Overclocking on the 754/939 Platform

ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
edited April 2006 in Science & Tech
Anyone serious about PC gaming knows that the current king of CPUs is the AMD Athlon 64. The Athlon 64 platform has brought many new features to the table and with these new features comes many new overclocking challenges. Weighing in at a MAMMOTH 55 pages.....

Short-Media is EXTREMELY PROUD to present the ultimate guide to overclocking the ATHLON 64 754 and 939 platforms.

Lemonlime... this is our honour & privilege to publish this masterpiece :respect:

Right here: http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=300

Comments

  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited February 2006
    Congratulations to Lemonlime for thoughtful, digestible, interesting, and thorough guide to 754 and 939 overclocking. I don't think a more complete overclocking guide on these systems can be found anywhere.

    Well done!
  • rapturerapture
    edited February 2006
    Has anybody tried removing the internal heat sinks on these CPUs to try and increase overclocking potential? I managed to safely remove mine and made a keyring out of what was left. The CPU is still running hapily in the machine I'm now posting from.

    I don't really do a lot of overclocking, I already hate the noise/heat my machines create on default settings.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited February 2006
    rapture-IC wrote:
    Has anybody tried removing the internal heat sinks on these CPUs to try and increase overclocking potential? I managed to safely remove mine and made a keyring out of what was left. The CPU is still running hapily in the machine I'm now posting from.

    I don't really do a lot of overclocking, I already hate the noise/heat my machines create on default settings.

    I removed the integrated heat spreader from my Opteron 148. It does help on air/water, but I already had my phase-change setup at that point and it did not do much for my overclock. I did drop about 10'C though at full-load, which I would consider significant.

    What heatsink/processor are you using?
  • NightwolfNightwolf Afghanistan Member
    edited February 2006
    Just finished reading the article and learned much that i had no idea would help me push my processor farther. Thank you very much for writing this article and i enjoyed it greatly.

    Thanks,
    Trent
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited February 2006
    Nightwolf wrote:
    Just finished reading the article and learned much that i had no idea would help me push my processor farther. Thank you very much for writing this article and i enjoyed it greatly.

    Thanks,
    Trent

    Thanks for the kind comments Nightwolf :cheers:

    Glad you enjoyed it :)
  • CarrrlCarrrl
    edited April 2006
    Hello,

    Grrreat overclocking article! Thank you!

    I only have one question: On page 13, the following comparison is made of different core revisions and their OC abilities:
    www.short-media.com/images/shorty/reviews/monsteroverclocking/700_GRAPH_CORE_REV_OC.jpg

    What I'm wondering about is the Venice core with E6 stepping - where would that be in that graph? Does it overclock about the same as the E3 Venice, or does it behave more similar to the E6 dual core?

    *I'm just about to buy a Venice and there are both E3 versions ("BP") and E6 versions ("BW") available at about the same price so I thought I'd choose between them based on how they (generally) overclock...*

    Regards,
    Carl
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited April 2006
    Carrrl wrote:
    Hello,

    Grrreat overclocking article! Thank you!

    I only have one question: On page 13, the following comparison is made of different core revisions and their OC abilities:
    www.short-media.com/images/shorty/reviews/monsteroverclocking/700_GRAPH_CORE_REV_OC.jpg

    What I'm wondering about is the Venice core with E6 stepping - where would that be in that graph? Does it overclock about the same as the E3 Venice, or does it behave more similar to the E6 dual core?

    *I'm just about to buy a Venice and there are both E3 versions ("BP") and E6 versions ("BW") available at about the same price so I thought I'd choose between them based on how they (generally) overclock...*

    Regards,
    Carl


    Hi Carl, Welcome to Short-Media, and thanks for the comments on the guide! :cheers:

    There are several revisions of the venice core out there right now, including E3, E4 and E6. When I wrote the guide, E6 single cores were pretty sparse. Now, there is even a Manchester dual core with one core disabled circulating around :)

    Some of the E6 single cores are doing very well, and I'd consider them to be more on par with the E3/E4 stepping single cores. E6 in a single core usually clocks higher than the dual core parts due to lower thermal output, and the fact that there are not two cores that have to remain stable (usually there is one core weaker than the other).

    mtgoat had little trouble getting his E6 venice 3500+ up to 2.8GHz recently :)
    http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43276

    Milage may vary, but 2.6Ghz is pretty common for any of those core revisions. Be sure to let us know how it goes!
  • CarrrlCarrrl
    edited April 2006
    Thank you very much, lemonlime!

    So, then it really doesn't matter if I get the E3 or E6 revision of the Venice core - they're just as good?

    And here I've been thinking all along that the E3 version was a better overclocker than its E6 counterpart - but I guess that's not true when one compares an E3 Venice (single core) with an E6 Vencie (single core)... - That's good to know! Thank you!

    But, then there's not reason not to get the (slightly newer?) E6 version, I guess - because that one supports both E3 and E6 steppings, right?

    Then I'll go with ADA3500DAA4BW instead of the ADA3500BAA4BP that I had originally planned on getting.


    Thanks again!
    /Carl
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited April 2006
    Carrrl wrote:
    Thank you very much, lemonlime!

    So, then it really doesn't matter if I get the E3 or E6 revision of the Venice core - they're just as good?

    And here I've been thinking all along that the E3 version was a better overclocker than its E6 counterpart - but I guess that's not true when one compares an E3 Venice (single core) with an E6 Vencie (single core)... - That's good to know! Thank you!

    But, then there's not reason not to get the (slightly newer?) E6 version, I guess - because that one supports both E3 and E6 steppings, right?

    Then I'll go with ADA3500DAA4BW instead of the ADA3500BAA4BP that I had originally planned on getting.


    Thanks again!
    /Carl


    Cool, I'm sure whichever way you go, your odds of getting a good clocker are pretty equal. The 3500+ models generally do quite well, as they are speed binned a bit better than the 3200+ models at the factory. The 11x multiplier is nice too when you want to start cranking up the reference clock.

    Let us know how it goes..
  • EssoEsso Stockholm, Sweden
    edited April 2006
    I will OC my Opty 165 following your guideline lemonlime.
    I know is not easy to OC, it takes time and allot of effort to accomplish.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    It's not really that difficult if one does the studying and research before actually starting the tweaking.

    As far as achieving results, yes, the last 100MHz can be very difficult. The first stages are usually pretty easy, so long as the hardware has sufficient "headroom".
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