AMD64 3000+ venice overclocking advice

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here is my main components

PSU 480W Tagan 2Force TG480-U22 SLi U-Quiet 21db
Chip AMD Athlon 64 3000+ venice 90nm socket 939 ( with original cooler )
M/board Gigabyte K8NSC/939 built in Gforce
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X
1 Gig of geil ddr ram ( 2x512mb 400mhz cl3 pc3200)

current idle temp 30c

anyone give me a rough idea of a safe and stable overclock for the above setup

before i try my first overclock i`d like to know what is a safe boundery guide don`t want to push it to crazy limits just a decent stable clock.

Plus is it best to overclock via bios or could i just do it via the EasyTune4 program in my taskbar.

thanks in advance
 
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Check out the numerous threads/guides on these forums ;)

Anyhow, overclock can vary considerably from chip to chip.....my Venice 3000+ happily went to 2.3GHz, with very little effort and only a slight bump on vCore, but others went higher and lower.......original cooler will limit more, but great to start off with....to a degree, if you don't change any voltages and lower the HTT so that the total (HTT multiplier x FSB) is never over 1000, you can't go too far wrong......but try at own risk ;)

Personally, I have found BIOS adjustments offer far greater reliability, control and success - Windows utilities less so......for me, Easy Tune is useful for temp status in Windows, but nothing more !

Seriously, have a look around for guides, I read one here not so long ago when I had the 3000+.....trick is to raise a little at a time, and don't just stema in there !
 

A2Z

A2Z

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my winnie 3000 is at 2.6ghz

put the HTT to X 3

start raising FSB slowly, you can safely go 230 at first

when it crashes, raise vcore, mines at 1.575v

put memory on divider (333)

could also bump up memory voltage to 2.7/2.8 cant memba what mines at
 
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This is what their capable of :D. And i havent pushed it yet. Maybe when i recieve my next cpu ill commit assisted suicide.

cpuzandprime951ag.jpg
 
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WOW

thanks for the initial replays..


gonna have a read of the ram timings see if i can understand that before i start the tweaking,

but obviously i won`t be taking it too high as i`m only running the original cpu cooler


@ !n$oMniA
when i run cpu-z it show exactly the same processor info as yours exactly to the letter

obviously the only thing thats different is the clocks section,
 
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taktmobiles said:
WOW

thanks for the initial replays..


gonna have a read of the ram timings see if i can understand that before i start the tweaking,

but obviously i won`t be taking it too high as i`m only running the original cpu cooler


@ !n$oMniA
when i run cpu-z it show exactly the same processor info as yours exactly to the letter

obviously the only thing thats different is the clocks section,

only the core and revision will change from chip to chip, do youi know the stepping it? Eg lbble0516

mine will do 2.8 (1.5v) but only windows stable, can prime 18hrs+ at 2.6 with 1.44v

Your mobo will be the limiting factor with your oc, remember you only have a 9x multi to play with.

good luck anyhow!
 
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taktmobiles said:
@ !n$oMniA
when i run cpu-z it show exactly the same processor info as yours exactly to the letter

obviously the only thing thats different is the clocks section,

If you can tell us the stepping, such as LBB2E we'd probably be able to help you further estimate the overclocking potential.

To be honest i could reach 2.8 on stock cooler but was about +- 10 degrees hotter that current solution. I would get one before overclocking. JUst gives that little extra confidence safety-wise.

Not to sure on the board so may be a limiting factor. Also i had to take the HTT down to x2 to get stably into windows (apparently no hit on performance)
 
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well so far

from 9x 200
to 9x 234

giving me a speed of 2105.83mhz

temp under idle use 31/32c
under prime95 test 43/45c

on first Torture Test under prime95 in just under an hour it errored

FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

so i upped the ram volt from 2.5 to 2.6 after searching on here on the error

so on second Torture Test run of prime its gone 4hours without errrors and still going

not altered the memory except upping the volt by .1 as the prime error looked to be memory related after searching the forum about the error
but looking on the memory page on CPU-Z its showing does it look ok without altering

frequency 234.0mhz
FSB.DRAM CPU/9
CAS# latency 2.5 clocks
RAS# to CAS# Delay 4 clocks
Cycle time (Tras ) 6 clocks
Bank cycle Time (Trc) 11 clocks
DRAM idle Timer 16 clocks

so, so far it looks as if i`m heading in the right direction, will try and find out the stepping


Did try taking the speed upto 2.2ghz but temp went upto 40c on idle so will need to change from original cpu cooler
 
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thats about the overclock I get without upping the RAM divider

I run my a64 at the following


RAM set to DDR266 3,3,3,8 1T
FSB set to 289
Multiplier at 9x
Vcore at 1.55
RAM voltage at 2.9 (with a fan to keep 'em cool)

thats 2.6Ghz and it's rock stable... I ram Prime95 for about 16 hours (whilst at school/work/in bed). No errors, and load temps were hanging around the 46'C mark. I was using an AC freezer 64pro at the time.

I've clocked my 3000+ as high as 3Ghz before... but it was only booting in safe mode, and wasn't at all stable. I might be tempted to voltmod in order to squeese more out of this this chip... theres loads of headroom, i'm sure.

basically... Up the divider and up the volts... anything under 60'C is safe and good luck ;)
 
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cheers Mikebert4

just been looking in my bios theres no options for changing ram timings / dividers

will have a look to see if a motherboard update will give me more options
 
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A64 3000+
Asus A8N-E
Corsair XL 1GB 2-2-2-5
Mem divider = 266Mhz
HTT = 3X
FSB =289
vcore = 1.6v (1.55 in bios)
Overlock = 2601
CPUtemp = 31C idle 40C load @ 20C ambient

might work @ lower voltage but i have aN XP-120 on it so it dosen really matter ;)
 
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Yeah, check for the updates.. but usually they're just compatability things.

is there no way in your BIOS to knock the RAM down from DDR400 to DDR333 or DDR266?
Scour every menu, on my Mobo it's under advanced CPU settings, rather than the Overclocking section, because the mem controller in on-die with all A64's. Have a real throuough search for it! :p

oh yeah... I forgot to mention to drop the HTT down to 3x... you don't want it running much over 1000Mhz... not healthy at all (trust me - tis a good job OCUK are good with RMA's : :rolleyes: )

let me know how you get on, I'm interestd to see how high others can clock their 3000+'s without getting that burining silicon smell that signals heart attacks and desperate lunges for power switches in all Overclockers :D


Alien8473: My mobo does that too, reads as 1.55v in BIOS but pumps 1.6 through the core. at first I though it was a dodgy sensor, but my multimter read it as that too... strange no?

Personally I blame ASUS.. but i'm really not compaining, more volts=more stable... well... up to a point :) and now i've gone watercooling, it really doesn't matter :D
 
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ok my temps r :-

34C @ Idle
46C @ Load
both @ 21.5 Ambient (room)temp

This is @ 2.661ghz
1.55Vcore (1.6Vcore in Smartguardian)

Im usin an XP-120 with thermalright paste and an Acoustifan 120mm Quiet fan on it:12v: 56.3 CFM, 24.7 dB(A), 1500 RPM .
 
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right,

just done a bios update it was on firmware f1 its now on f8

its now given me heaps more tweaking options in the bios

i now have the option for altering everything to do with the ram and htt

heaps of options are now available where as on old firmware wasn`t there

so off to see if i can fine tune a bit more, after reading the above great advice
 
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heres a little update

above i had a idle heat jump to 40c on idle when trying 2.2

but now after bios update got the following

2205.00mhz

multiplier x9
htt 245
htx3
ram set to 2/1.66
timings NOT CHANGED
vcore NOT CHANGED

temp on idle 31/32c
under prime95 43/45c

ran prime95 understress for 12hrs no errors

------------------
so just upped to my next step

htt 255 = 2301.11mhz

temp on idle is currently sitting at 32c

nothing else from above changed

now time to prime95 on new setting

update on 2301.11mhz pc shuts down then restarts within 10 mins of running prime95

off to read some more on the forum for a cure
 
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You'll need more volts. Try 1.5 or 1.55

to answer the question earlier I was using a AC freezer64 Pro to get the temps i did on air... I had it mounted so that there was a 120mm case fan sucking air through as well as the HSF fan. God bless the Akasa Eclipse-62's airflow as well.

But yeah, I ran at 1.6v 24/7, I still do, though i'm going to drop it down a bit to prolong core life methinks, I want this this to be alive for when I get the chance to bench it on Phase :D
 
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Ive already said this but dude take your HTT down to 2x. Anything over 800MHz is dodgy, i was unable to break through 2.6GHz with 3x. And as far as im aware makes no difference on performance. Did 2 benchmarks and results were close enough to be in a margin of error.
 
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my girlfriend says that overclocking is evil and the spawn of satan and the root of all evil in the universe... and that it's addictive ("like heroin") and we'll all die of stomache ulcers from mars...

she's going to set up an 'Overclockers anonymous' for all us poor, misguided souls.

However, she's ginger and so we can ignore her. :p

I would argue that HTT is fine as long as it's kept around 1000Mhz, you don't really want to drop too far below this as you'll be strangling the RAM's bandwidth.

I run at 3x HTT all the way up to 333Mhz (which makes sense).

The thing you need to do BEFORE any of this is drop your RAM timings to DDR266 at 3,3,3,8 1T
 
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