Windows 7 - Finally worked out good overclock!!

I have a ASUS M4N72-E motherboard with a 2.8ghz AMD Athlon II X4 630 64 processor, running windows 7 home premium.

Have read and heard so many things about overclocking AMD's and how much they can tolerate etc,

Not experienced at this to be honest and have had a few unsuccessful play abouts in the bios.

My bios is AMI 2403.

My memory is rated at 800 mhz and the timings were 6-6-18 when installed, I have 3 banks of 2GB installed, should be four but it refuses to accept four!

I wanted to leave as many of the myriad options in my Bios under AI tweaker at auto as possible cause I am a novice to this, but the highest stable setting for my memory clock I could achieve was 206 x 14, any higher and it wouldn't boot.

This is hardly spectacular, turning a 2800mhz into a 2884mhz processor.

But with everything set to auto, that is all I could get.

I then came across a screen in bios saying that my NB clock should be 2000mhz!

This was actually a eureka moment, cause i now realised that alls I had to do were set the DRAM frequency to less than 800mhz to protect them and to get my NB clock to around 2000mhz.

Setting these 2 options to manual did the trick!

DRAM frequency
NB frequency

As well as

CPU Multiplier
FSB clock

Everything else was left on AUTO.

I then started playing around with figures in the FSB in order to achieve the desired less than 800mhz for DRAM and 2000mhz for NB clock.

At the 14x multiplier, the figure that did this best was 228.

I tried several until the figures showing up in DRAM and NB were close to the ideals!!

At 228 x 14 i am effective achieving a 3172mhz processor with temperatures of only 51C which has actually decreased and to boot my RAM timings are now 5-5-15 cause i am not pushing the RAM quite so hard at a frequency level.

The DRAM timings were left on AUTO too!

Here should be some results showing this overclock, its the temperature drop that interests me the most! faster but cooler!

Any way very easy way to add at least 10% to your processor, not pushing any further to leave the CPU to have a longer happier life and to aid system stability, I am happy with the increase and there is a noticeable difference when running CPU heavy games like FSX, the frame rates are about 10% higher!

Hope this helps someone!

Congrats!
I would recommend you stress test it with prime 95 or Intel Burn Tool to make sure it is stable.
Cheers

Have run FSX on it for over an hour which is very CPU critical, i know not an accurate stress test but the system is responding well and has had no ill effects.

Previously when i had left the DRAM and NB frequency alone, the system would not boot, just saying overclocking failed when I got beyond 206 on the FSB.

Have creeped it up a little more but still keeping it under the 800Mhz mark for my RAM.

The processor is now at 3237Mhz, CPU temperatures at 52 - 54 C.

Well under the 60C danger zone i have heard about.

FSB-DRam is still 3:5 or 6:10 i have seen also.

couple more aida 64 shots here.....


FSB is set in BIOS to 330 with the 14x mutiplier, actual FSB is running at 331.7 apparently!

Just came across this piece of tech data from AMD.

Voltage 0.90 - 1.425

Core Temp MAX 71 C, not sure where i had heard 60 C from

http://s128.photobucket.com/albums/p...-16_213842.png Hello, I have been using this rig for about 2-2.5 years now, it was easy to setup, basically just bumped the voltage a bit, same with the memory and came up with some pretty good numbers.

I have had the rig up to approximately 4ghz and better but stability was an issue. Better cooling definitely needed
Some stats:
X3210 @3.6ghz/AC Freezer Pro
P5K Premium/WiFi/4x1Gb GSkill
ATI Sapphire Vapor-X 4890
2x640Gb WD Black Hdd Raid0/WD 74Gb Raptor
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatality Extreme Gamer
Lian Li Pc-7B plusII/PC Power and Cooling 850 SSI Turbo
Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speaker system
Samsung SH-223F DVD Burner

2011-05-16_213842.png picture by python134r - Photobucket

Anyway, this machine has been a pleasure to build[X3], sold the others 2 years ago and has always ran well, I have been busy with some builds for customers and I have to say this machine still gives the newer platform rigs a good run for the money, I am thinking of adding an SSD as the OS drive, Keep the WD X2 640's Black Hdd for data and still use this for a while longer........

Hello, I have been using this rig for about 2-2.5 years now, it was easy to setup, basically just bumped the voltage a bit, same with the memory and came up with some pretty good numbers.

I have had the rig up to approximately 4ghz and better but stability was an issue. Better cooling definitely needed
Some stats:
X3210 @3.6ghz/AC Freezer Pro
P5K Premium/WiFi/4x1Gb GSkill
ATI Sapphire Vapor-X 4890
2x640Gb WD Black Hdd Raid0/WD 74Gb Raptor
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatality Extreme Gamer
Lian Li Pc-7B plusII/PC Power and Cooling 850 SSI Turbo
Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speaker system
Samsung SH-223F DVD Burner

2011-05-16_213842.png picture by python134r - Photobucket

Anyway, this machine has been a pleasure to build[X3], sold the others 2 years ago and has always ran well, I have been busy with some builds for customers and I have to say this machine still gives the newer platform rigs a good run for the money, I am thinking of adding an SSD as the OS drive, Keep the WD X2 640's Black Hdd for data and still use this for a while longer........

Found some great software called AIDA 64, only free for 30 days tho!

Really helps with monitoring the overclock and has a stress test that runs at 100%cpu! constantly!!!

These are the stats after about 30 mins of this full assault on the CPU and Memory.

As you can see the CPU is running at 3237 mhz

Prime95 runs the CPU at 100% and does variable tests to check for stability, and it is always free.

You can also use CPUz (also free) to monitor hardware, and Realtemp (still free) to monitor temperatures. All are good programs, and I recommend Prime95 over whatever that program you found was.

~Lordbob

+1

Great programs.

And Intel Burn Test (IBT) puts an even greater load on the cores so can spot a bad CPU overclock much quicker, though Prime95 is better all-round for catching memory and memory controller problems in addition to CPU.