The Official X2 Overclocking Discussion Thread

Got around to playing with the X2 3800+ that I ordered from Mwave.

It appears to be an average OCer, mangaged to get 2750mhz dual prime stable with 1.71v cooled with Exos2. So I figure 2.6 stable on good air. Thats with the IHS removed.

I've already pulled it out of my work rig and stuck my 4400+ back in. I'm going to put the 3800+ under the LS tomorrow and see what happens but I'm not expecting much. I guess my oldest daughter is going to get an X2 upgrade ! lol

I'm back at the office right now, I'll post pics and stepping in a couple of hours.

Alright, here's the exact same settings at 1T (minus the two 4800LA sticks)...no 20k bandwidth here, am I missing something?
http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/5...7sandra4kk.jpg

20k must be his Dhrystone ALU benchmark number...can't think of what else it could be.

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Originally Posted by Vapor

20k must be his Dhrystone ALU benchmark number...can't think of what else it could be.

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i'll post screenshot shortly. i was surprise to see such a high number. the green bar, forgot what it's called, but it looks normal. the top bar, orange or yellow color, is whacked :).

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Originally Posted by pentium777

Yes I just can't justify the $$$ for what you get on overclocking when using phase or any other high end cooling, price of fans and XP-120 was enough for me really and I kind of had a hard time paying the $50+$12 for fan also since I think stock HSF would have gotten me 2.6-2.65ghz but hey at least I squeezed that little bit extra out of it and the cooler and fan will be useful in another board etc later on. Sorry to hear about your medical issue, gaming is my escape from realittt sh..t it's 5pm!! :slapass: what I am still doing here!

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I know what you're saying about paying that much for a cooler...it's not anything I imagined myself doing a month ago. Heck, water was a big jump for me. Anyway, I'm addicted to OCing now and I do have the capability so save for a nice PCICE SS, so why not?

About the medical issue...it wasn't anything too catastrophic, I had my shoulder rebuilt after a series of dislocations and tears and now my arm is in a megasplint (that's what I call it) and I can't quite get my fingers out of it far enough to reach a keyboard without having it also press down a bunch of keys. Makes typing a problem, but I've gotten to become a damn fine one handed typer. I can take the splint off for good in 3-5 weeks and will be able to have it off briefly for more elaborate exercises in about a week...so at least I'll be able to have short 10-20 spurts of gaming :D

Interesting note...my incisions are supposed to heal like bullet wounds, so I gotta come up with a good story before I go back to school. :D

On another note...I think I :banana::banana::banana::banana:ed up my Ballistix a little....Systool got stuck at an unstable speed for 20 minutes earlier today...can't do 289+ anymore (I think...I did have much looser timings than I did when I hit 293, so maybe not). More testing is needed.

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Originally Posted by pentium777

This is just one thread and not from that lead programmer I mentioned but this should be enough for most people to realize it is a problem. What baffles me is some people reporting they have no issues at all, that just doesn't make sense to me, maybe they just aren't playing the affected games.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...VIEWTMP=Linear

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Maybe some people installed the AMD driver...

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Originally Posted by Major

Got around to playing with the X2 3800+ that I ordered from Mwave.

It appears to be an average OCer, mangaged to get 2750mhz dual prime stable with 1.71v cooled with Exos2. So I figure 2.6 stable on good air. Thats with the IHS removed.

I've already pulled it out of my work rig and stuck my 4400+ back in. I'm going to put the 3800+ under the LS tomorrow and see what happens but I'm not expecting much. I guess my oldest daughter is going to get an X2 upgrade ! lol

I'm back at the office right now, I'll post pics and stepping in a couple of hours.

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Good, now I won't be crying about my X2 4400+ that can't do much more than 2580 w/1.45V!

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Originally Posted by pentium777

Start game, notice the process it is using or processes and assign it/them to one core, very simple and yes everytime you start the game for now until some fixes go into effect or new games have this solved. Everytime you reboot it will reset explorer.exe to both cores

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This seems (so far) to have corrected my issues! Thanks pentium777!

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Originally Posted by undefeatedone

Good, now I won't be crying about my X2 4400+ that can't do much more than 2580 w/1.45V!

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Yup - still shocks me just how much oomph the X2 4400 at 2.6gig. Still more power needed Scotty!

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Originally Posted by undefeatedone

Good, now I won't be crying about my X2 4400+ that can't do much more than 2580 w/1.45V!

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Errr... thats actually quite good for the voltage I think :P (Heatspreader intact that is)

heh found out its actually only COMPLETELY stable @ 1.42V with 216X11. I'm guessing it would be only completely stable with 221X11 if I gave it those original 1.45v. But hey, my performance is great. Dual Prime Max FFT Stress Test stable, dual Pi 1M in Systool rock solid stable, and Superpi 1M done in 38 seconds, all running at the same time! And I even have my memory on a divider (9/10)! Even though they don't OC great, you gotta love those X2s.

FYI, this is just my opinion folks, but for those of you who are short on cash, think twice before forking out the big bucks for dual core. it's not what it's cracked up to be and for now i'm seeing issues with gaming. the reason alot of the people in other posts didn't report gaming problems is because they're too busy benching and pushing their dual core to the max. we need more posts with problems with dual core, whether it's gaming or apps or whatever. i'm regretting a little for getting a 4400 x2 now because mine is giving me too much issues. also reading an article from a well known game developer saying dual core is not ideal for gaming kind of make me reconsider. sorry if this deters people from getting dual core, but i'd seriously rethink your buying habit. the hype is out there and it's a power thing :). also unless you're a developer or work with a game studio or anything that requires more processing power, dual core isn't for you and a waste of money. sorry for this long rant, please don't flame me :).

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Originally Posted by dng29

... also unless you're a developer or work with a game studio or anything that requires more processing power, dual core isn't for you and a waste of money. sorry for this long rant, please don't flame me :).

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[flameon]
Atleast in big areas (java/weblogic/sql) of developement the specific tools aren't multithreaded. Course there are heavy compilers that are but I dont know much about that.
The same as in gaming/home PC (well atleast the non-joesix pack people) development usually requires you to do a lot of tasks at the same time. Yes current games aren't multithreaded. Will having another CPU help you do any task faster if you are already doing others? Yes. www.2cpu.com. This has been brought up countless times on their forums.
[/flameon]

Ermm, I'm a heavy gamer and I have an X2 4400+. Plays better than my SD 3700+ actually due to one core being able to deal with windows whilst one deals solely with the game. I can't understand what issues you are talking about but my HL2, UT2004 etc all play very well, in most cases better than a 2.75ghz 3700+ San Diego. Ok, mine is clocked at 2.6ghz but there must be something in your setup causing that as it isn't the processor in my experience. Not only does it deal with games, windows is sooo much faster and more responsive. With Vista around the corner and it's enhancements base don dual cores, the future is bright not only for games but also for windows in general.

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Originally Posted by dng29

FYI, this is just my opinion folks, but for those of you who are short on cash, think twice before forking out the big bucks for dual core. it's not what it's cracked up to be and for now i'm seeing issues with gaming. the reason alot of the people in other posts didn't report gaming problems is because they're too busy benching and pushing their dual core to the max. we need more posts with problems with dual core, whether it's gaming or apps or whatever. i'm regretting a little for getting a 4400 x2 now because mine is giving me too much issues. also reading an article from a well known game developer saying dual core is not ideal for gaming kind of make me reconsider. sorry if this deters people from getting dual core, but i'd seriously rethink your buying habit. the hype is out there and it's a power thing :). also unless you're a developer or work with a game studio or anything that requires more processing power, dual core isn't for you and a waste of money. sorry for this long rant, please don't flame me :).

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Dng29, I had the same initial feelings, but at the time (about 3 weeks or so ago) I spent approx 30-40 hours researching FX or X2 and trust me I was on the fence so much it was driving my wife crazy my eyes were glued to the screen reading benches and comparisons.

LUCKILY my CPU does really good at 2.7Ghz which is more than the $818 FX-55 and I paid $632 at the time for my retail 4400+ so I saved $186 and when I run my benches for RAM in Sandra I get 6800-7000 which from what I read is very good. When I run my 3dmarks05 with single 7800GTX stock speeds it is around 8700s range which is about what the single core FX and 3700+ OC'd to 2.7 run.

While I might have been able to do 2.6-2.8 on the FX-55 it doesn't produce much FPS extra at my 1920x1200 resolution I am still way GPU limited at that and 2xAA 8xAF HQ mode.

At the end of the day while I upgrade regularily this box will move to my wife, and her current P4 3.4EE w/6800Ultra AGP will be sold either as a server minus the 6800 Ultra or together as a complete system. Then I'll get whatever the latest is in a year if technology moves quick enough.

I also wanted to not wish I had dual core when the next gen games come out and if you think about Intel the largest manufacturer of CPUs they are aggressively phasing out single core CPUs, this information gets to the software developers quickly, would you write new code when both major CPU manufacturers are pushing dual core? As a consumer I'll choose software that has dual core now as will anyone else with dual core technology.

Besides at 2.7Ghz I have basically dual FX-55 except for the shared 128-bit mem controller which didn't have much if any real world gaming impact.

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Originally Posted by dng29

FYI, this is just my opinion folks, but for those of you who are short on cash, think twice before forking out the big bucks for dual core. it's not what it's cracked up to be and for now i'm seeing issues with gaming. the reason alot of the people in other posts didn't report gaming problems is because they're too busy benching and pushing their dual core to the max. we need more posts with problems with dual core, whether it's gaming or apps or whatever. i'm regretting a little for getting a 4400 x2 now because mine is giving me too much issues. also reading an article from a well known game developer saying dual core is not ideal for gaming kind of make me reconsider. sorry if this deters people from getting dual core, but i'd seriously rethink your buying habit. the hype is out there and it's a power thing :). also unless you're a developer or work with a game studio or anything that requires more processing power, dual core isn't for you and a waste of money. sorry for this long rant, please don't flame me :).

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Oh and don't forget the antivirus (I would hope no one runs a PC without) and many other processes, just check on your processes list, all of my processes at startup are set to use whichever core is least busy as default by XP Pro, so basically my gaming time is likely maxing or near maxing one core while anything else is working on the idle core, if you've seen how the single core FX-XX gets chewed up whenever any multitasking is done you'll see my point. Also I like the "option" of ripping DVDs to Mpeg4 to my PSP while gaming or burning a CD on other core etc etc. Options are good

My tune would be VERY different if my 2.2ghz 4400+ had only done 2.3-2.4ghz, especially if it hadn't overclocked at all I'd be very :mad:

2.5-2.6 I'd still have been happy with

i guess my post is a bit pointless then huh :). i was just trying to advocate to people who have to earn hard cash for a living that's all :). i'm not by all means putting down dual core. i just hope that it will be the technology that everyone(app/game developers) will adopt to. i read an article recently talking about dual core processor and they also compare it to the days of the tnt2 from nvidia. they made a good point that at the time, the nvidia gpu was the greatest thing ever and it was supposed to be utilized to the fullest. then everyone turns around and did a 360 and change technology again the tnt2 was not so great anymore. my point is this, i hope that next or 2-3 years down the road, amd, intel, ms, big names game developer, or anybody doesn't change their mind about dual core and continue to support it. what if they decided to say forget dual core, we need quad core or whatever. i just hope that there will lots of apps/games supporting dual core in the future. i intend to keep this system for a very long time, that's my main reason for going dual core :). obsolescence is inevitable :).

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Originally Posted by dng29

i guess my post is a bit pointless then huh :). i was just trying to advocate to people who have to earn hard cash for a living that's all :). i'm not by all means putting down dual core. i just hope that it will be the technology that everyone(app/game developers) will adopt to. i read an article recently talking about dual core processor and they also compare it to the days of the tnt2 from nvidia. they made a good point that at the time, the nvidia gpu was the greatest thing ever and it was supposed to be utilized to the fullest. then everyone turns around and did a 360 and change technology again the tnt2 was not so great anymore. my point is this, i hope that next or 2-3 years down the road, amd, intel, ms, big names game developer, or anybody doesn't change their mind about dual core and continue to support it. what if they decided to say forget dual core, we need quad core or whatever. i just hope that there will lots of apps/games supporting dual core in the future. i intend to keep this system for a very long time, that's my main reason for going dual core :). obsolescence is inevitable :).

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Of course they will say "forget dual core we need quad core" that's already in the works! Facts are whether it is dual core or quad or octacore if the app/game is SMP multithreaded then it will use however many cores you have. AMD and Intel decided raw speed single processor wasn't the most efficient way anymore and now dual processing is, that won't change

I can chime in here on teh FX-55 vs X2!

My FX-55 does 3096 (258*12 @ 1.56v). Its great for doing 1 or 2 things, but there are also times when I want to shoot it! The 1 thing that AMD alsways had going against it was the non existance of some form of Hyper Threading. While gaming sure, the 64's and FX's shine, but in the Windows environment when you have mutlple processes running in the background, its sluggish. I remember last year going from a 2.8C to the 3200+ and thinking what did I do? Windows just felt like it wasn't moving smoothly.

Over the past weekend, I have been setting up a X2 system similar to mine with the parts, but a few things different for a friend. Let me tell you, I can definitely tell the difference between my FX-55 @ almost 3.1MHz and his X@ 4400+ @ 2.75! Windows is much smoother on his than mine, load up times are about the same without the 2-3 sec pause at initial boot up when the floppy seeks, and loading apps after apps is just seamless. So much so I ordered another X2 4400+ on Monday and its burning in on my setup right now at 2.82MHz. Though game developers aren't up tot he coding yet, I feel that t future is bright for Dual Core. If AMD had put some form of Hyper Threading on the A64 platform, we would have probably seen more software written for it. Now that the big 2 both are doing dual core, I think the developers won't look away...

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Originally Posted by dng29

... my point is this, i hope that next or 2-3 years down the road, amd, intel, ms, big names game developer, or anybody doesn't change their mind about dual core and continue to support it. what if they decided to say forget dual core, we need quad core or whatever.
...

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Usually when an app is multithreaded it isn't limited to 2 CPUs... Every program scales differently and definitely stops scaling at a point. Was just reading about a CAD app called ANSYS that is multithreaded but doesnt scale much at all past 8 CPUs. Going from 1 to 2 and 2 to 4 and 4 to 8 pretty much doubles performance.
Im guessing any apps coded to be multithreaded will have the same flexibility. Just might not scale as well.

And AMD and Intel are both pushing multiple cores. AFAIK both already have quad core atleast planned. Im sure anyone big is already coding new products to be multithreaded.

Wish I did more fork and join stuff in school =)

Did a few tests last night with my 4400 and it is a good chip got to 270x10 and keep in mind this is on a neo2 platnum board. Even though it "feeled" real stable I will probably stick with 260x10 for maximum stability but this chip rocks.

Steppings= CCBWE 0524RPMW

This is with a xp-90 and the neo2 loves this chip with the offical 1.9 bios

CPUZ http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=31818

i need to know if my 4400 x2 is bad. the problem i'm having is bsod. i got a dfi lanparty nf4 sli-dr. i'm using bios 623-1 for 1G of g.skill pc3200 tccd chips. i got a 550W antec true power 24pin psu. the cpu is cooled by an xp-120 with 120mm fan blowing 110cfm of air. everything is default in bios. every time i boot into winxp, 1-2 minutes later, i would get a bsod with phsyical memory dump error. i don't think my g.skill sticks are bad since i was able to use these same sticks on a 3200 venice fine with htt up to 280 with 1:1 sync ratio and 1T timing. so now every time i boot into winxp, i get bsod and hard reboot. is this justifiable for an rma for a replacement proc?

just replaced my 3700+ SD with my 3800+ X2 and used the same settings and everything seems stable. I love this X2! everything seems snappier. The memory controller is alot better than my SD also.

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Originally Posted by dng29

i need to know if my 4400 x2 is bad. the problem i'm having is bsod. i got a dfi lanparty nf4 sli-dr. i'm using bios 623-1 for 1G of g.skill pc3200 tccd chips. i got a 550W antec true power 24pin psu. the cpu is cooled by an xp-120 with 120mm fan blowing 110cfm of air. everything is default in bios. every time i boot into winxp, 1-2 minutes later, i would get a bsod with phsyical memory dump error. i don't think my g.skill sticks are bad since i was able to use these same sticks on a 3200 venice fine with htt up to 280 with 1:1 sync ratio and 1T timing. so now every time i boot into winxp, i get bsod and hard reboot. is this justifiable for an rma for a replacement proc?

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Your OS is borked. Reinstall Windows at default clocks and keep your OC a little lower from its max.

hrmm how can my winxp be borked when if i oc(slightly) the proc over the default speed, everything is fine. isn't that weird? since when do you have to oc a proc from default to get it to work properly. i hate to reinstall an OS every time i change a component in my system such as a cpu, but i guess i have no other choice :(.