Hey everyone, I overclocked my Athlon 64 3500+ Clawhammer by
400 MHz (default was 2.2 Ghz, now its at 2.6~) Its been stable and I increased the vcore to 1.6 to make it stable.

The memory vdimm is at default but the frequency has been lowered by me from 400mhz to 333mhz.

Now I think that a processor from 2.2 to 2.6 would be giving me better fps in games by a little bit atleast, but I still get the same fps in HL2.

So why aren't I seeing results?

Hard to say, post the rest of you computer specs.

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (Default 2.2 @ 2.6~)
2x 1024MB PC3200 OCZ in Dual Channel
Chaintech VNF4 Ultra nForce4 Ultra MoBo
ATi Sapphire Radeon X1600XT PCI-E
Creative X-fi Xtreme Music
1x 80GB ATA100 Harddrive
1x CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
Air cooled at 40 Degrees C Idle, stable

Hope this helps.

So does windows see it as 2.6ghz???

Yes, when I right click on My Computer it says 2.64 GHz and when I ran CPU-Z
It says 2640 MHz.

click start then click all programs then accessoires then system tools then system inforamtion ( i know there is so file you can just type in run)


and see if it's reporting your cpu speed.

You should see a huge graphical change. I wonder why not?

many newer CPUs are locked, meaning even if you change the overclock settings in BIOS, nothing will happen. This is because the manufactuers wise up and want you to buy a faster chip and thus spend more money. This happened with the Athlon XP series. My first XP 3200+ was very overclockable, my second was locked tighter than a drum.

So are you saying we won't be able to overclock in the near feature????????????????????????????????????????

Yeah it is, under processor it says my processor name and then 2640~MHz.

Edit: lol damn you guys are fast, didn't see Tedster's post. I think it should be overclockable since I know plenty of people who overclock their Athlons.

Can anyone else help me out here?

many newer CPUs are locked, meaning even if you change the overclock settings in BIOS, nothing will happen. This is because the manufactuers wise up and want you to buy a faster chip and thus spend more money. This happened with the Athlon XP series. My first XP 3200+ was very overclockable, my second was locked tighter than a drum.



So are you saying ALL CPUS made by amd won't be able to overclock in the near feature????????????????????????????????????????

My guess is, your oc'd cpu is being balanced out by your underclocked ram so you aren't getting the frame rate jump you were hoping for.

But also don't forget, the GPU is (arguably) the main part that determines frame rates. Especially when your CPU is not so bad to begin with. If you want to play around, you could OC your GPU a bit. You'd probably get a nice little performance jump there.

Ha, thanks for the suggestion Don, the only problem is I'd probably fry it. :haha:
I have no way of telling (other than putting a temp probe on it, but I don't have one with me.) the temperature of my x1600xt. I already believe that it gets too hot, because during Quake 4 I get quite a few artifacts after playing for a while.

I am going to buy an ATi silencer or maybe a Zalman GPU heatsink for it though, so maybe then I'll overclock it.

Edit: also, is there any way I can put my ram speed back to normal? (turn up its voltage, looser timings, etc.)

So are you saying we won't be able to overclock in the near feature????????????????????????????????????????
quite possibly now.

not necessarily. Usually overclockable chips appear early in production. When the manufactuer catches on that the batch is good enough for stable overclocking, they tend to lock the newer productions. Overclockable chips happen when a particularly good batch of chips occur early in production runs.

You need to up the Mhz on your RAM to the same speed as the FSB that the CPU is running at or you really wont notice anything. Your probably getting less FPS since your RAM is running at 333Mhz rather than 400 like its rated for.

I just ordered an Opteron 146 and I plan on overclocking the piss out of it like everybody says they can. Stock its 2Ghz but many people have hit nearly 3Ghz with them.

I actually underclocked my RAM, but even then I still get a huge performance increase....

I went from 200mhz RAM to 197 (underclocked, then overclocked), but I saw some 500 3DMARK20005 points (compared to 5000)...
I suppose it depends on which part of your computer is the bottleneck. Mine's definately the CPU, given that I'm using a Northwood....

You need to up the Mhz on your RAM to the same speed as the FSB that the CPU is running at or you really wont notice anythingThere is no FSB on an Athlon64 system, it uses a HTT bus.

There is a divider value to set RAM speed. i.e. socket939 Athlon64 has a 1000MHz HTT bus with a divider of 5 to match the 200MHz PC3200

Usually overclockable chips appear early in production. When the manufactuer catches on that the batch is good enough for stable overclocking, they tend to lock the newer productions. Overclockable chips happen when a particularly good batch of chips occur early in production runs.the only thing they lock are the upper multipliers. They can't lock the FSB/HTT. The early AthlonXPs were released with totally unlocked multi's (or were easily modded to unlock them).

They locked the multis because shady PC sellers were overclocking them and replacing the labels to sell them as faster CPUs, not because overclockers pissed them off. AMD has a huge overclocker following, and they know it. Since Intel has the major OEM contracts, AMD wouldn't dare release entirely un-overclockable CPUs.

also, they leave the lower multis unlocked because AMD cool'n'quiet relies on it to downspeed the CPU when it's not under load.

So what exactly am I supposed to do? When I put the ram frequency back to normal, it made 2 very long beeps, and then booted up, and set ALL my bios settings back to default, and it wouldn't boot any further.

So again, do I give it looser timings, or what?

Isnt the HTT bus a multiple of the RAM, not a divider (200Mhz x 5=1Ghz HTT Bus) and the CPU speed is also a multi of the RAM speed (200 x 10 (cpu multi) = 2Ghz). Take my new CPU for example, if I overclock the RAM to 250Mhz I get 250Mhz x 5 = 1250Mhz HTT Bus 250Mhz x 10(opteron 146 multi) = 2.5Ghz. If mossimoboy overclocked his CPU to 2640Mhz his RAM should be running at 240Mhz to be properly sync'd up with the bus since his CPU multi is locked at 11. Correct me if i'm wrong.

Thats a good point actually.

My HTT is 240MHz but the ram (according to CPU-Z) is 188MHz.
But yes, I think the HTT is a multiple of something (not a divider) because when I check the HTT multiplier, all the settings are times (x) a number.

240 HTT x 11(cpu multiplyer) = 2640
236 x 11 = 2600
Setting ram at 333mhz(or sometimes 166) is a 5:4 divider (cpu:ram) A64 can't divide correctly (http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=170999).
CPU : RAM
240 : 192 but is 188
236 : 189 but is 185 - the "real" divder even changes with the cpu multiplyer.

The slightly slower RAM may be a problem, but you have another bottle neck(video card.)

Try 260x10 5:4 if your memory can hang at 217mhz. Alot of PC3200 can.
Try that little program attached here (http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=149717) to see real A64 math. :haha:

no, HTT is not a multiple of the RAM. you are confusing different settings

the HTT multiplier sets the HTT bus speed. the RAM divider sets the RAM speed

mirob explained it well in the above post

Now I think that a processor from 2.2 to 2.6 would be giving me better fps in games by a little bit atleast, but I still get the same fps in HL2.

So why aren't I seeing results?
Is Vsync enabled in graphics card settings? It could also be that the graphics settings are too high for your graphics card, so that it becomes the bottleneck, not the CPU.

Yes, I did have v-sync enabled, but when I turned it off I got only 1-3 more fps.

The program didnt do anything, it just turned my DRAM frequency into a decimal.

But also don't forget, the GPU is (arguably) the maon part that determines frames


What I had ment is it increases the bandwith on the graphic card.

By OCing your CPU.

On the PCI-E Bus

I just set it back to normal. There was basically no performace increase, and all I had was a hot piece of metal in my computer. Besides, the vnf4 ultra isn't a good board for overclocking.

Please refer to my thread here:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?t=43427

It should answer many of your questions.