OC'd my Opteron 146 this weekend

[Compuzen]

I got the last part for my rig this past Friday and got started as soon as I got home from work. This is my first overclock more difficult than useing the sliders on ATI Tool so its all pretty new to me.

All the components are in my sig.

I reached 2.89Ghz (340fsb x 8.5@ 1.6V) on my CPU and 222Mhz on my RAM at stock timings (2-3-2-6 1T). I tried loosening the timings and increasing the voltage to get more out of them, but they would either fail Memtest86+ or the system wouldn't boot. None of the options above 200Mhz would work, so I set it to auto and it used a middle of the road 222.3 . That means its running at 444Mhz effective? Also, CPUz says its running CPU/13. Not sure what that equates to. I got my fsb up to 400Mhz (boards limit) with the CPU multiplier turned down to 6X and RAM limit set to 200Mhz, surely wouldn't pass memtest.

I ran Prime95 for 6 hours lastnight without errors and the CPU never hit 60degC. When I run Sysoftsandra's 2 CPU benchmarks they score over the FX57, and the Memory scores over all the memory they give you to compair to. I was wondering if thats a glitch? I didn't get that good of a OC on my RAM. Should it out perform pc5300 on an intel?

I OC'd my Evga 7800GTX KO to 525/1.35 with Coolbits and scored 8734 on 3DMark05 and 97,613 on AquaMark 3.

Any suggestions or opinions?
Thanks guys,
Dennis

 

[MiranoPoncho]

fx 58 for one ftih the price! W00t!

 

[Triggerhappy007]

I've read somewhere that you shouldn't use a .5 multiplier, use a whole number one. I think it slows down your bandwidth or something. So set the multiplier to 9 or 10 with a lower FSB. Make sure your HTT is around 1000 (2000 effective).

 

[Compuzen]

Thats one other thing. What exactly is HTT. Is that Hypertransport? I don't see a setting for it anywhere in BIOS. I can go to 320fsb x 9 for 2880. Is that going to effect my RAM much? I've read a LOT on OC'ing, but didn't see a HTT setting or multiplier for it in BIOS. Thanks for the help.

 

[thilanliyan]

Do you know which stepping the CPU was? (ie. what it said on the top of the IHS)

 

[Compuzen]

Yea, it was the CABYE 0540. Had to order it off of Ebay.

 

[sodcha0s]

Question.... why are you running such a high HTT with a low multi? You should be able to get 2.9 with 290x10 @ stock volts, or very close with that stepping. Raising the HTT (or fsb in your case) isn't really accomplishing anything. I have the same chip as yours and am running 280x10 at 3.7vcore, it will do 2.9 at 1.42vcore without breaking a sweat.

 

[Triggerhappy007]

Everything you wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.

 

[Furen]

the half multipliers dont affect your performance negatively or anything like that. The only "problem" with them is the fact that there are no half-dividers for memory. So if you, for example, run your CPU on an 8.5 multiplier, your memory will run on a 9 divider (if you are running at DDR400 in the bios).

HTT is the hypertransport base clock. It is the "equivalent" of the FSB clock on chips with external memory controllers (the "FSB" is integrated into CPU, as are the system request interface and the memory controller) in that most other clocks are derived from it, but nothing works at this clock. The Hypertransport clock is not this base clock, but the base clock multiplied by the HT multiplier (On Intel CPUs the FSB "base" clock IS the FSB clock, the FSB just transfer data 4 times per clock, which makes a quad-pumped 200MHz FSB into an "800M tranfer" FSB).

 

[Compuzen]

Originally posted by: sodcha0s
Question.... why are you running such a high HTT with a low multi? You should be able to get 2.9 with 290x10 @ stock volts, or very close with that stepping. Raising the HTT (or fsb in your case) isn't really accomplishing anything. I have the same chip as yours and am running 280x10 at 3.7vcore, it will do 2.9 at 1.42vcore without breaking a sweat.

I thought that a higher fsb was desired if possable. I'll try lowering it and seeing how it effects my RAM's speed. I'm still trying to figure out the whole RAM divider thing and how it works. When I first started reading up on it I thought I had to set it manually, but couldn't find it,lol

Thanks guys, I'll let you know how it goes. I'm gonna put up some images when I'm finished.

 

[Furen]

You cannot set the ram divider directly. You can set the ram divider to CPU multiplier ratio (though it's cloaked as the DRAM speed), however, and the bios will try to get as close to it as possible. The divider basically takes your CPU clock speed (2.89GHz, in your case) and divides it by a whole number in order to get the speed at which to run the ram, this is why it doesn't matter which ratio you use, if you divide 3GHz by 15 or 2GHz by 10 you still get the same DRAM clock and the ram will perform the same, barring any memory controller limitations. The reason why external memory controllers hate running divider is because theres no way to perfectly synchronize the RAM and the northbridge besides using the 1:1 ratio.

 

[sodcha0s]

I thought that a higher fsb was desired if possable.

That used to be the case, but with A64 CPU speed is king. Also, since they have onboard mem controller higher memory speed isn't critical either, using mem dividers along with lower latency almost always results in better performance.