Massive Overclock

[Team42]

I've just finished a complete tune-up and rebuild of my e4300 system which I built at the end of the summer. I've got it to 3.0 GHz stable and cool and I'm happy. That's a 67% overclock on air.

So now I've turned my attention to my secondary rig, based on an AMD Athlon (Barton) XP 3200 on an ASUS A7N8X2.0 Deluxe mobo with 1 Gb of Corsair RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, a ThermalTake cooler in a ThermalTake Xaser III Skull case (yeah, yeah, yeah... I bought it second-hand 2 years ago for a snip...).

Anyhoo, after stripping the PC down, cleaning the fans, lapping the heatsink, rewiring everything and "cleaning" the OS, I looked for an overclock solution.

Google is a wonderful thing.

I found this: my ultimate goal.

From: Hothardware.com

The Athlon XP 3000+ we reviewed back in February was a fairly good overclocker. At its default voltage, with stock cooling, we were able to increase the 3000+'s clock speed by 13%. Well, it seems that with each new batch of processors, AMD further refines their .13 micron, copper manufacturing process. We were able to take the Athlon XP 3200+ all the way up to 2520MHz! A full 320MHz, or 14.5% higher than its default speed! Getting to this speed was a bit trickier than just raising the FSB, however. It's already a stretch finding RAM that's going to run reliably in Dual-Channel mode with aggressive timings at 200MHz. Sure, you can relax the memory timings and take the FSB higher, but the best performance comes by running your memory with aggressive timings. Luckily, the multiplier of an Athlon can be easily adjusted with a quality motherboard. We found the "sweet spot" for our CPU and memory was with an FSB of 210MHz and a multiplier of 12. We suspect using more advanced cooling techniques would have allowed us to take this CPU even higher

Jealous? Go on, admit it. You are. All the way up to 2520MHz! A full 320MHz or 14.5% higher than it's default speed!

I shouldn't jest, though. That review was written in May 2003. A full 44 months ago!

!!!

Oh my, how times change.

I've decided against overclocking the AMD rig. I use it as a back up when my main rig is down but my 8 year old daughter is the main user, primarily for surfing the High School Musical 2 website. I doubt she'll benefit from that extra full 320MHz...

I might put some new fans on it though. The current (Thermaltake) 80mm fans are a bit noisy.

 

[brencat]

Fun times. My last rig was an XP-M 2400+ on an A7N8X Deluxe v1.04 (the 166 FSB/333 DDR version). The CPU's stock speed was 1.8ghz (13.5 x 133) which I ran @ 2.23ghz (12 x 186) 24/7 for over 2 yrs. Had the chip as high as 2.4ghz during testing (12.5 x 192) but the 1st-gen A7N8X Dlx that I had wasn't stable past 188 FSB without a vdd volt-mod which I couldn't be bothered doing. Cooled it with a TT Volcano 12 which sounded like a vacuum cleaner at full power!

The best of the mobile Athlons though was the XP-M 2600+. Many an overclocker with those + the venerable Abit NF7-S ran them @ 2.5ghz and up (11 x 230+ FSB). The A7N8X Dlx version 2.0 you refer to was also good for 220ish+ FSB speeds.

 

[formulav8]

I remember getting a AXIA 1Ghz Athlon Thunderbird that I simple unlocked and clocked straight to 1.5ghz

Even earlier I remember having a 600mhz Duron and unlocking and clocking to 900mhz. I've had even earlier ocing times but not quite as rosey

The good old days


Jason

 

[Arcanedeath]

Don't get me started on the good ole days =P I still remember my Cellery 333A @ 550 for the longest time that was my best overclock, I replaced it w/ a P3 550E @ 733 which my cousin still has in service.

 

[Amaroque]

Wow! haven't heard AXIA for years!

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Team42
I've just finished a complete tune-up and rebuild of my e4300 system which I built at the end of the summer. I've got it to 3.0 GHz stable and cool and I'm happy. That's a 67% overclock on air.

So now I've turned my attention to my secondary rig, based on an AMD Athlon (Barton) XP 3200 on an ASUS A7N8X2.0 Deluxe mobo with 1 Gb of Corsair RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, a ThermalTake cooler in a ThermalTake Xaser III Skull case (yeah, yeah, yeah... I bought it second-hand 2 years ago for a snip...).

Anyhoo, after stripping the PC down, cleaning the fans, lapping the heatsink, rewiring everything and "cleaning" the OS, I looked for an overclock solution.

Google is a wonderful thing.

I found this: my ultimate goal.

From: Hothardware.com

The Athlon XP 3000+ we reviewed back in February was a fairly good overclocker. At its default voltage, with stock cooling, we were able to increase the 3000+'s clock speed by 13%. Well, it seems that with each new batch of processors, AMD further refines their .13 micron, copper manufacturing process. We were able to take the Athlon XP 3200+ all the way up to 2520MHz! A full 320MHz, or 14.5% higher than its default speed! Getting to this speed was a bit trickier than just raising the FSB, however. It's already a stretch finding RAM that's going to run reliably in Dual-Channel mode with aggressive timings at 200MHz. Sure, you can relax the memory timings and take the FSB higher, but the best performance comes by running your memory with aggressive timings. Luckily, the multiplier of an Athlon can be easily adjusted with a quality motherboard. We found the "sweet spot" for our CPU and memory was with an FSB of 210MHz and a multiplier of 12. We suspect using more advanced cooling techniques would have allowed us to take this CPU even higher

Jealous? Go on, admit it. You are. All the way up to 2520MHz! A full 320MHz or 14.5% higher than it's default speed!

I shouldn't jest, though. That review was written in May 2003. A full 44 months ago!

!!!

Oh my, how times change.

I've decided against overclocking the AMD rig. I use it as a back up when my main rig is down but my 8 year old daughter is the main user, primarily for surfing the High School Musical 2 website. I doubt she'll benefit from that extra full 320MHz...

I might put some new fans on it though. The current (Thermaltake) 80mm fans are a bit noisy.

Parody....


Even S939 AMD X2 days. 2.6ghz was average... 2.8 was excellent, 3.0ghz was wow... 3.2ghz was omgwtfbbq.

Now its like when you buy a intel chip people automatically assume 100% overclocking.

Actuality the spread is somewhere between 30-100 100+ being sub ambient territory. :T

 

[taltamir]

so you managed to OC it to the E8400 stock speed, but it is still slower due to being an older architecture and having less cache? How is anyone to eath their hearts out when most E8400 users OC to 4Ghz...

Anyways, this IS a very impressive OC, congrats.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: taltamir
so you managed to OC it to the E8400 stock speed, but it is still slower due to being an older architecture and having less cache? How is anyone to eath their hearts out when most E8400 users OC to 4Ghz...

Anyways, this IS a very impressive OC, congrats.

Ive seen quite a few on XS that didnt make 4ghz.

And my spread is very wide.