Athlon 64 Uberclocking

[Tyberius]

Hey guys, I'm not a newb to overclocking, but am a newb to these forums. I was quite successful in my Barton/Nforce2 overclocking, but am still trying to figure out a few things about these A64 systems, few questions. I have a A64 3200+, a Gigabyte K8n-pro, and 2x 512 of mushkin lvl 2 black, this is liquid cooled(cpu and NB) and my chip idles about 16C (cold room!)

1. Is Clockgen the only way to change the multi on this board? is there perhaps a hacked bios out there? I already know about ctrl-F1 to open up advanced chipset, but theres still no multi adjust. I heard of peeps using the s940 bios for the k8nnxp version to get the multi unlock, perhaps it would work for this board as they are almost the same, but how do you fool the flash utility, wont it checksum error because its the wrong bios?

2. I've heard of many A64 deaths relating to high voltages, im not too afraid as the place where i buy my chips is OC friendly with RMAs anyway, but pretty much i need Vcore and Vmem right? Should I worry about the chipset voltage or anything else? im not lookin to top 3dmark, i just wanna get up around 2.5-2.6ghz.

3. Is thereany trick with these new chips or some secret that I'm missin to get them to clock well, i see so many people with great results, but it hasnt been that way for me so far, im doin my vmods today,and have been tinkering with clockgen without huge success, why doesnt the 9.5 multi seem to work right? cpuzid says it does, everything else doesnt read the FSB right thoguh...

Great Forums guys! Glad to finally join up!

[Charles Wirth]

Welcome to XtremeSystems!

Hang tight and a few of the A64 guru's will able to help you shortly.

Might wand to search the AMD section for your mobo and read up in the mean time.

[cowpuppy]

Read this and see if it helps OC out http://www.dugu9tweaks.net/guides/a64oc/index.html
I ran up to a 295x9 last night after reading it.

Mem voltage seems to be the killer and most of there deaths are comming from the AN50R boards. I dont think you will have much problems with the K8n-pro. I thought I killed my chip several times and am just wondering when that day will come.

Clock-gen is the ticket.

[J0k3r3]

No you can change the multi via bios download and flash the GIGABYTE K8NNXP-940 bios to your motherboard. it will work without a hitch. next your able to change your multi (down) but not up.

[Tyberius]

it wont let me flash with that bios, i think it said there was a checksum error

[Tyberius]

also, where do you read vcore on the k8n-pro? Ive seen a few pictures posted, but none seem to give me the correct voltage...anyone know where the point is for sure?

[J0k3r3]

well in bios it says cpu vcotre .. something like that in the voltage section and if the vcore says "normal" that means its at stock....use the utility supplied w. your mb i think its called easy tune4 or use mother board monitor or cpu-z (not 100% percise)

[saaya]

vcore doesnt kill a64s, its the vdimm. dont use vdimm above 3.4v and if you mod your vdimm never use the bios settings to change the vdimm, thats what killed so many a64s, because when you reset and it loads the new vdimm the vdimm can rise to a very high level. only for a fraction of a second but enough to ill the onboard memory controller...

[Tyberius]

im not looking for a utility to read my vcore, im looking for a contact point on my motherboard to read the vcore with my multimeter, i saw a picture pointing to a lead on one of the mosfets, but that only gives me a .75v reading...so I wanna know what one is the correct reading point

[Tyberius]

Found my test points,and both my vcore and my vdimm mods are done, vcore works fine, but if I try to take my vdimm past 3.05v my computer shuts down. Is this because of my 3.3v rail? If so should i do a power supply mod to raise my 3.3v rail? Or is there another way around this?

[boyin]

Originally posted by Tyberius
but if I try to take my vdimm past 3.05v my computer shuts down. Is this because of my 3.3v rail? If so should i do a power supply mod to raise my 3.3v rail? Or is there another way around this?

this is exactly what's happening to me as well

i will go pick up the VR for psu mod tomorrow

[Tyberius]

okay, this is just wierd, im trying to play with my htt freq and find my max clock speed for my proc, so i'm using a divider on the ram to eliminate that as a limiting factor, but im still having issues getting my speed up. So i dropped down my multiplier to 7, and tried bringing my htt up to 240, and still no luck, just get hard locks. Any ideas? is there a way to up any other voltages through mods? or could this be because i cant get my vdimm voltage up that high until i mod my powersupply? The memory controller voltage is the same as the ddr on these chips right? so perhaps because i can only get 3.05v ddr, this could also be limiting my htt freq.... any input guys?

[boyin]

i was just playing with drop down the multi and using 5/4 for ram and i was able to do 8.5 x 280

your problem might just be upping the htt too fast
did you try upping it maybe 5 or less at a time??

i also just flashed to the 940 bios but i couldnt find any setting for multi in the bios and but easytune did allow me to lower, but i wasnt allow to lower multi

[unrealneo]

I believe there's OVP @ 3.05 vdimm on the K8N ;)

that's what Paddy is saying anyway.

must need a vsense mod

:toast:

[Tyberius]

vsense mod? i think i saw a guide for that on my PSU even, but pics werent too clear, anywhere else that is a bit clearer?

[JNav89GT]

you need to lower your HT or LDT(not sure what gigabyte calls it) to 2x or 2.5x.

[unrealneo]

Originally posted by JNav89GT
you need to lower your HT or LDT(not sure what gigabyte calls it) to 2x or 2.5x.

ah yes, do that. :)

[Tyberius]

done that already, is there any performance hit btw?

[unrealneo]

Originally posted by Tyberius
done that already, is there any performance hit btw?

test it yourself:rolleyes:

but yes, there will be a performance hit, it wont be as fast clock for clock, but you'll be able to up the CPU more by doing it, so overall, it's a winning situation. :)

[Nomjr]

I was stuck at the 3.05 on my mem mod also. That was with my 3.3 rail at 3.45. I took that to 3.6 and now I can go to 3.25 on the mem, any higher, ovp kicks in and shuts it off. I read about raising the 3.3 rail up above 3.6 to get 3.2 on mem, tried it and it worked. I'm using the newest bios, f11 I think it is and I can do 250x10 3d stable, prime, etc etc with 1.75 on the core and running 1:1 and ldt @ 2. If I run ldt @ 3, I can't go above 230fsb.

One thing I do notice is that memory is a big issue on it. Sticks that I have that do 260+ on an nforce 2 board are topping out at 240-250 max, so going out this weekend to test a few more sticks. Your dual 512's might be the problem? I am just using single 256 sticks atm to bench/test with. (stil learning alot)

[Tyberius]

im trying to use the f11 bios, and it wont boot into wondows with that loaded, it initializes my RAID, but instead of that windows loading screen, i get a black screen, and thats it, its not the bios settings either, ive changed those to everything trying to get it to boot, and still nothing...

[Tyberius]

Hey, just thought I'd give an update. I did the vcore mod, vdimm, and 3.3v sense mod, and now am getting about 2.4-2.5ghz, still cant seem to get the memory speed up too far past 210 unless i really relax the timings. I'm putting 3.2v through the mushkin, and its still not very stable at too fast of speeds. It is fully stable using a 240mhz HTT and 200mhz ddr at 2.4ghz, running prime95 for 20+ hours, and woke up this morning and it was still running a continuous loop of 3dmark. Any ideas?