Overclocking my A64 3000+

[Jhatfie]

Actually the A64 3000+ is looking to be a great overclocker. It just takes a little work. I am not familiar with the VIA vased motherboards so I will not comment on them, but my nForce3 based Shuttle AN50R has been more than willing. On stock cooling I have been able to run 2470mhz (274.5x9) @ 1.65v on stock cooling. Granted I am not using up any of my PCI slots and only using the onboard sound, raid controller, etc. My GC is a Geforce2 MX as my 9500 PRO refuses to work with the AN50R even at default speeds. I have a 9800 PRO due in today or tomorrow, so I'll how throw that in and see how it goes. For me, the trick was to drop the LDT to 2.5x, raise the LDT voltage to 1.5v, vdimm 2.9v, vcore 1.65 and run the 5:6 memory divider (166). I used clockgen to achieve the high FSB and lower the multiplier.

However, keep in mind that it gets a little toasty at that speed with stock cooling, so will not keep it there or try for higher until I get my watercooling going.

sickcamry, my 9800 PRO on order is a sapphire and I am also running the 512MB Mushkin PC3500 level 1 (only one stick though). It is good for me up to 238 @ 2-3-6-3 timings @2.9v. When I run cas 2.5 my system will not boot either. Apparently is is cas 2 or nothing. You might want to test each stick individually and see if you might have a bad one. There is a rumor around that the nforce3 motherboards do not like some ATI cards. Hopefully this is not the case, but I can confirm that it does not like my 9500 PRO.

 

[sickcamry]

I'm back up to 2.2GHz now. Comp locked up at 2.5GHz so I'm gonna play it safe and just keep it right at 2.2. I suspected my video card was getting to hot when overclocked because it would allow me to play 20+ minutes before locking up. I went out and bought one of the really large Zalman video card coolers with the optional 80mm fan. I used Arctic Silver 5 to apply it. It still isn't stable at 9800XT settings, but it overclocks much better now. So I think I now have all my problems worked out.

 

[DarkMadMax]

Just one friendly advice -dont change voltage on memory ,you can easily frr your cpu as many guys at overclocvkers did.

 

[Jhatfie]

Just one friendly advice -dont change voltage on memory ,you can easily frr your cpu as many guys at overclocvkers did.

Yeah, but almost all of the guys that fried their CPU's over at overclockers were running extremely high vdimm of 3.2v or higher with a volt mod to the motherboard.

 

[Dustswirl]

Out of the Asus's User's Manual (K8V Deluxe User Guide, Revised Edition V2, Chapter 2: Hardware information, page 2-18; 2003)

"If installing the ATi 9500 or 9700Pro Series VGA cards, use only the card version PN xxx-xxxxx-30 or later, for optimum performance and overclocking stability"

could there be somekind of a similar limitation for nf3 boards too?

 

[Markfw]

Well, my sig says it all. I don't know whats normal, but even in 3d games, I run 32c temp(28c case). The only way to get higher is to run seti, which puts the cpu at 100% and then I can get to 42c after an hour or so.

 

[StumbleBum1]

You might want to try this Athlon 64 overclocking Guide It explains a lot

 

[McArra]

Originally posted by: StumbleBum1
You might want to try this Athlon 64 overclocking Guide It explains a lot

Nice link

 

[sickcamry]

Merci beaucoup for the links. I am now at 2.2GHz stable, and happy.