Overclock help.

Heyas, Im trying get abit more life out of my computer before I finally go ahead with an upgrade. Iv been thinking of overclocking for the last month and have been looking around for guides, but its starting to confuse me. Wondering if anyone here would be able to give me a hand. I can give you what ever details needed.

Iv currently got a AMD Athlon 64 3200+, Venice core running at 2010MHz and my motherboards an Asus A8N-sli Premium. Im not sure what else you need to know, and also is it possible to OC video cards? or even RAM, and do I require better cooling. I live in a pretty cold area so Iv never had heating issues before that I know of.

without a multiplier you can only clock so much using the fsb. Since your MB is asus it should have good clocking options but with such a dated processor you probably will only be able to get maybe a 5-10% OC without using an aftermarket cooler. Also in order to give you advice on overclocking that CPU the temp for the idle cpu would help in determining how much to push also the load temp as of now would also help.

ok, the computers been running for about 7-8 hours now and the temps are:

Motherboard 32 °C (90 °F)
CPU 36 °C (97 °F)
GPU 62 °C (144 °F)
GPU Ambient 51 °C (124 °F)

all Im really interested in is what to do in the bios, without frying anything. First time overclocking so its all new to me. :P

The more important temperature when overclocking is with a loaded processor. Idle temps will almost always be fine when OC'ing, but when ypu load an OC'd processor temps rise sharply and if your cooler's not up to the task you can quickly surpass the thermal limits of the processor and, hopefully, self-protection will shut it down before major damage is done. Download Prime 95 to artifically load the processor. This will allow you to monitor temps with a full load to determine if cooling is adequate and also determine if the OC is stable. If an OC will run prime for 20-30 minutes (many will say more time is needed), and maintain a comfortable margin below thermal limit, then it should be safe for gaming, benchmarking, etc.

ok according to your cpu mhz and assuming your fsb is 200 you have a multiplier of 10 on that cpu. So you should try to up the fsb to 210 and then save settings and run prime95 for stability. This will raise your clock to 2100(210*10). In the motherboard it may be called cpu clock frequency. However, without alternate cooling your stock fan will probably only reach about 10% to reach 2200 (220*10). I doubt any higher and windows will not even start. If 210 is stable keep increasing the cpu past 210 by small increments also since you are upping fsb your ram may also become a factor in how far you can overclock as the fsb pushes your ram as well. So increment slowly to see what fsb will be stable for you but 210 should be stable to start off with.

Heyas, Im trying get abit more life out of my computer before I finally go ahead with an upgrade. Iv been thinking of overclocking for the last month and have been looking around for guides, but its starting to confuse me. Wondering if anyone here would be able to give me a hand. I can give you what ever details needed.

Iv currently got a AMD Athlon 64 3200+, Venice core running at 2010MHz and my motherboards an Asus A8N-sli Premium. Im not sure what else you need to know, and also is it possible to OC video cards? or even RAM, and do I require better cooling. I live in a pretty cold area so Iv never had heating issues before that I know of.

Kamuikankatsu

That's a socket 939 system. I used to have that same Motherboard, and it was a decent overclocker. I had my 3500+ Venice running at 2.5-2.6ghz without messing with the voltages in the BIOS. If you want to get more life out of that rig, I recommend you look around online for a socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 (dual-core). The 4400+ up to the FX-60 "toledo core" models are the best ones. I took out my single-core Venice and replaced with with a 4400+, and Overclocked it close to 2.7ghz stable on air with a minor voltage tweak. Assuming you have a decent video card and at least 2gb of RAM, that system could still run some pretty intensive games.

First thing you'll need to be familiar with is how to reset the CMOS. By either a jumper, or by removing the button battery with the PC unplugged from the outlet. This will reset everything in bios to default values, which should allow it to post. If you set things to far out of bounds... your PC won't post; and unless you reset the CMOS... it'll never post, again. So, know how to reset that CMOS. You'll learn to hate doing this, becuase it messes up the time and date of your PC, too....

You'll have to do two things to get the the bus higher than 210mhz. (default is 200mhz)

First thing you'll have to do is reduce the HTlink mulitplier. The default is 5x... you'll need to reduce it to 3X or 4x. Then next thing that needs to be reduced is the Memory ratio or Memory Mhz. Don't know anything about ratio's myself, becuase my motherboard uses Mhz. default is 200mhz, but reducing it to 166mhz gave me enough to overclock to about 270mhz on the bus.... 133 got me higher number, but my system started to become unstable in windows at 133 memory speeds and a HTlink of 3X. Was able to get it to boot into windows at a 300mhz bus, but couldn't run anything in windows... would end up blue screening.

Htlink multiplier is kinda hidden in the bios... Its usually in the bios menu that is related to your video card, not in the menu dealing with OC'ing or memory timings. Should have a menu selections of 1x-5x and auto. Most likely, it's set to auto... which will be 5x (and I've found keeping in Auto doesn't work, found that the PC won't post if you don't set it manually yourself to 4x or 3x). In CPU-z... you really want to keep that HT link as close to 1000mhz as you can... I'm guessing that the default on your machine is also 1000mhz. To make sure that it *is* the default, Download CPU-z, and check what it is right now, without any OC'ing.... whatever it is, you want to try to keep it at that number. Pretty sure it's going to say 1000mhz. http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

Currently my 939 3000+ with a default GHz rating of 1.8 and a locked multiplier of 9x, is running at 2.4mhz... HTlink is set to 4X (I think... probably a bit high on Cpu-z; like 1100 or something), Bus speed is set to around 270mhz can't remember what the memory is set to, maybe 166mhz? I'd give you better details, but I'm not on that PC, right now; so can't copy CPU-z's numbers.

I'll modify this post later when I get home.... maybe.

But in your case... you should ease up on the bus speed. The higher you go the more difficult it becomes, really.... At the extreme edge, you'll have to retard memory timings. Like increase the cas values and such... And also you'll have to start playing with the CPU voltage, and Memoryvoltage.. I don't really recommend going that far... maybe 215mhz bus should be your goal, for now... and then ease up 1mhz at a time from there. Just watch your CPU temps as you go up...