GTS 250 overclocking with thermalright t-rad 2. help!

[river686]

i just upgraded the cooling in my xfx GTS 250. and i started to do some overclocking, however this is only the the second card i have overclocked, and i really dont know if i am getting good clock speeds or if my cpu is bottlnecking my GPU. or maby my GPU is overclocking really good and im just crazy. your opinion an these specs would really help me out! thanks guys.

AMD athlon x2 6000+ 3.10ghz with titan fenrir heat sink
evga 730a mobo
2GB crucial ballistix 800mhz ram
xfx gts 250 overclocked with thermalright t-rad 2
BFG gs 450watt psu
western digital caviar blue 320GB in RAID
windows 7 ultimate 32bit

GPU stock clocks: fur mark score:22462 3d mark vantage score:6729 idle temp:36c
memory:1101 max temp:55c
shader:1836
core:730

GPU max overclock: GPU stable overclock: fur mark score:24772 3d mark vantag score:7364 idle temp:36c
memory:1264 memory:1242 max temp:57c
shader:2040 shader:1944
core:834 core:820

 

[OvrClkr]

Nice cooler, or shall I say "coolers" =)

My secondary rig has a BFG GTS 250 (1Gb) and the highest I can push it is 820/1205/1898 ......anything over that is unstable....

You got a good overclock from what I see...

You got good taste when it comes to aftermarket cooling

 

[river686]

hey thanks! i love that cooler!

 

[OvrClkr]

Why don't you overclock your CPU? you can get at least 3.6Ghz with minimal effort....

 

[river686]

that is what im trying to do right now actually but i am a bit of a newb and i have only overclocked GPUs. and i can find a good guid that isnt like trying to read Chinese backwards! con you help me out?

 

[OvrClkr]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-overclock-athlon,2161.html

read that, ask questions later

 

[river686]

ok awesome, i have been reading alot for the past few weeks on cpu overclocking, and the only thing i am really confused about is ddr2 memory speeds. im all set to start my overclocking right now...but i don't know why my dram frequency is 200 mhz on cpu-z, from what i have red it is because i have a multiplier of x5.0 this is the only basic concept of overclocking an amd system that i cant figure out, why the underclocking of memory is caused by DDR2 memory paired with an odd or fractional CPU multiplier and what do i need to change it to in order to get a good overclock????

 

[OvrClkr]

Well you have not read the part about the RAM.

First off disable cool n quiet and any other power saving feature's

Make sure your RAM timings/frequency and voltage are set according to the manufacturer ( use CPU-z and check the SPD tab ).

In your Bios look for FSB Frequency and raise it in increments of 0.5/1.0 , anything over 3.3/3.4Ghz will require a bump in voltage as well so you do the same, raise in increments till you get a BSOD, then you back off a bit and you should be fine. Don't go crazy on the voltage, your CPU does not need much voltage to operate.

Make sure your RAM frequency is at 400Mhz (800Mhz DDR2)

Keep on reading, the more you read the easier it gets