I need some overclocking help...

[rmh636]

Hi everyone. I just installed my brand spankin' new Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (Yes, I know it's ancient by today's standards), and right now I'm trying to figure out how to squeeze some extra juice out of this thing.

I'll be honest: I'm an overclocking noob. I've tried reading overclocking guides, and I get lost about 2-3 pages into them. Following this short guide I managed to OC it to 2.41 Ghz. If I try going anything over that, my system hangs at startup. I know I have to be doing something wrong, because I've seen people with X2 3800+'s getting 2.6+Ghz.

Here are my specs:

Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (stock 2.2 ghz)
2 GB of RAM
Geforce 7950GT 512 mb
Asus A8N-E mobo


My goal is to get to 2.6 or 2.8 ghz with the least amount of work possible. I'm not trying to push this thing to the max. So my question is this: is there a simple overclocking guide out there specifically for the A8N-E bios? A lot of things are named differently in this bios than others that I've seen in guides. Also, the Memory Clock setting only goes down to 200 mhz, and that guide says I need to be down to 166 mhz for the DDR400 memory I have.

Like I said, I'm not interested in maxing this thing out and I only have stock cooling. I'm just trying to figure out why I've hit a brick wall at a measly 2.42 ghz...

Any help is GREATLY appreciated.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

That board uses the doubled DDR speed for memory settings
DDR400 = 200
DDR333 = 166
DDR266 = 133
DDR200 = 100

You shouldn't need anything lower than DDR333 as long as you stick with the 11x CPU multi. Make sure your HT multi is set at 4x, and bump the vcore up a couple of increments, that should get you a little higher.

Overclock in bios on this board! If you use windows based apps to change the FSB
the PCI bus remains unlocked. If you set the FSB to 201+mhz in bios it locks the PCI bus.

If you set ram at DDR333 and HT multi to 4x, your only variables will be FSB(HTT) and vcore, leave everything else on auto. The 4200+ is a fairly high clocked part so you will probably have to bump the vcore up to get past 2.4ghz, I consider 1.5-1.55 the max vcore on X2's using air cooling as long as temps are OK.

 

[rmh636]

Thanks for the help. I've gotten past the brick wall.