Athlon 64 0.5x Multiplier

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I come from the days of the Thunderbird 1400. I still run a 1400 mhz so I know it uses 10.5x multiplier. For me, the 0.5x multiplier is a necessity for my current CPU because thats how I overclock and what not. I havent been following hardware that closely. Even though I try to keep up to date, there are somethings that I will never know simply because I don't have something that is new.

However, I read that Athlon 64s don't allow 0.5x multipliers. Yet I see that the DFI board offers 0.5x multipliers as with many other mobos. How does this work? I havent seen people running on any half multipliers and have only seen whole integers.

Plz update the newb =P

 

[SVT Cobra]

you adjust the front side bus instead to get small increments.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Some mobos allow adjustments of .5x, most don't though.

 

[IntegraGSR]

Originally posted by: Kensai
Some mobos allow adjustments of .5x, most don't though.

even for motherboards that support half steps, its not recommended to use them.. not sure why though 😕

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Well does anyone use half steps??? If so anything wrong with it?

 

[dodgybob]

Wasn't there some controvesy with the msi neo boards about their 0.5 multipliers?

I'm a bit hazy but one tech website did some close benching of one and found that it was incapable of .5x increments and it was actually increasing the fsb to give an approximation of the .5x value. The guy apparantly found this out when he was running a bunch of memory bandwidth benchmarks. I think the article said that it wasn't meant to be possible to do .5x mulitipliers at all with the a64.

Mind you take what I'm saying here with a bit of scepticsm. It's a while since I saw the article and can't remember what site I saw it on. Also knowing me I probably got the end of the stick.

 

[ribbon13]

http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=633

 

[dodgybob]

Oops! So the guy was wrong. Thanks ribbon 🙂

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

That's just one board. Then I see at Futuremark, they have a chart with all the half multiplier speeds. Seems that RAM gets jacked up??

Come on... all you A64 OCers respond here. I know there are thousands of you. Do you all like just ignore the fact that half multipliers are offered or what? Have you ever tried them?? I need a solid answer

 

[imported_rod]

I don't think I've got half multipliers on my board, and even if i did, I wouldn't use them.

You can't increase your multiplier, and why would you drop your multiplier?

RoD

 

[ribbon13]

I've always had worse performance with .5s
10 > 10.5

stick to whole numbers. Why would this even be an issue? Isn't the FX series the only unlocked mult chip?

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
Isn't the FX series the only unlocked mult chip?

That's what I thought. All the A64 are multiplier locked excep the FX series. The only way to O/C normal A64 is FSB increase and memory divider.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: biostud

Originally posted by: ribbon13
Isn't the FX series the only unlocked mult chip?

That's what I thought. All the A64 are multiplier locked excep the FX series. The only way to O/C normal A64 is FSB increase and memory divider.

I thought A64's were downwardly unlocked. Theres so much information flying around with so many different revisions of A64's that its getting hard to track everything.

 

[theMan]

yes, a64's are locked upwards, and unlocked downwards. except, the fx chips are completely unlocked. some people may want to lower their muktiplyers to get a really high fsb for their memory, and keep the cpu speed below the chip's maximum limit. so instead of 2700 (270x10) with memory at 270, they may want 2700 (300x9) with their memory at 300. just an example.