Anyone remember? Athlon 64 Venice OC question.

[txrider06]

Can't convince myself to drop a grand on a new PC, so I'm going to force myself to. I'm overclocking (for the first time) my 3.5 year old system:

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice 2.4GHz Socket 939 89W ADA3800DAA4BW
ASUS A8N5X 939 NVIDIA nForce4
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro 92mm
EVGA 512-P3-N861-AR GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCIE 2.0 x16
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) KVR400X64C3AK2/2G
Kingston ValueRAM 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) KVR400X64C3AK2/1G
Thermaltake TR2 W0070RUC 430W ATX12V V2.2

I'm on day two of trying to figure this out. CPU OC'ing I understand decently. RAM OC'ing - not so good. My current setup:

PCIe locked @ 100Mhz
PCI locked @ 33.33Mhz
CPU volts 1.375
DDR volts 2.6
HTF 4x
DRAM settings still on auto, think it says 333mhz in there..
40 idle, low 50s loaded

I'm happy @ 3GHz. My question.. do I need to change anything in my RAM? I've read that if you're not OC'ing your RAM, faster CPU speeds are wasted. What's my next step before doing some 24hr stress tests (trying get the setup right so the time isn't wasted)? Thanks for any help.

 

[overshocked]

ovrclockr or xtc 28 can help you with amd chips ( =

im sure theyl post soon.

 

[txrider06]

ovrclockr or xtc 28 can help you with amd chips ( =

im sure theyl post soon.

Hopefully. I went ahead and started a Prime95 test last night. I'm 22 hours in and no problems.

24 hours went fine BUT.. I realized with my 3gb of varied RAM, I wasn't running sync'ed (333mhz). So I pulled the 2 512's I had and now am running 2 gb's at 250 mhz, synced with the cpu now. Running stability tests again.

 

[eagles453809]

problem with that. 250mhz is too fast for that ram...you need to keep it at 200mhz so use a ram divider like 166mhz or 133mhz. i can almost assure you that your ram is not stable at 250mhz. the venice core prob wont go past 3.2 ...you have a nice oc going there. set the ram divider to 133 for now to be sure that your cpu is stable at 3ghz. if it passes 24hr prime test with small fft's then try the following:

set the fsb to 277 with a cpu multiplier of 10 or 11 to bring the ram to 200mhz exactly and the cpu near 3ghz (prob 10)...this will put the ram at ddr400 which is factory spec

do the small fft test again for a couple hours to be sure that the north bridge is stable at the voltage...if its not raise the voltage 1 settign at a time until it is stable. but don't go too high...i would say around .1 to .2 if i remember correctly.

when it is stable enjoy your overclock...watch your temps.

 

[txrider06]

I know my CPU is stable @ 3ghz at my voltage per passing the 24 hr blend Prime95 test. Right now I'm running memtest+ to check the RAM @ 250mhz. Might as well try it out before slowing it down.

edit.. 5 hours in. still no errors

 

[txrider06]

Well, looks like I'm setup. Final clock is 3ghz w/ 1:1 ram. Passed 24hr Prime95 and 24hr memtest and 4 hour 3dmark01.

Hopefully I'll notice the bump.