. Would this be the multiplier?
Click to expand...
Yes, that's the multiplier. Just decrease your memory divider to DDR333.

After i finally manage to decrease the memory clock.. i just increase the FSB 1 mhz at a time or can i do little more at a time?
Click to expand...
You can do it a little more than that, 3-5Mhz is fine

One more question, will overclocking my CPU cause an increase in my PCI express slot? I have no PCI cards so im not worried about my PCI slots.
Click to expand...
Everything should be locked, so no need to worry
 
Well at first, yoi would try raising it 5Mhz at a time, but once you get past 230Mhz, i would start raising it every 3-5Mhz.

With the HTT multiplier, 5x is good for a bus of 200 or lower, 4x is good for a bus of 250 or lower, and 3x is good for a bus of 300 or lower. If you dont lower the HTT multipler, you wont get a good overclock since the HTT isnt meant to be run higher than 1000Mhz.

Personally, i never touch the multiplier, i leave it at 10x and just mess with the voltages, ram, and bus.

if you have DDR400 memory, you really want to be careful if your going over DDR430 speeds, since some memory cant handle the higher speeds very well. Then its time to lower the memory speeds.

And most motherboards have a PCI-E lock, so you should be all set.
 
Well i pretty much understand what to do now, however, I have one more question. My motherboard has a dynamic overclocking feature... which clocks the CPU higher when under load. I researched the internet and found nothing negative about this feature... what do you guys think? Is it better to manually overclock? Thanks for all the support :)
 
I think my motherboard has something like that to (my old MSI), but i read in the manual that it's only to be used with MSI an MSI video card or something, and that using it without an MSI video card could damage it.
 
Well I bumped my FSB up to 203mhz. Would of went to 205mhz but I was not sure what the memory clock would do.. but now i know, it increases to the same speed as the FSB. So far I have ran 3Dmark03 test at max settings.. ran perfectly and I noticed my score went up by 24. I also ran 3dmark05 after and it also ran perfectly, also my score did go up by 100. I also played a game for abit... fps only went up .20 and thats about it.. ran fine though. System seems very stable... but how long do i keep running tests before I overclock again?

Also on a wierd note, I was monitoring my voltage before and after the overclock.. i see that it changes a lot... however, i found that is decreased just a tiny bit after the overclock. I didn't touch the voltage however. BIOS setting is at 1.400.

Before OC:
Voltage: 1.368-1.400
Voltage Setting: 1.400

After OC:
Voltage: 1.328-1.378 (Voltage has gone down... interesting, good or bad?)
Voltage Setting: 1.400

Tomorrow I will increase the FSB to 206mhz... then test it after that. Then after that, if all works well, i will increase it to 210mhz and decrease the HT frequency to 4x.

Anyway, thanks for the support again.
 
Last edited:
Altanore said:
Well i pretty much understand what to do now, however, I have one more question. My motherboard has a dynamic overclocking feature... which clocks the CPU higher when under load. I researched the internet and found nothing negative about this feature... what do you guys think? Is it better to manually overclock? Thanks for all the support :)
Click to expand...
depends... some people would prefer never to lose performance. sounds like something that would be useful for a laptop.
 
Hmmm well the CPU clock is at 2060mhz now.. memory clock at 206mhz. At this stage i noticed just minor glitches.. not sure if it's due to the overclock or not. 3Dmark03 score went down by 1 point.. however, my 3dmark05 score went up by around 40 points. Went to test it on a source engine game that has a video stress test.. in the middle of the test the game froze for around 3 seconds then continued normally. So i thought the memory was the victim.. went to lower the HT frequency from 5x to 4x(this should lower the memory speed right?) but there was no change at all. CPU still at 2060mhz and memory still at 206mhz.

Any ideas? Thanks. As you can see, im being as careful as possible =O Don't want to continue if i can't decrease the memory clock...
 
200 to 203Mhz is not a good overclock, lol

The problem is most likely because of the fact that your HTT is at 5x, the HTT isnt designed to run past 1000Mhz, so i would set it to 4x, and then continue oc'in.

I would raise it 5 at a time, what i do is raise it from 200 to 215, reboot into bios, go to 230, reboot into bios, 240, and then go up by 5 and boot into windows occasionally.

And to decrease the memory, there should be an option to set the memory speed to 166Mhz, this will get it below 400 and also allow you to OC further.
 
Well I did what you suggested. I actually found the setting to lower my ram.. so i set it to 166mhz. So memory clock went down. Then, I bumped the FSP to 215. Booted up fine. Then I bumped it up to 220... screen did not turn on at all. So i knew i hit the ceiling.. so I hit the CMOS reset button on my motherboard and it booted up, restored the last stable settings i had so this is the current settings:

CPU clock: 2150 mhz.
Memory Clock: 179.2mhz
HT Frequency: x4
Memory setting: 166mhz
FSB: 215mhz.
CPU Idle temp: 34C (Idle temp has not gone up at all.. same temp i get without being overclocked.)

Of course, i know im not going to get great results at this stage since the memory clock is low. There is a 180mhz setting tho for the memory...

Due to it hitting the limit, do you think it's because the voltage is too low? Voltage is still as the default setting. Or do u think that is pretty much my limit?

Must say, thanks for all your time in guiding me in this process.
 
it could possible be the memory, mine is running at 1.520V now, but it was able to run even at 1.600V.
 
Possibly the memory being too low? I set it to 166mhz before i clocked the FSB to 215 or 220mhz. Don't want to play with it that much incase something does go "pop" :P

Edit: Im going to increase my voltage just by a tad.. and see if it boots as 220mhz as suggested in OC101. If it does not work two times... then I guess i hit my limit.. which would suck =P oh well what can ya do?

Edit2: Success! Increased the voltage by 3.3% and it happily booted at FSB 220mhz.

Edit3: Well not so much of a success.. it booted fine.. then I went to reboot to change the memory to 180mhz so that it would be restored to 200mhz memory clock. However, I got a blank screen again.. so had to reset again.

So then I put the same settings back but I increased the voltage to 6.6% this time and put the memory to 180mhz which I wanted to do... it booted fine. Then I decided to restart just to test to see if it would.. nope.. blank screen again. So looks like I can't get my processor to 2.2ghz unfortionatly :( Oh well.. was a worthy experience learning to overclock... I'll just upgrade when the times comes.. hopefully to a CPU that is overclocking friendly.

I could play with it a little more, increase the multiplier or something else. Maybe increase the voltage by 9.9%. At 6.6%, CPU-Z did not report it going past 1.5v. Plus 9.9% is reaching the red zone in my bios, so rather not try it. Wierd how it boots fine.. but then if i do a restart.. no go. But i think i took enough risks already.

Anyway, thanks very much for the support everyone :)
 
Last edited:
try lowering the HT speed to 4x again that should increase stability... mines running at 4x :) and my memory is running a 166mhz divider as well.

btw HT frequency changes hypertransport... you notice "FSB" well hypertransport is basically that times 5 to be 1ghz, which is why they advertise 939 socket cpu's as having 1ghz fsb. normally above 1ghz fsb will cause instability and increase performance by tiny amounts, and below 1ghz wont really lower performance much anyways.
 
I did lower the HT to 4x.

I was doing it more slowly.. i was overclocking by a tiny bit then stress testing. Then I read i should of increased the FSB by 5mhz until my system does not boot as suggested in OC101 and what omega suggested.

So then i bumped the FSB at 215mhz, had the HT setting at 4x, and lowered the memory to 166mhz. It booted fine. So I tested it going to FSB 220mhz.. with the rest at the same setting.. it did not boot. So i reset the bios, restored the settings to FSB 215mhz, HT 4x and memory 166mhz. Then I decided to increase the voltage on my CPU by 3.3% and increase the FSB to 220mhz since it might not of booted because it did not have enough power. After I did that, it did boot and went into windows successfully. My CPU clock was 2200mhz (my goal) but the memory clock was too low.. (183mhz) so I decided to restart and set it to the 180mhz setting which would of made the memory clock to 200mhz (it's normal state). Went to restart and I just got a blank screen when it reached the point to boot up the bios again. So it obviously, it still did not like the setting. So i reset the cmos again and restored the settings at the same setting but I increased the voltage to 6.6% this time and increased the memory divider to 180mhz which would of made the memory clock 200mhz (normal speed) along with a 2200mhz cpu clock. It booted into windows perfectly. I decided to restart to see if it would not boot again.. got the same result.. no boot. Even turned the pc off for 30 seconds.. turned it on.. no go.

So it was happy on the first boot.. but any boot after that, would not go. So I stopped it at that thinking my CPU could not reach 2.2ghz or some other hardware is causing the problem. Probably is my motherboard... I don't think it's my PSU or ram. It certainly was not the temp either.. at 2.2ghz, the idle temp was at 36-37C. Only 2 degrees up from the normal temp.

I could of increased the multiplier to x11 instead of increasing the FSB or bumped the voltage up by 9.9% but i did not want to push it any harder.. so i restored the default settings.

So ya, all along the HT setting was at 4x. Oh well.. was worth shot.. probably is because of my motherboard or that my CPU has the winchester core which is harder to overclock. 2.2ghz is all i asked out of it :P nothing more! lol
 
Last edited:
Dont worry too much, before i got my 2ng gig of memory i could oc past 222 bus, no matter what i tried. Then i got another gig and dual channel, and now it works great.
 
Thats what I have.. 2 sticks of 1GB PC3200 DDR400 cosair ram running at dual channel. I am a bit worried since this PC cost me over $2500 (not just hardware, but also modding upgrades etc.) Don't want to push it too hard incase it fries!

I could not find anyone having the same problem as me... it boots the first time but not again afterwards... so what's causing that is beyond me. Anyway, in OC101.. just because I may have the same hardware or whatever, ur overclock ceiling will never be the same.
 
Last edited:
I succesfully got my CPU to 2.2ghz!

I found the problem after more research. Apparently my motherboard has a fault.. which is known as the "219 bug". It is impossible to get the FSB past 219mhz or else it just won't boot. I can only get the cpu to 2.2ghz if I used a program called clockgen which overclocks the CPU while in windows.

Running a stress test to make sure everything is stable.. i may attempt for a higher speed.
 
is this 939 socket or 754 socket? it matters because 754-socket procs use 130nm tech which is much hotter than 90nm tech. therefore, the 90nm would be much more o/cable, probly by 400mhz or so
 
Altanore said:
I succesfully got my CPU to 2.2ghz!

I found the problem after more research. Apparently my motherboard has a fault.. which is known as the "219 bug". It is impossible to get the FSB past 219mhz or else it just won't boot. I can only get the cpu to 2.2ghz if I used a program called clockgen which overclocks the CPU while in windows.

Running a stress test to make sure everything is stable.. i may attempt for a higher speed.
Click to expand...
If you flash your bios you may be able to get rid of that "219 bug". Are you able to get it past 2.2Ghz in windows?
 
No, this is a socket 939 motherboard. K8N Neo4 Platinum.

I tried updating the bios to the latest version to maybe fix the issue, but nope.. did nothing. MSI seems to ban people who ask on there forum about it.

Only work around is by overclocking via windows. I did manage to get the CPU past 2.2ghz... farthest i got was 2.35 ghz... at 2.4ghz, it crashed (may of needed more voltage) not sure.. but i stopped the test instantly since I remembered that I didn't lower the voltage on my memory! If I lower the memory clock, i would have to lower the voltage won't I? So i thought i was killing it... so i restored everything back to normal again. Ran memtest overnight.. the ram is 100% ok :P phew.

I will see if i can bump it up to 2.4ghz again... or else overclocking will be pointless since at 2.2ghz, my memory speed is only 183mhz. Since I updated my bios, I don't have the memory speed settings I had before. For example, I could set my memory clock to 180mhz... which would make it 200mhz when the cpu clock was at 2.2ghz.

However, I'd feel more comfortable overclocking in the bios than in windows...

EDit:

someone in the other forum suggested this to get around it in the bios:

Lame=yep

219 bug been around for ages but only with CBBID winnies and MSI.
The other mobo makers sorted it with a sorted bios but it seems that MSI bios makers could'nt/can't.
Earlier winnies are ok.

set your memory timings manually
i.e 3.4.4.8

You can do it all in the bios,just use a HT multi of "1".
no big performance loss doing it that way.

memory dividers only affect "bandwidth"
not performance.

Lowering the HT to x1 won't really effect anything?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top