New CPU and RAM !

[congo]

Today I'm building a custom gamer for an associate.

In return, he's buying me an Athlon 64 XP3700+ CPU which is based on the San Diego cpu core. He's also agreed to buy me 1gb of PC4000 Kingmax Hardcore RAM and I must hand over my current 1gb of PC3500 to him, with a cash adjustment.

My current CPU is a not-so-old-at-all XP3500+ Venice core. Both the old and new CPU's have a default clock speed of 2.2ghz.

The 3500+ has limited overclock potential on air cooling with temps rising sharply beyond 2.4ghz.

I've read in the overclockers forums that the 3700+ is basically an FX CPU with a locked multiplier and that they are wunderbar for overclocking.

I hope to overclock the new CPU up to the new PC4000's rated 250mhz Front Side Bus speed, which would give me a CPU speed of 2.75ghz, and though I doubt whether this would be stable on air cooling, I hope to be able to leave the CPU running at 2.6ghz, which equates to a FSB speed of about 236 mhz. At that speed, I should be able to have fairly tight timings on my new PC4000 ram.

I get back with the results in a couple days.

[congo]

I installed the gear into my system.

I'm running the FSB at 260 with a 10x CPU multiplier giving me 2.6ghz and 520mhz DDR for my new RAM.

No voltages increases required for stability as yet at these speeds and there is no noticeable Temp increase in the CPU either.

Chipset seems quite warm though  

[congo]

Here is another way I overclocked this new CPU.

I left the CPU Multiplier at it's stock 11x and set the FSB speed to 250mhz, my PC4000 ram's rated speed. I set the Hypertransport multiplier to 4x (4 x 250mhz = 1000 or 2000mhz DDR).

This screenshot shows (well, it's a bit tiny at 800x600 but...) my system running Prime 95's max heat and stress tests. At the same time you see my mainboard monitor's temperature page. The San Diego cored CPU is running steady at 52*C, chipset at 40*C and the ambient air temp is 28*C in my room.

Everest is running there as well showing my real time system specs.

[congo]

This CPU costs $350 here in Australia. An AMD FX57 costs $1500 here, and they seem to be essentially the same CPU, even if a "little" effort is required to extract the best out of it.

I thought my 3500+ Venice CPU was fast, this 3700+ San Diego is noticeably faster in all aspects of my daily computing.

Anyone after a single core performance CPU need look no further than this beast.

[Jimbo]

Have you considered an Opteron AMD chip?

These are suppose to be absolutly highly overclockable, and extremely fast.
They cost

[congo]

They are expensive here and those models at OC'ers aren't available thru my contacts. I would have paid

[Jimbo]

Glad to see you was following my newb posts

Although when the new Dual core games come out, i still maybe tempted for the dual core solution.

[Skligmund]

Looking to sell the 3500+? I run water cooling, and I run into a limitation of "FSB" on my 3000+. I think a higher multiplier would help me loads. (current CPU temp: 86 F)

[NicksFXHouse]

[quote]Here is another way I overclocked this new CPU.

I left the CPU Multiplier at it's stock 11x and set the FSB speed to 250mhz, my PC4000 ram's rated speed. I set the Hypertransport multiplier to 4x (4 x 250mhz = 1000 or 2000mhz DDR).

This screenshot shows (well, it's a bit tiny at 800x600 but...) my system running Prime 95's max heat and stress tests. At the same time you see my mainboard monitor's temperature page. The San Diego cored CPU is running steady at 52*C, chipset at 40*C and the ambient air temp is 28*C in my room.

Everest is running there as well showing my real time system specs.

[NicksFXHouse]

Here are the benchmarks for 250FSB @ 1000-HT:

Memory @ 211.6Mhz (5:3 DDR333)
CPU @ 2.751Ghz






RAM Bandwidth Int Buff'd iSSE2 : 6649 MB/s
RAM Bandwidth Float Buff'd iSSE2 : 6617 MB/s

Chipset 1
Model : ASUSTeK Computer Inc K8T880Pro CPU to PCI Bridge
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 456MHz (912MHz data rate)
In/Out Width : 16-bit / 16-bit
Maximum Bus Bandwidth : 3648MB/s (estimated)

Logical/Chipset 1 Memory Banks

Chipset 2
Model : Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 / Opteron HyperTransport Technology Configuration
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 456MHz (912MHz data rate)
In/Out Width : 16-bit / 16-bit
Maximum Bus Bandwidth : 3648MB/s (estimated)


CPU:

[NicksFXHouse]

I started having problems with my PC4000 ram getting out of range as I approached 2.9ghz on the overclock, so I backed it off. I don't want to run a bus divider.

Run a 5:3 divider (DDR333)... you are not reducing performance AT ALL if you raise the FSB so the CPU/memory bus (transfer rate) is maxed out. Also, lock the AGP/PCI frequency (if it is AGP) and set any AI overclocking to manual.

Sometimes it requires bumping up the DDR voltage a tad and slow the CAS from 2.0 to 2.5. Also, the T-RAS sometimes helps to raise it by 2 or 3 clks.

In any case, best performance is usually always reached by using the divider and increasing the FSB.

The A64 system is nothing like the Athlon of the past. A64 overclocking is all in FSB/memory bus communication. DDR400 is typically not the best performance setting even with PC4000 memory. The idea is to max out the FSB/Memory transfer rate and forget about the actual memory frequency. For your system it may be possible to nail 260-280 or higher using that method. Mine is a bit limited as it is one of the last AGP motherboards that will run all A64 dual cores and FX57 grade processors.


Also, with AMD64, Using the program SPEEDFAN and AMD COOL & QUIET, all my fans are practically silent at idle (24c-28c) (under 1000rpm)and barely heard under full load (48c, sometimes 50c if ambient is high). The only time my tower fans are at 100% is if all the following are reached:

the system goes above 28c,
the CPU is above 45c,
the video GPU is 70c...

otherwise the tower is practically silent... and I mean so quiet you can hear a sewing pin drop in the next room.

[NicksFXHouse]

PS:

You need not worry about an A64 overheating.... at all

The A64 will automatically shut down if the temp exceeds 75-80c with absolutely no damage to the processor. AMD was very smart to include that E-shutdown system starting in their A64 line of processors. It works very well, so well in fact that when the clip broke on my CPU heatsink and the HSF fell to the bottom of the tower while I was using FS2004, the system simply haulted. I opened the tower with it still running to find the HSF had fallen off. I shut the tower down (it ran at least 2 minutes after the HSF had come off the processor) ... and replaced the clip with a spare I had.

The system booted up like nothing happened.

Temps are no longer an issue with the A64 processor.

[congo]

Looking to sell the 3500+? I run water cooling, and I run into a limitation of "FSB" on my 3000+. I think a higher multiplier would help me loads. (current CPU temp: 86 F)

I'm going to build another nForce4 PC for my daughter and use it in that, selling the P4 rig she has or use it as a server PC.

[Skligmund]

Ah!  Good deal.

Well, enjoy your new found overclocker!  ;D

[congo]

I tried for days to get better results with all sorts of combinations.

I'm not able to get timings like I see in O/C forums everywhere.......... for a start, CAS 2 just fails completely at any FSB speed, and 1T command rate is never stable and impossible at higher speeds.

However, Everest returns me close to 7gb/sec bandwidth in the mem write test, which I'm impressed with.

I was able to go a little faster but things were either dodgy with the way it was configured, or I had to add a lot of voltage to get things stable, so, at the end of all this initial tweaking I ended up with these stable and cool settings:

CPU