AMD Athlon 64 X2 Overclocking Results

jpeyton

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EDIT: New Results At The Bottom

Alright, I hope this is the first on many to appear on ATForums. I was waiting on a DFI NF4 SLI-DR, but it still hasn?t arrived, and I got a little impatient. [rant]Remember when FedEx Saver Shipping meant about 3-4 days from coast to coast? Well Newegg?s FedEx Saver Shipping apparently means 5 days from California to Oregon.[/rant]

Well whether it?s a blessing or a curse (probably a curse if you ask my girlfriend), I live about 15 minutes away from a Fry?s Electronics. They had a special for the weekend, a retail AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (Socket 939) and a DFI NF4 Ultra-D for $269.99. I grabbed one so I could use the motherboard to test out the OEM Athlon 64 X2 4400+ that I got on the 15th from TigerDirect, but as a bonus, the retail 3000+ they included was a LBBLE 0520DPDW Venice core. I?ll test the Venice out later.

The Players:

DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D ? The board didn?t have a revision number, but it?s fairly new because it shipped with the 0310 BIOS. This allowed the 4400+ to POST, but I was getting constant BSODs installing Windows XP Professional SP2. I flashed it to Oskar Wu?s 0510-3 BIOS and it worked like a charm (note the -3 suffix means the BIOS is optimized for TCCD).

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ - Two cores, 2.2GHz each, 1MB L2 cache per core. OEM processor I got from TigerDirect, it is a few weeks older than the OEM 4400+ that were on sale at Newegg. Mine is a 0517 CPU, while Newegg?s were 0520 (at least the pictured one was).

Patriot 1GB Dual Channel PC3200 XBLK - TCCD on BrainPower 815 PCBs. Didn?t check the markings on the memory chips because I?ve been reluctant to remove the retail red heatspreaders. I bought these at the beginning of 2005 but they?ve been in the closet gathering dust for a while because my test bench was running DDR2 motherboards.

Zalman CNPS7700-Cu - The kilogram copper beast with a 120mm quiet fan. Fan speed was pegged between 1800-1900RPM.

Other components: ATI X850XT Platinum Edition (stock), Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 40GB PATA, LG 52X CD-ROM, NEC 1.44 Floppy, Fortron 550W PSU (with dual 18A 12V rails).

Software/Drivers: Windows XP Professional w/ SP2 & All Windows Updates, nForce 6.53 Unified Drivers, Omega Catalyst 5.4.

The Results:

Keep in mind that I still haven?t fully tweaked this setup, in terms of max overclock and max memory bandwidth. It may run with a little less voltage, or a little higher clock speed, and with faster benchmark results, but I did as much testing as I could in a 6 hour period and determined this to be a safe overclock. I?ll update later when I squeeze more out of the setup. Stability has been tested so far with Memtest (5 passes of test 8) and dual Stress Prime 2004 (~4.5 hours). Will do more stability testing later, but it flew through all the benchmarks without a problem.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Overclock Results

CPU Clock Speed: 2600MHz
CPU Multiplier: 10X
FSB: 260MHz
LDT Multiplier: 3X
HTT Clock: 1560MHz
Memory Ratio: 1:1
Memory Timings: 2.5-3-3-5
PCIe Clock: 100MHz
PCI Clock: 33MHz

VCore: 1.55V BIOS, 1.50V Actual (Idle), 1.52V Actual (Load)
VDimm: 2.7V BIOS, 2.72V Actual
VLDT: 1.3V BIOS, 1.26V Actual
VNB: 1.5V BIOS, 1.47V Actual

Temperatures: 33C Idle, 57C Load
Screen

Super PI 1M: 31.775s
Hexus PiFast: 45.47s
Screen

CrystalMark: 133663
Screen

POV-Ray 3.7 Beta
Benchmark (Single Thread): 717.33s
Screen
Benchmark (Quad Thread): 368.81s
Screen

Cinebench
Single CPU Render Test: 71.2s
Multiple CPU Render Test: 38.1s
Screen

Sisoft Sandra
ALU: 24136 MIPS
FPU/iSSE2: 8240/10667 MFLOPS
Integer: 49705 it/s
Floating-Point: 53629 it/s
RAM Bandwidth Integer: 6888 MB/s
RAM Bandwidth Floating-Point: 6803 MB/s
Screen

ScienceMark
Molecular Dynamics: 57.43457s
Primordia: 261.75984s
Screen

3DMark2001SE: 31026
Screen

3DMark03: 13568
Screen

3DMark05: 6234
Screen

So with mid-end air cooling and a safe VCore of 1.52V, we have the equivalent of a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, or two AMD FX-55s in one socket. Not bad.

If you guys have any benchmark requests, please post in this thread with a download link and I?ll update my results.

EDIT:

TMPGEnc
DivX AVI-To-MPG
Source File: Batman Begins Trailer 1 (143s long, Available At DivX.com)

CBR
Conversion Settings: DVD NTSC (MPEG-2 720x480 23.976fps CBR 7992kbps, Linear PCM 48000Hz 1536kbps)
Singlethreaded Conversion Time: 135s
Multithreaded Conversion Time: 72s

2-Pass VBR
Conversion Settings: DVD NTSC (MPEG-2 720x480 23.976fps VBR 4000kbps, Linear PCM 48000Hz 1536kbps)
Singlethreaded Conversion Time: 263s
Multithreaded Conversion Time: 135s

NEW RESULTS

CPU Clock Speed: 2700MHz
CPU Multiplier: 9X
FSB: 300MHz
LDT Multiplier: 3X
HTT Clock: 1800MHz
Memory Ratio: 1:1
Memory Timings: 2.5-4-4-8
PCIe Clock: 100MHz
PCI Clock: 33MHz

VCore: 1.55V BIOS, 1.53V Actual
VDimm: 2.7V BIOS, 2.7V Actual
VLDT: 1.3V BIOS, 1.26V Actual
VNB: 1.6V BIOS, 1.56V Actual

Temperatures:
CPU 34C Idle, 60C Load
PWM IC 30C Idle, 50C Load
Chipset 37C Idle, 48C Load
Screen
 

Pixle

Senior member
Apr 9, 2004
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Thanks for the tests, I plan on making a similiar setup with the 4400 2.2ghz and overclocking that to 2.6ghz +.

Saves yourself $500 on a 4800.

Could you try Aquamark? And maybe..some games like bf2 :)

Thanks,

Pixle.
 

Duvie

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Feb 5, 2001
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Do a quick test of an Xvid avi or Divx avi to mpeg2 using TMPGenc...There is a free 30 day trial version to download...make sur ein environmantal settings are turned to multithreaded...I dont think it will auto-recognize it since it didn't with HT on a P4...
 

jpeyton

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Originally posted by: biostud
Originally posted by: jpeyton

FSB: 260MHz
LDT Multiplier: 3X
HTT Clock: 1560MHz

Wouldn't the HTT be 780Mhz?

It's the same thing basically. Duvie, do you have a sample AVI file you want me to convert? EDIT: NM, I found a movie.
 

Duvie

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Originally posted by: biostud
Originally posted by: jpeyton

FSB: 260MHz
LDT Multiplier: 3X
HTT Clock: 1560MHz

Wouldn't the HTT be 780Mhz?



It is 2 wide so they double it...

800HTT of newcastle and pre winchester chips equalled 1600 effectively and now winchester and above with 5x200HTT for 1000 equals 2000 effectively....
 

SVT Cobra

Lifer
Mar 29, 2005
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great post thx

EDIT: i dont think game results would be needed, as it will not show any differences from a single core

congrats on your uber OC'ing/multitasking goodness
 

jpeyton

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Okay Duvie, added your AVI-To-MPG conversion benchmark, both single and multithreaded.
 

Duvie

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Originally posted by: jpeyton
Okay Duvie, added your AVI-To-MPG conversion benchmark, both single and multithreaded.



And that right there is amazing...nearly cut the time in half meaning it must be making 85-90% usage of the second core.....

If you can try the vbr 2 pass and see if it helps the analysis portion of it as equally as it does just crunching to a constant bitrate...
 

jpeyton

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Originally posted by: Duvie
Originally posted by: jpeyton
Okay Duvie, added your AVI-To-MPG conversion benchmark, both single and multithreaded.



And that right there is amazing...nearly cut the time in half meaning it must be making 85-90% usage of the second core.....

If you can try the vbr 2 pass and see if it helps the analysis portion of it as equally as it does just crunching to a constant bitrate...

Done...
 

Duvie

Elite Member
Feb 5, 2001
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Originally posted by: jpeyton
Originally posted by: Duvie
Originally posted by: jpeyton
Okay Duvie, added your AVI-To-MPG conversion benchmark, both single and multithreaded.



And that right there is amazing...nearly cut the time in half meaning it must be making 85-90% usage of the second core.....

If you can try the vbr 2 pass and see if it helps the analysis portion of it as equally as it does just crunching to a constant bitrate...

Done...



Do you have those reversed??? VBR 2 pass shouldn't be same time as CBR....If it is reversed that is good sign...
 

jpeyton

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Originally posted by: Duvie
Originally posted by: jpeyton
Originally posted by: Duvie
Originally posted by: jpeyton
Okay Duvie, added your AVI-To-MPG conversion benchmark, both single and multithreaded.



And that right there is amazing...nearly cut the time in half meaning it must be making 85-90% usage of the second core.....

If you can try the vbr 2 pass and see if it helps the analysis portion of it as equally as it does just crunching to a constant bitrate...

Done...



Do you have those reversed??? VBR 2 pass shouldn't be same time as CBR....If it is reversed that is good sign...

Yep, reversed, thanks for catching that :)
 

bjc112

Lifer
Dec 23, 2000
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Nice thread J..

Good to see different results around the board..

have you tried H.264 playback?

Some the 1080p clips put a hurting on my Venice @ 2.8ghz.. How does the X2 stack up?

Does it peg both cores @ 100%?


 

Duvie

Elite Member
Feb 5, 2001
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Originally posted by: biostud
how long is the trailer?

Try Futuremark PC Mark 04

I am interested in that as well but I know most clips are kept to just under 2 minutes and current 2.2-2.4ghz plus AMD chips and 3 ghz+ Intel chips can do AVI-MPEG2 CBR encoding at better then realtime....

NOnetheless, TMPGenc is a program that scale perfectly wioth cpu and has little effect with memory bandwidth or timings...straight cpu power...
 

imported_g33k

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Aug 17, 2004
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Originally posted by: jpeyton
L]

So with mid-end air cooling and a safe VCore of 1.52V, we have the equivalent of a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, or two AMD FX-55s in one socket. Not bad.

Wow great results! Not bad? That's awesome! But if you consider the Zalman 7700cu mid-end air cooling, what would a high-end cooler be?

 

jpeyton

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The clip was 143s long.

How can I try H.264 playback (i.e. what do I need to download)?

I'm getting a grammar check error in PCMark04 that's not letting me obtain a full score, but a few people on XS had the same problem with their X2s. I'll try to find a fix.
 

jdogg707

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Jun 24, 2002
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Originally posted by: jpeyton
The clip was 143s long.

How can I try H.264 playback (i.e. what do I need to download)?

I'm getting a grammar check error in PCMark04 that's not letting me obtain a full score, but a few people on XS had the same problem with their X2s. I'll try to find a fix.

You need Quicktime 7 Preview for Windows (quicktime.com) and one of the High Def clips on their website.
 

n7

Elite Member
Jan 4, 2004
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Serenity trailer is a good one to look for.

BTW, very nice results so far :D
 

jpeyton

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Originally posted by: g33k
Originally posted by: jpeyton
L]

So with mid-end air cooling and a safe VCore of 1.52V, we have the equivalent of a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, or two AMD FX-55s in one socket. Not bad.

Wow great results! Not bad? That's awesome! But if you consider the Zalman 7700cu mid-end air cooling, what would a high-end cooler be?

According to AMDZone, high-end air is a ThermalRight XP90C with a 90mm 108CFM Vantec "Bleed From Your Ears" Tornado. I agree, that is high end, but it's also completely unrealistic for anything but benchmarking.

I really need to get into some light water cooling. I've been eyeing the ThermalTake Big Water Kit for a while, and I think I'll jump on the bandwagon.
 

Pabster

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
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Originally posted by: jpeyton
According to AMDZone, high-end air is a ThermalRight XP90C with a 90mm 108CFM Vantec "Bleed From Your Ears" Tornado. I agree, that is high end, but it's also completely unrealistic for anything but benchmarking.

Sheesh, and I thought my old Swiftech MCX462 with the SHE Delta 80mm was a tornado!

I'd seriously have to look in to water cooling before I'd go with that setup.