Teh overclock....

[JIMINATOR]

Well, this has been an interesting experience. I want an X2, but they are too expensive, and the cheapest one at 3800+ actually is clocked lower than my 3500+, so unless it was overclocked, I could lose some speed. My memory hasn't proven very overclockable, so I would really need new memory to do that. And damn it, that shoots up the expense, to way more than I want to spend on a questionable enterprise.

I have an athlon 3500+ (winchester - 939 90nm) The thing really has not been that overclockable. The cpu runs at 200 fsb * 11 multiplier = 2200 mhz. With 2.5 cas memory I had been able to bump up the fsb to about 205, for 55 mhz increase, but that is disappointing. I was experimenting with different ratios last week, but either couldn't get anything stable or anything worthwhile.

So next step, I picked up some OCZ DDR 500 Gold gamer memory. That shi is expensive, but it has a rebate (ha ha) to lessen the pain. Not sure what happened to your memory Sirc, but it is guaranteed, you need to send it back. Anyway, with it I was able to get about 2400 stable, 10X * 240 mhz fsb. Nothing too great, but hey, it is 200mhz.

For my testing I mainly like to run prime95 cpu torture test, and it needs to be able to go for some 9 hours before I think it is really stable and reliable.

So then I wondered about the heatsink cpu. Like I bought some expensive goop, but it had seperated somewhat. I had mashed it out and like 'dusted' the top of the cpu, but I always thought it was questionable. I bought some cheap crap and spread it over the top. That gained + 5 fsb, or 2450 mhz stable. Better.

So, teh next step. what if I lap the cpu heatsink. I did that today. For sanding the cpu it is best to stick it into a conductive sponge used for shipping cpus (in the past) but lacking that, I stuck it into the loop portion of a big velcro square and held on to that while sanding the top. No damage. Bending these pins would be a major beyatch to fix. Back when the pins were big, I had to straighten some out with a razor blade, but it would be major pain with this cpu... Washing the cpu with water is ok, just clean it with alcohol afterwards.

I used 350, 400, 600 & 800 grit paper for the heatsink, 400, 600 & 800 for the cpu. It pulled a lot of the silver off of the cpu so the copper could be seen underneath. With this grit the paper will not get a mirror finish. There is actually a debate about that, as some claim that too smooth a finish does not give enough grooves for the thermal compound, and it actually hurts the cooling capability. They recommended only to 600, so I compromised.

There is also a question about how to apply thermal compound. Arctic silver recommends a dab (about 1.5 uncooked grains of rice) on top of the cpu die, then to put down the heat sink and twist it from side to side. That is where the main heat transfer comes from and that method allows the compound to spread freely to the sides. Anyway, that's cool, going for it.

Putting the system back together, I realised I was doing my testing wrong. I have been messing with fsb and multipliers to see how much I could bump it up. The 11X multiplier is out at 250 fsb, the computer would not boot. So instead I set it to 11X, notched up the cpu voltage until the computer would boot and go into windows. It didn't get much farther.

With a little more conservative voltage I am now running 10X @ 255 fsb, and no complaints from prime95 the past 30 minutes. That is 100mhz over the previous high, so it is maybe the lapping and also the increased cpu voltage. Looking at other's results, 2.55 ghz is about the max for this cpu, and AMD only sells up to 2.4 for a 3800+. So anyway, some of you might find some of this useful. I am on the computer a lot for both work and play, so I really enjoy any extra speed I can get.

Well darn, Prime95 crapped out at 44 minutes. Time to go down 1 mhz fsb.... :)

[Sirc]

About the surface finish - if the coefficient of thermal conductivity of the paste is higher than that of the copper cpu/heatsink (which I doubt, copper is a very good heat conducter), then having more surface area would benefit the cooling. More surface area = rougher finish. This is all conjecture, but I think the ideal sitaution would be to have perfect contact between the cpu and heatsink. If both were perfectly flat and smooth then you could swage them together and have a perfect thermal path. This isn't technically feasable, so the next best thing is to fill any tiny gaps with thermal compound. Not as good, but magnitudes better than leaving an air gap. Air is a pretty good insulator.

For anyone who may be considering the lapping technique, the idea is to get the surface perfectly flat and smooth as possible. I'm not quite sure what you used to lap your parts Jim, but the sandpaper part makes me sorta nervous. Generally, lapping a part involves using a very hard, extremely flat plate along with lapping compound. The plate is held stationary, and the part being lapped is gently moved in circular motions. The process can take quite a while because lapping compound is not very aggressive.

Honestly, I think most of the people that "lap" their cpu/heat sink only end up making things worse. Most people don't understand what lapping is, and confuse polishing with lapping. It may end up shiny, but probably not very flat. Lapping does not involve sandpaper, ever. Lapping is intended to achieve flatness with a tolerance of just a few millionths of an inch.

For 99% of people playing with the surfaces of their heatsink and cpus, it's just best to leave them alone and use a good thermal compound.

LOL, sorry, but I work in a materials test laboratory and have had some experience with surface finish, and how the finishes are achieved. I know I'm being anal. And honestly, if you can see machine marks on the contact area of your heatsink then light sanding and polishing will probably help if you know what you're doing and have a very flat surface to back up the sandpaper/polishing compound. I doubt that anyone that says they have lapped the surfaces have actually truly lapped the surfaces.

Erm, yeah. Class is over. :rolleyes:

[Sirc]

And BTW, if you are going to polish your cpu/heat sink, a GOOD mirror usually provides a reasonably flat surface. Mirrors, by nature, are very flat because even a few thousandths of an inch waver can cause visible distortion considering that the image you see is twice the distance away from the mirror than you are standing. Glass is also very hard, and if you use the correct polishing compound for copper (with is fairly soft) you shouldn't cause much if any wear to the glass.

[ME BIGGD01]

Wow Jim, you have been busy:eek: .

from my experience with these lil suckers, the problem is not the memory, heat, or voltage which seems to be causing your problems with a good over clock. I have been through some of the stuff you are doing except the lapping part.

I would of advised you not to buy such expensive ram but what the hell you did it and you now have some good ram.

The problem you seem to be having has to do with 1 thing only and that is the memory controller that is integrated into the cpu itself. You have one of the first revisions of the chip and being that I have one of the same versions, I have come to the conclusions that the ht link is going to hold you back as it did me.

Regardless of these chips, we must remember that overclocking is done very differently then previous chips. This is a whole new technology compared to mixing with multiplier and fsb.

The best and safest way to overclock the Athlon 64 outside of having an fx chips is lowering the ht divider and the overclocking it to reach a simialr clock. sounds weird but I know you undertsand what I am talking about.

for those that don't I will explain.

for a socket 939, the ht link has dividers 1-5 x what ever memory subsystem is. now this is different compared to having miltiplier x fsb becuase the memory speed is different from the ht speed according to the divider used. typically using a 939 chip is utilizing a x5 ht x 200 which = a 2000 fsb. Remember this is not a FSB but used as a term because the memory controller is on die.

With these settings here is how your system is running
your ram is running at 200x2=400mhz
your memory controller is running at 200mhz-xht with 5 divider-2000
your clock speed or multiplier is locked and running at 11

Now due to this architecture, the systems memeory controller is the only real problem that can cause a problem when over clocking past 200 memory subsystem. There is an upside though if considering changing the thinking of this platform.

After hours of testing this to see what is the best benefit to overclocking these chips, I have come to some weird but success in overclocking these chips.

The trick is lowering the ht divider, lowering the memory speed and overclocking the subsystem to reach as close to the 400 mhz as you can. doing this should not require any extra voltage but maybe need a little.

So looking at what I have had success with I lowered memory divider to 4 and memory speed to 333 which will make fsb 1600.
11x166 is what your clock speed would be.
now the trick is raising memory subsystem higher which overclock the 4t divider/memory controller. Now breathing room should be anywhere between 166-200 or looking at the subsystem would be around 245 which would bring your memory speed close to it's 400 mhz speed and the ht divider would be closer to it's 2000 fsb speed. It takes some playing around with but this is the way to oc this chip.

Now looking to get higher then this by lowering ht link lower then 4 would not really give you a performance boost because other things would be slower. I noticed in my testing was that it would seem overclocking with a lower ht setting has been useless as memory bandwidth is crippled.

Also lt may take some tuning to see what is the best and most stable by lowering the cpu multiplier by 1 point. doing a 1/2 point from experience never seems to be any good for some reason which I think has to do with the memory controller again. If anyone can do this using say a 10.5 multiplier and have a success, please let me know. I wonder if that is why there is no 2.1, 2.3 or 2.5 clocked chips on the market.Know what I mean?

So after all that gibberish, Jim, may I suggest you trying this setting for starters and move up as high as you can.

set multiplier to 10
set ht to 4
set ram speed to 333
set system to 240 for starters
and voltage to auto
memory should be kept to auto unless needed to be specified like 2.7

before testing for stability and as long as you can boot, run sandra and see what the performance benefits are.

You can try raising the multiplier up back to 11 but play with subsystem first. I found lowering multiplier to getting me closer to the 400 mhz speed which is better for dual channel to be more efficient. Keeping the multiplier at stock did not give me that ability and stability. All chips are different so Good luck bud and looking forward to what you are able to push that thing to.

[ME BIGGD01]

I know I posted a pic of my settings before but ever since sirc and jim has had me looking at this again, I decided to play around and look at the overall scores. After doing that, I decided to go for the most efficient settings and here is a pic. I could go higher and I did but the overall stability was compromised and that is a no-no to me. As far as I am concerned if your system can crash at any given time, you do not have a good overclock.

This is using an Asus a8n-sli board. Most boards are different in the bios and have different settings. One thing I noticed is the voltage goes up and down with this board and that is the reason I have it set to auto. I have not had any problems and at idle chip is extremely cool. These are some great chips if you ask me.

[JIMINATOR]

uh.... yeah.

obviously the belt sander was not ideal....

joking.

The technique was to put a piece of sandpaper down on a flat counter, wet it and rub the pieces in semicircular motions, rotate, repeat. Lap is by far an exaggeration of a term, but that is what people are becoming familar with. While this is not ideal, it will pull out the high spots and maybe allow for better contact. After all it is two big hunks of metal. if there are high spots, then there is going to be a gap. The heatsink appeared to be pretty flat, the cpu pulled off material from the sides (expected) and center (not expected). Anyway, unless you smash the pins, i don't think it is going to hurt anything to do.

[ME BIGGD01]

Here is a refresher of what my older settings were. Notice the higher clock speed which gave a better score in some tests but overall, the memory bandwdth is better with new settings and still stable.

[Sirc]

uh.... yeah.

obviously the belt sander was not ideal....

joking.

The technique was to put a piece of sandpaper down on a flat counter, wet it and rub the pieces in semicircular motions, rotate, repeat. Lap is by far an exaggeration of a term, but that is what people are becoming familar with. While this is not ideal, it will pull out the high spots and maybe allow for better contact. After all it is two big hunks of metal. if there are high spots, then there is going to be a gap. The heatsink appeared to be pretty flat, the cpu pulled off material from the sides (expected) and center (not expected). Anyway, unless you smash the pins, i don't think it is going to hurt anything to do.

You shouldn't rotate it. You will surely put more pressure on one side or one corner, which will cause more material to be removed from that spot. That's okay. The heat sink can handle such a slight bit of tilt. If you turn it, then you are removing more material from the other corner/side. That's bad. Now you are rounding the surface. Don't rotate it. Keep things aligned the same way throughout the process. If the surface ends up tilted a slight bit you won't even notice. If you rotate it and round it then even if you can't tell, the part will not be flat, and you will be back to relying on the thermal compound again.

Again, this is all very anal. Lapping will only make a very small, if any difference. Today's thermal comapounds are very good. You may see a few degrees diffrernce. Not worth it. If cooling is that important then water cool.

[JIMINATOR]

yeah, i didn't mess with the cpu voltage with the other memory, but I did about everything else, including ALL of the memory dividers and the highest fsb for each. I just did not find anything worthwhile. With new memory the higher voltage I was able to do 10.5, but it didn't not prove stable. I think those multipliers are only theoretical... :) By stable, btw, I do not mean no BSOD or lockups. That rarely happens. I run prime95 and look for errors. That is certainly not comprehensive, but I have noticed when it reports errors, going into and coming out of games have a higher incidence of flakiness. So i'll experiment some more with this memory, and see if I can get a higher core with reduced memory divider.

[JIMINATOR]

Thank you Sirc, i'll take your advice the next time I get a wild hair up my.... :)

[ME BIGGD01]

Jim, I tried to pm you but no way to send pic in pm.

[JIMINATOR]

Yes, in my brief experience selling CPUs a long time ago, I found that some retail outlets sold stuff cheaper to the public then the distributors. Example monarchcomputing, up the street from me, beats them on all the prices. It is only a few dollars, but I imagine there is not much margin on these items...

[ME BIGGD01]

The problem with buying retail here in NY is the tax is incredible. Almost 9 cents which adds up when buying stuff. NY is one big rip off:down: .

[Sirc]

The problem with buying retail here in NY is the tax is incredible. Almost 9 cents which adds up when buying stuff. NY is one big rip off:down: .

Your local/state tax is 9%???? Holy crap!
I hate to bring this up, especially in this thread in which I actually have some real-life experience to share, but.....is anyone pissed off that double taxation is illegal, and yet sales tax is taxing money we have already been taxed by the feds and the state governments? We are being taxed by the state twice. Can you declare sales tax as a deduction?

[JIMINATOR]

they bend you over, and not even a kiss afterwards....

you can deduct sales tax, or income tax, but not both. if your sales tax is > than your state/local tax rate, that might be a deal.

[Sirc]

they bend you over, and not even a kiss afterwards....

you can deduct sales tax, or income tax, but not both. if your sales tax is > than your state/local tax rate, that might be a deal.

LOL, I don't know what state you live in, but I pay both state/local income tax and sales tax on everything I buy. There is no option to pay one or the other. We pay both. I've never seen a tax form that let's you deduct you sales tax. The only one I've seen is the one that insists you pay taxes of things you buy over the internet. Of course I don't recall ever buying anything over the internet, so that's not an issue. ;)

[ME BIGGD01]

they bend you over, and not even a kiss afterwards....

you can deduct sales tax, or income tax, but not both. if your sales tax is > than your state/local tax rate, that might be a deal.

That pretty much says it all mildly. You just forgot to mention there was no lube.

As far as tax here it is 8.75 sales tax but they tax other things a lot higher. Example, in the city a pack of cigs cost 7 bucks and is going to cost another 25 cent soon. This is to pay for some workers or something but it trully is illegal. Gas here is expensive as it is but most of it is tax. Currently gas is in the 2.62 range a gallon. The costs of tolls have also gone up here which cost 4.50 cents each way on tunnels and bridges. To get to NJ and back it simply costs a person 14 bucks. I don't want to tell you how much it costs to park either in the city.

When Lash and Goober' family came up, they nearly had a heart attack and immedietly suggested to get the hell out of NY. It really sucks but nobody says anything about it. The taxes are so high which for my house is around 9000 a year. The schools suck here also which are filling up with gangs. I am planning on private school due to it and the lack of teaching skills. In the city, the schools are over crowded and teachers make squat. The lotto system was suppose to be paying for all of that but they put it on other things which is a crock of you know. The city cops starting salary is 32,000-35,000 a year which was just raised. The only question I have is where is all the money? Everything here is just corrupt. If one actually thinks about it, they would flip put as I am starting to heat up just thinking about it.

soon the houses here people will lose due to the constant interest rates. It is already starting. You can not buy a house here on LI for under 200,000. And that is in an all crack area where you get mugged if you have a nice pair of sneakers. For a decent area which is not saying much you could not get into a house for less then 400,000. In that area, your taxes will be as high as 6000-10000 or even higher depending if you got a pool.

So people may say well you get paid a lot more in NY but that is not always the case when you consider the extra time it takes you to get to and from work--2 hours into manhattan, 2-hours back is 4 hours just getting to the city. Oh, I forgot to tell you I live 25-30 miles from Manhattan.

NY sucks and not even worth visiting for vacation. Unless you like the smell of piss, looking at bums or people trying to get a dollar out of you. If you want to see the Statue of liberty, look at a picture. The only thing good here is the food and that will cost you as well.

For all you southerners, you can probably expect some yankees moving down there because it's just too expensive today.

[JIMINATOR]

Uh i said deduct, as in against federal taxes....

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/20041012b1.asp

Some states do not charge income taxes, for those, the sales tax deduction works. It may not necessarily get renewed this year.