Overclocking AMD Opteron 144 processor

[sickcamry]

I'm seriously considering getting one of these processors with an Nforce3 Pro motherboard. It will be watercooled with the high-end kit from Danger Den. Anyone have any idea how high I can safely go with the overclocking? I will play around with it once it's installed, but I just want a good idea of how high the clock speed could go and still be stable. It seems from Anandtech's review of the Opteron 144 that they hit 2.0 gHz without any problems cooled with air. http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1856

 

[myocardia]

You won't get all that much higher with water-cooling, than you will with good air-cooling. Of course, you can end up getting much lower temps, at the same speed... But then again, maybe not. My XP2400 runs 40°C/104F, under load, when the room is around 70°F, and that's overclocked to 2.1Ghz @1.775V, and I don't even have a Thermalright heatsink, just a Thermaltake X-Dream, that I picked up at Fry's for $9.99! It goes up as high as43/44°C, when I've got it clocked @2.3 Ghz. I'd be willing to bet that you could probably hit around 2.2Ghz, but nothing's guaranteed with OCing, man. You're only guaranteed the speed that AMD sold it to you as it's "rated" speed.

 

[Jeff7181]

The Athlon-64's and Opterons don't seem to be very overclocker friendly yet. If you want to buy one with the intent to overclock, I'd wait until more proven parts come out.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
The Athlon-64's and Opterons don't seem to be very overclocker friendly yet. If you want to buy one with the intent to overclock, I'd wait until more proven parts come out.

Yeah, but the whole point of buying an Opteron is, even though you can overclock them, you don't have to. A 2.0Ghz Opteron (the 146 chip) blows away a 3.2Ghz P4 by an average of 50% (P4=100% & Opteron 144=150%). The only instance where the Opteron didn't destroy the 3.2P4 was video encoding! That's good enough for me, although I'd still probably try to OC it a bit, knowing me...