Overclock Athlon 5200 HELP PLEASE

[skypirate]

Greetings everyone!

After a year of happily using my system at the stock settings now I feel the time has come to do a little OC to cope with the new games requirements. So I sat down red some threads regarding this and started the tries.

System specs:
AMD Athlon 64 x2 5200+ Windsor socket 940 (AM2) running @ vCore=1,35V, bus speed=200MHz, HT Link=1003 MHz, Multy=x13
MB Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5
RAM 4x1GB Kingmax DDR2 Dual Channel running @ 377MHz 5-5-5-18-24
Power Supply Force 900W
Custom Air Cooler
GPU GeForce GTX280



After couple of days trials and testing finally I got my Athlon 64 x2 5200+ running from 2600 MHz to 2840 MHz ...

Here is the link to CPU-Z dump>> http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=481501

The system was running stable during the test with core temperatures on air cooling @ 52-55C degrees on 100%

Further OC with bus clock to 220 and 222 MHz was not possible as Windows failed to boot properly.

So, now my question is whether I can bring this baby further up, lets say to 3000MHz stable? Any suggestions for other BIOS changes?

Thanks for the help!

 

[megamanx00]

The problem is you're running your RAM at 405 MHz with the default voltage and rather low timings. The CPU uses a divider to figure out the memory speed and the default is 7 so 2840/7=405. The easiest thing to do is raise your divider to 8 by going into the BIOS and setting your RAM speed at 667. Also make sure to manually set the timings to 5-5-5-18-24 since the motherboard may try to use a lower timing since it will think the RAM will be running slower. You could also try loosening the timings and raising the voltage of your RAM to push it farther, but of course if that RAM is not meant for overclocking you can easily fry it with too much voltage or too much heat. You will probably have to raise your vcore to 1.4v to get it stable past 3.0Ghz. Since your board is based on the nvidia 590 chipset your board has a default HT speed of 1000. It would be a good idea to lower the HT multiplier in your BIOS by setting it to 800MHz (which would give you a multiplier of 4). That way you could overclock your FSB to 250MHz without going over an HT speed of 1GHz.

 

[skypirate]

The HT Muly is already @ 4 this is giving me at the current overclock @ the bus 218 Mhz - about 870Mhz... The vCore voltage is already 1,4V...

So I guess the RAM has to be clocked from 800 to 667 with manual timings as you say.
I'll try later and I'll let you know the outcome.

Thanks a million for the help! Much appretiated

 

[skypirate]

Actually the RAM settings are already there>>

RAM@667MHz - with the current overclock the RAM Speed : 355 MHz (CPU/8) @ 5-5-5-18-24 (these settings are on Auto though)

so it is not the RAM I guess.....

 

[megamanx00]

Check CPU-z to make sure those are the timings and the RAM speed. You're going to have to raise your vcore to 1.45. The Windsor chips need more power and run hotter. You can use Everest to monitor your individual core temps while your running something like prime 95. If one core is running significantly hotter than the other it would be a good idea to reapply your thermal paste. If you haven't already make sure to dissable Cool n Quite in the BIOS. It may just be called power saving technology or something depending on the BIOS. If you have the option to do so lock the PCI-E requency as well.

You should be able to get around 3.0GHz with the stock cooler. You need to have good case ventilation if you want to go a little further and you may also want to consider a good aftermarket cooler. Windsor Chips seem to top out at 3.4-3.6Ghz on air but they release alot of heat and suck up alot of power doing so.