Newbie to OCing - AM2 Sempron 3000 + Asus M2N-E

V

vfrex

n00b
Joined
May 12, 2006
Messages
48
I have read through the guide at the top of this forum now a few times, and I am still having difficulties with this whole overclocking thing. (Obviously I am not understanding everything that I should be). I got an AM2 Sempron to hold me over until the dual core price drops, but with 65nm and K8L off in the not-so-distant future, I decided to stick with the Sempron for now. I love how cool it runs, which allows me to keep things very quiet. However, I have an AC Freezer 64 Pro on it, which gives me a fair amount of overhead in terms of cooling. Anyway, I want to at least push this thing to see what kinds of gains I can get from overclocking.

So, as I mentioned in the title, I have the M2N-E with the AM2 Sempron 3000 processor and 2x512 Corsair XMS2 6400. It is rated for 5-5-5-15, but is currently running at 5-5-5-18. I have so far played around with Asus's overclocking utilities a bit (NOS and AI Overclock). They raise the base clock rate by 3, 5, 8, or 10%. NOS will do so under load, whereas AI Overclock will remain at the overclock. I can bring the AI Overclock up to 5% without stability issues (I haven't tested extensively, but it seems ok). 8% occasionally locks up on boot and the computer will display some slightly strange behavior. So we'll unscientifically call that marginally unstable.

The 5% overclock brings me up to 1680mhz. I tried a voltage bump to get the 8% stable, but that wasn't helping. I have my doubts that this is my OCing max, but I am running short on ideas at the moment. The first thing that is confusing me is that the guide suggests playing with the multiplier. I see no option in BIOS to change the multiplier, so I am going to assume that it is completely locked. FSB is running at 800mhz pre-overclock. I tried bringing the memory down to 667 under the 10% overclock while boosting CPU voltage. I was unable to get a stable boot in.

So then, how should I go about this overclock? Have I given enough information/tested enough to determine what might be holding me back? My questions were most likely answered in the OCing guide or in this forum at some point, but I haven't been able to find the answers. I apologize ahead of time if I wasted anybody's time.
 
Here is a guide that will walk you through finding your max overclock. This guide is, in my opinion, by far the best out there especially for new overclockers.

It'll guide you through finding the max speeds of all the important elements of your hardware and then finding the best combination. In order to test your final overclock for stability, you need to run a program like SP2004 (which is simply prime95 with a friendly interface) overnight (generally 12 hours is a good amount of time).

The only thing I have to mention about that guide is that it was written for 939 processors (i.e. DDR RAM instead of DDR2), which means the dividers will look different, but you still want to use the same ratios he mentions in the guide (a 1:2 divider for DDR would say 200Mhz, but for DDR2 it would say 400Mhz).
 
Update:

I tried using clockgen, and attempted to keep the PCI-E frequency constant. I pushed up from 1600 -> 2000mhz. Ran superpi, 3dmark06. I'm headed out for now, but when I get back, I'm going to see how much higher I can push it on stock voltage. Then I'll ease off and test for stability.
 
vfrex said:
Update:

I tried using clockgen, and attempted to keep the PCI-E frequency constant. I pushed up from 1600 -> 2000mhz. Ran superpi, 3dmark06. I'm headed out for now, but when I get back, I'm going to see how much higher I can push it on stock voltage. Then I'll ease off and test for stability.
Click to expand...

Did you follow the overclocking guide to find the max your processor will do?
 
Not precisely. I went up to ~2000, running SuperPi to 1M every few bumps. I went until it crashed, and have now returned to 2100. I am now on ~8 minutes in a prime95 torture test without errors.

I might try going higher with voltage bumps or something in the future. For now though, I think going from 1600->2100 is a pretty nice hike.
 
vfrex said:
Not precisely. I went up to ~2000, running SuperPi to 1M every few bumps. I went until it crashed, and have now returned to 2100. I am now on ~8 minutes in a prime95 torture test without errors.

I might try going higher with voltage bumps or something in the future. For now though, I think going from 1600->2100 is a pretty nice hike.
Click to expand...

Ok...well to be honest since you came here asking for newbie advice on overclocking, that guide is the best out there. If you don't follow it, there is a pretty good chance you won't be getting everything you can out of that processor.

But hey, it's up to you.
 
My socket 754 sempron 2800+ ( 1.6ghz ) did 2.4ghz on stock voltage and 2.76 on 1.68v although thats a socket 754 so they are totally different. I wouldn't use any windows overclocking utilities do it the old fashioned way ( the bios ) that works much better.
 
jordan172005 said:
My socket 754 sempron 2800+ ( 1.6ghz ) did 2.4ghz on stock voltage and 2.76 on 1.68v although thats a socket 754 so they are totally different. I wouldn't use any windows overclocking utilities do it the old fashioned way ( the bios ) that works much better.
Click to expand...

works much better?

once you find the max speeds each element can do you set the combination in the bios, but I suppose if you really like rebooting that often...
 
Ok...well to be honest since you came here asking for newbie advice on overclocking, that guide is the best out there. If you don't follow it, there is a pretty good chance you won't be getting everything you can out of that processor.

But hey, it's up to you.
Click to expand...

The guide is for athlon 64's. It assumes that I can lower my multiplier, which is not the case. I can't follow the guide precisely. I also didn't find a particularly clear way to run a memory divider in my BIOS.

I didn't realize that I was so far off of the procedure in eclipse's overclocking guide. I was still following the stickied thread here to some degree. Mixing and matching I guess. That being said, do you think that I should stop my primetest now, go back down to lower frequencies, restart the test, and start moving my way up again?
 
vfrex said:
The guide is for athlon 64's. It assumes that I can lower my multiplier, which is not the case. I can't follow the guide precisely. I also didn't find a particularly clear way to run a memory divider in my BIOS.
Click to expand...

The Sempron is just an A64 with less cache. Whats this about not being able to lower the multiplier? Also, are you unable to find any information about running a divider in your manual? Does the bios not show ratios or speed in Mhz?

Eclipse just did a review of his Sempron 3400+
 
The two processors are a bit different. For one, he mentions that the multiplier on the 3400 is 9x. 8x on the 3000. Also, the 3000 lacks CNQ, whereas the 3400 has it.

Also, I found no ratios in the bios. I'll try digging through the manual for some information.
 
vfrex said:
The two processors are a bit different. For one, he mentions that the multiplier on the 3400 is 9x. 8x on the 3000. Also, the 3000 lacks CNQ, whereas the 3400 has it.

Also, I found no ratios in the bios. I'll try digging through the manual for some information.
Click to expand...

Right, I know the multiplier is lower but I didn't know that the 3000+ doesn't even allow lowering of the multiplier....sorry to have misunderstood.

I suppose it'll be trial and error to find the max your proc will do. I would definitely have a look for those dividers though.
 
Ok, I'm looking at the manual. The place where the cpu multiplier should be, isn't there for me. I have just assumed by my inability to find it that the CPU doesn't support it. I'll look into that some more.
 
quadnad said:
Right, I know the multiplier is lower but I didn't know that the 3000+ doesn't even allow lowering of the multiplier....sorry to have misunderstood.

I suppose it'll be trial and error to find the max your proc will do. I would definitely have a look for those dividers though.
Click to expand...
so u mean sempron multi's are locked up n down? i think it's the mobo, or he doesnt underrstand his bios well to know the terms. some terms used in OC guides differ to terms some mobo's used.

first step:
find max FSb ur mobo cna handle

2nd step:
find max FSB ur cpu can go

3rd step:
tweak ur ram or use a divider

follow the link quadnad gave u, and follow it step by step.
and know ur BIOS also.
 
If you want to download my motherboard's manual, you can look at the screenshot on page 79 regarding JumperFree configuration. The screenshot shows the following list of options:

AI Tuning
Overclock Options
NOS Options
CPU Frequency
DDR2 Voltage Contorl
CPU Voltage
CPU Multiplier
Advanced Voltage Control

In my bios, the CPU Multiplier line is COMPLETELY omitted.


I'm almost definitely missing the translation between terms in the guides and terms in my bios. But, I've been looking for a few days for a way to set a memory divider and am not having much luck. Hence my putting the motherboard in the title of the thread :cool:
 
I may have a spare moment sometime this afternoon and I'll have a look to see whats what. I suppose it's possible the BIOS doesn't have those options, but that'd be ludicrous. The A8N-E had lots of options, why wouldn't it's AM2 variant have the same?

Have you looked to see if there are any shortcuts to reveal those options? On my old gigabyte motherboard, I had to hit ctrl+f1 to show the advanced overclocking options.
 
it is ASUS, w/ overcloking options and NOS.
in the bios u can't just see memory divider, some are termed different. and some, u have to go to: (like in bios, to acces memory dividers)
advcance>memory config>memclock mode/mct timing mode.....
for cpu:
advanced>cpu config>....
it is asus...if it has built in NOS in the software, definitely the BIOS also have the options. take a camera and take picture of it as u cant prntscreen it.post pics of ur bios.
 
I've gotta head to work for now, but I will try to get screenshots straight from my bios later.
 
Ok, I had the memory divider working all along and didn't know it. As I alluded to in the first post of the thread, I dropped my memory to 667 almost from the start. That is effectively a memory divider.

Anyway, here's where I've done since:

Dropped HTT multiplier to 3x, dropped memory to 533. Pushed CPU all the way up to 2400. 2400 wasn't stable in prime95 or superpi, but it was nice to hit without a voltage bump. I seem to be "stable" around 1900-2000. (~250x8). That is, I made it through ~6-7 hours of superpi before stopping it. However, I ran into another issue. I can't soft boot with the FSB over 225. I'm not even sure if that is completely stable as testing has been minimal at this level. The reboot button allows a consistent, stable boot, but I don't think I can accept that as a stable overclock. I tried moving my two sata drives from the 1st and 2nd connectors to the 3rd and 4th, a tip from the EclipseOC guide, but no luck on that either.

I'm not exactly sure where to go from here. There is a thread of complaints about this motherboard on anandtech, one of which mentions the same soft boot issue. So I am inclined to blame the motherboard. I'm trying to get that user to experiment with what FSB soft boots stop working at, but I'm not sure how much that will help. Am I on target with blaming the mobo? If so, am I stuck hoping for a BIOS update that fixes it?

I guess I'm OK with using clockgen to deal with the overclock within windows. But I need to find a way to get it to revert to stock FSB when Windows goes down for a reboot.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top