How to Overclock a AMD 64 system (socket 939/AM2)

Weltspiele

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Tuesday, September 4th 2007, 11:43pm

First of all you need to check that all your cooling fans are clean and operating.
At the beginning i recommend the newest Bios for your Mainboard.
You need some tools to check and stress your system: Everest Ultimate 2007 wich shows your complete system with Overclock status, voltage and Temperature. Please check your Standart CPU Voltage befor you overclock!!
And Orthos to stress your System with a 100% load to see if it is stable.
Lets beginn to see how far we can get your CPU:
1. Go into yor Bios and set the HT Multipler to 3x (standart is 5x).
2. Turn down the FSB-Ratio from your Memory, like set to 166 mhz (real low).
3. Now you setup the CPU FSB to 220 (200 standart) and start your system.
4. If you are in Windows start the Orthos and stress the CPU for about 10 Minutes.
5. Everything fine ? Ok, then go back into your Bios and setup the CPU-FSB to 230.
6. and again: start Windows / start the Orthos and stress the CPU for about 10 Minutes.
7. the next steps i test only 5 mhz CPU-FSB steps like 235/240/245/250/255 etc.
8. do this untill the Orthos hangs up or your system wont boot anymore.
9. if your Screen keeps black after biossteup and your Mainboard is beeping wild, you got to clear your Bios cmos (look at your Handbook howto, or dismount the small battery on the Mainboard for about 1 Minute)
10. Have you found the last working CPU-FSB your system is booting, you may have to turn on the CPU-Voltage a little bit more (max. Voltage for CPU is 1,50 Volt !!)
11. Your standart CPU-Voltage is 1,35 Volt? Try 1,375 Volt (or more) and you may overclock the CPU-FSB a little more.
12. NOTE: For a real stable system you need to run Orthos about 3-5 Hours, only then you will know how your system rocks !!
13. Keep the max. Temperature of your CPU under 60°!
14. If you have troubel to overclock, try to disable the "Cool 'n Quiet" function in your Bios. This can block overclocksettings in some cases....
Maybe you are lucky as i was with my old 3700 AMD wich runs with standart Voltage 1,35 @ 2800mhz!
--------------------------------------
Thats it for overclocking the CPU, if you need some more Memorypower do this=
Now we are going to check how far your Memory goes.
1. Turn down the Multiplikator of your Cpu. Example: 11x200 = 2200. Turn down to 5x200 = 1000.
2. Setup the desierd CPU-FSB were your System was running perfect.
3. manage the Memoryclock adjustment to fit it near/over your FSB (you can setup the memory derrived to the CPU)
4. stress the System with Orthos again with the Memorystresstest.
5. if your Memory dont run well you may overvoltage it from standart 1.8 Volt to 1.9/2.0 or 2.1 volts.
6. my Corsiar XMS2 667mhz Memory runs with 2.0 volts at 825mhz stable (5-5-5-14 CR2).
7. You found the max mhz for your Memory? Then try to set it with the CPU-FSB and the Memorydivisor.
8. At the end: Dont forget to setup your CPU-Multiplikator back to your standart
At last you do a complete Stresstest with Orthos for about 5-7 Hours.

Maybe your system runs better (CPU and Memoryclock together) with a higher FSB. You can turn down the CPU-Muliplikator and rise the FSB a little more instead.
My 3600 runs standart with 9,5x200 i set it up to 9x320.
It is better to have a high FSB instead of a high Multi.
This is only a lead into Overclock... do i like i did and search for more Infos with google

There is even more: How to Underclock your Cpu when it is in idlemode. My runs with 1100 mhz with 1.0 volt @ roomtemperature !

Screenshots of my Biossettings with a s.939 3800 X2

And this is a screenshot from my second PC with a s.AM2 3600 X2

This post has been edited 4 times, last edit by "Weltspiele" (Sep 15th 2007, 9:11pm)

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MAKD82

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Wednesday, September 5th 2007, 9:06am

Ok that was one pant wetting sexy guide, now i only need to ask you this before i start working on it !!! At normal room temperature my CPU can reach 40C to 45C so will it be ok for me to still overclock. It's because of the hot weather over here ???

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deviant_n

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Wednesday, September 5th 2007, 10:31am

Quoted from "MAKD82"

Ok that was one pant wetting sexy guide, now i only need to ask you this before i start working on it !!! At normal room temperature my CPU can reach 40C to 45C so will it be ok for me to still overclock. It's because of the hot weather over here ???

What CPU do you have? It would be nice to see the power consumption of it, the less power it uses - the more suitable for overclocking

If you're using the stock heatsink&fan you might get a better one for the job

cheers

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Weltspiele

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Wednesday, September 5th 2007, 2:24pm

The Heat will only rise if you liftup the Voltages for your CPU. But it is only little untill you reach 1.45 Volt.
You can try Overclocking with your Cooler, but keep an eye on the Temperatures with Everest Ultimate 2007.
Here ist the CPU cooler iam using:
Arctic-Cooling Freezer 64
This cooler is very cheap and silent, it is about 13-17 Euros (Germany).

Look at my Screenshot. The standart voltage for the 3600 X2 EE is 1.28 volt.
I raised it up to 1.45 volts and the cpu still keeps cool at 37° under 100% load

But keep in mind that there are good overclock CPU's and some bad ones.
My old 3700 runs with standart voltage (1,35v.) @ 2800mhz. Saschas 3700 needs 1.60 volts (to high.... say bye, bye to CPU in the nexttime) to get on 2600 mhz.

Be patient, safe overclocking needs its time. Dont try to force anything.
If there are any questions, ask them here.

Here are some other Tools to read the Temperatures:
Speedfan
Coretemp

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MAKD82

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Monday, September 10th 2007, 3:12pm

OK here is the deal, I have been working on your guide for some time now and have tried numerous ways, i have been successful somewhat but there are some things that are blocking my path to successful holy overclocking !!!

I have been able to achieve from 2.2 to 2.6 successfully but thats the limit !!! Why ??? there are some things such as you mentioned that i can change but my mobo doesnt allow me to namely CPU multiplier, its on 11x by default and cannot be changed. Other thing is the HT multiplier, it can only be increased upwards from 5x and cannot be decreased. One thing i could downgrade was my memory from 800 to 667 so that i could overclock via software within windows !!! So now i can only overclock my cpu through software while being in windows and there i can change everything via my mobo's software ntune which is based on nvidia chipset and can be downloaded via nvidia site. The other option which my motherboard gives me is the MSI's dynamic overclocking, which is a bulit-in function. It does everything automatically, you just have to select from many given options i.e 1%,3%,5%,10% etc and then it overclocks automatically by checking your temprature and voltage etc !!! it's a much safer option so i have selected it at 12% and have reached 2.6 max, i had to reset my bios because i seleted a higher value then 12% and then everything went black !!!

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Weltspiele

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Monday, September 10th 2007, 9:20pm

Ok, thats nice but i still think you can get much more than 2600mhz.
Please post a screenshot of your Settings in ntune.

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MAKD82

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Thursday, September 13th 2007, 12:28pm

i'm sorry that i have not been clear in my previous post that i had to abandon the ntune overclocking since i had stability issues and also all the settings revert to defualt after the system booted so i then used my mobo's built-in function that is D.O.T ( Dynamic Overclocking ). So these pictures i'm posting are only showing the settings and no changes have been made using the ntune utility. Perhaps these would show you where i'm going wrong or what i'm missing !!!

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Weltspiele

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Thursday, September 13th 2007, 3:04pm

OMG .... i see what you are doing wrong.....
Maybe i quote myself from my first Thread:

Quoted

Go into yor Bios and set the HT Multipler to 3x (standart is 5x)

I can see clearly that your HT multiplier is still at 5x so your systembus is overclocked over 1000mhz ( yours is at 1100mhz)
You HAVE to set the HT multiplier to 4x or 3x (depends on how far you go).
Never tune a system over a HT above 1000mhz
Example:
FSB 220 mhz x 4 HT = 880 mhz
FSB 250 mhz x 4 HT = 1000 mhz
FSB 270 mhz x 3 HT = 810 mhz
FSB 300 mhz x 3 HT = 900 mhz

Never set your HT to 5x if you overclock your system!
Even when you are using your D.O.T from MSI, enable a lower HT multiplier.

BTW:
You cant raise the CPU multiplier. It is fixed at 11x, you only can lower it to 10x or less.

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "Weltspiele" (Sep 13th 2007, 3:09pm)

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hintakaari

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Thursday, September 13th 2007, 10:12pm

orthos gives me this: "1:FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4" every time i try to overclock. i have amd athlon64 3700+. i put HT multiplier to 3x, memory fsb to 166 and cpu fsb to 220. And when i run orthos, after ~1minute i get that message :stressed:

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Sascha

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Friday, September 14th 2007, 12:26am

lol

my max settings are

first step:
Ram/Memory multipler lowerd to 333MHZ or 166MHz (when u have diffrent Bios) with DDR 400 or better RAM better RAM.
Save bios > restart.
Back into the Bios and set cpu busspeed (FSB) to 242MHZ and CPU voltage to 1,55 <<<<< more volt can be more stability but i have read 1,6 volt = max, or you can buy a bigger cpu
Than i set the ht multipler to 4x

Ram/Memory volt from 2,65 to 2,7 for more stabillity
save > restart > done.

when u make not the restart like i make, than u can have a blackscreen after save bios.

cpu is not cpu you need to look codename, brand id, stepping, revision. weltspiele have a better revision than me and he came higher than me.

/////// edit by Weltspiele:
Sascha has the 3700 Athlon 64 with the Toledocore and the E-6 revision / stepping.
I got the 3700 Athlon 64 with the Venicecore and the E-4 revision / stepping.

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "Weltspiele" (Sep 14th 2007, 11:03am)

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Weltspiele

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Friday, September 14th 2007, 10:01am

There are two steps on overclocking a system:

Test how far you can overclock your CPU
Test how far you can overclock your RAM/Memory

You have to be really sure witch Hardware is limiting you.
In the Bios you can setup the Cpu/Memory devider like 200:200, 200:166, 200:133 or 333:200, 166:200.
To Test your Memory you have to lower your CPU Multiplier (example 3700: 11 x 200 standart> lower to 6 x 200).
Now you can raise the FSB to find out how far you can overclock your Memory.
If it is getting unstable you can raise up the Memoryvoltages.

Memoryvoltages:

DDR1: standart 2.6 volts
DDR1: light overclock and better stabilty 2.7 volts
DDR1: more overclock 2.8 volts
DDR1: getting hot 2.9 volts
DDR1: over the edge 3.0 volts

DDR2: standart 1.8 volts
DDR2: light overclock and better stability 1.9 volts
DDR2: more overclock 2.0 volts
DDR2: getting hot 2.1 volts
DDR2: over the edge 2.2 volts

@ Hintakaari
If your Memory runs stable you should try a higher CPU-Voltage.
@ All
Sascha has rised his CPU voltage over 1.5 volts, these high voltages shortens the life of your CPU.
If you dont care and the Temperatures are ok you can do it too :stars:

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MAKD82

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Saturday, September 15th 2007, 7:32pm

Well i am trying and don't mind if i ask you again and again since this is my First Real try at overclocking, other then that terminology is to be blamed here as well as things in my MOBO are not under same name as you have been mentioning .

My current settings are

Reduced HT Multi from 5x to 4x and now it is at 876Mhz
FSB was @200Mhz increased it to 219Mhz
Cpu Core from 2.2 Ghz is now @2409Mhz
Cpu multipluir was at 11x and still at 11x
Ram was at 800Mhz reduced it to 667Mhz and now it is @729.270
Ran Orthos for 10 minutes and Cpu temperature was touching 59C
i'm hitting the wall here cant increase FSB to 220Mhz, if i do then BIOS gives error after restart and setting change to default !!!

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Weltspiele

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Saturday, September 15th 2007, 8:37pm

OK, so far so good (bad fsb :opfor:

)
Did you tryied a higher CPU voltage?
Do you have the newest Bios on your Mainboard ?
If not, use the "Live Update Tool" from your Mainboard. You have this Software on your Install-CD or download it from MSI MSI-Liveupdate
What kind of CPU-Cooler do you have ?
Try to disable the "Cool 'n Quiet" function in your Bios. This can block overclocksettings in some cases....

This post has been edited 2 times, last edit by "Weltspiele" (Sep 15th 2007, 9:09pm)

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hintakaari

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Sunday, September 16th 2007, 4:40am

grrr... i put my cpu voltage to 1.375 and now i can put my fsp to 220. if i put more, orthos gives error message after 1 min.

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hintakaari

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Sunday, September 16th 2007, 5:50am

looks like that more voltage i put, more far i can go. like now i put 1.49.. and i can go to 2550mhz (11x232). And i dont want to put more voltages to get like 2600--> :stressed:

i dont want to ruin my computer

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Weltspiele

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Sunday, September 16th 2007, 1:35pm

@ hintakaari
Try to disable the "Cool 'n Quiet" function in your Bios. This can block overclocksettings in some cases....
Can you post a screenshot of N-Tune ( like MAKD82 ) and Sascha with CPU-Z ?

CPU-Z download
Nvidia-Ntune download

//// edit: Please take a look at my first post. I did some screenshots of my Biossettings.
Maybe it helps you a littlebit.

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "Weltspiele" (Sep 16th 2007, 1:40pm)

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hintakaari

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Sunday, September 16th 2007, 3:34pm

i just download cpu-z, and i have same cpu than sascha, damn.. so i just have to raise my cpu voltage. :stressed:

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Sunday, September 16th 2007, 4:49pm

i think when we have the same prozessor can u put the same thinks i use but i hope u have a good cpu cooler and not boxed shit.

my cpu stress temp 38°C. The max temp for this cpu is 65-70°C

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hintakaari

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Sunday, September 16th 2007, 5:34pm

my stress temp is somewhere 47-50c with 2500mhz and 1.46v (idle ~38c)

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MAKD82

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Wednesday, September 19th 2007, 2:36pm

Instability Instability .... This is definately what i did not want !!! looks like i had to come back again for this .... so now i have successfully passed the 220 fsb mark ( MOBO does not like jumps in the fsb ... it likes it if you increase it step by step ) so i slowy increased the FSB and when i got to 221 ... Bang instabilities .... there were no lockups or restarts and i played the games as well but the problems were minor ... i.e there is is this program i use windowblinds .... it refused to open up ... then kapsersky antivirus gave and error which has not happened before ever ... Hmm wonder what is happening now ... and yeah about the last post when you asked me questions

Quoted

by Weltspiele
Did you tryied a higher CPU voltage?
Do you have the newest Bios on your Mainboard ?
If not, use the "Live Update Tool" from your Mainboard. You have this Software on your Install-CD or download it from MSI MSI-Liveupdate
What kind of CPU-Cooler do you have ?
Try to disable the "Cool 'n Quiet" function in your Bios. This can block overclocksettings in some cases....

voltage is set to auto which increases when i chnage the fsb ....
i did update to newest BIOS ..... using live update from MSI .....
CPU cooler is stock that came with the AMD CPU in the box
yes i did disable the Cool & Quiet fucntion in the BIOS .

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