Help me Overclock my Dual-Core AMD Opteron 170.

[Jowdy]

Alright, so..I heard quite a lot of awesome stories from a website called "DFI-Street" a while ago, but it seems the site has now shut down? So I've come to you guys for help. :-)

 

Here's an introduction to what I would like to do:

 

I've got a decently "old" PC that I've been using for the past 5 or so years now. I would like to "breathe new life" into my system, or, rather..Overclock my CPU to improve gaming performance.

 

My Hardware:

 

-- AMD Opteron 170 Denmark (Stock 2.0GHz) <-- I'm not entirely sure what the steppings are, because it was a pain in the butt to get my Zalman 9500A 92mm Cooler on..and I don't want to take it off. :-)

-- DFI LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-D Socket 939

-- 4x 512MB DDR400 PC3200 Patriot RAM (Cas Latency: 2) (Timing: 2-3-2-5)

-- Thermaltake 500W Power Supply

-- Nvidia 8800GT

-- 4x Seagate 320GB HDDs. Two of them in RAID 0 for my Windows 7 64-bit install. The other two are data drives.

 

I've been running the Opteron 170 @ 2.4GHz for the past year now, on (for the most part) default bios settings.

 

I'm wondering if anyone could help me with the BIOS settings (and help me reach at least 2.8GHz), because the DFI LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-D settings are still a little strange to me.

 

BIOS pictures of my current settings (sorry they're so large):

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you! (I'll be checking this post for the next week or so. Hopefully one of you amazing people can help me finally get this thing to at least 2.8GHz!)

[hardnrg]

The A64 overclocking guide from DFI-Street is now here at OCC:

http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.php?showtopic=80258

 

I highly recommend you read it, in its entirety... back when I had an NF4 Ultra-D, I got some pretty nice OCs with four different Venus/Denmark Opterons (2.8 - 3.1) and a few Winchester/Venice (2.6-2.9), and somehow still have a #1 benchmark at hwbot for my 3500+

 

Pretty much all my success was down to understanding the settings of the motherboard... finding the best BIOS and direct-die cooling helped a bit too

[Jowdy]

The A64 overclocking guide from DFI-Street is now here at OCC:

http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.php?showtopic=80258

 

I highly recommend you read it, in its entirety... back when I had an NF4 Ultra-D, I got some pretty nice OCs with four different Venus/Denmark Opterons (2.8 - 3.1) and a few Winchester/Venice (2.6-2.9), and somehow still have a #1 benchmark at hwbot for my 3500+

 

Pretty much all my success was down to understanding the settings of the motherboard... finding the best BIOS and direct-die cooling helped a bit too

 

Nice! Thank you! I'm totally going to give this a good read tonight.

 

My goal is 2.8GHz, but hopefully I can exceed that, given my decently awesome CPU cooler and awesome case air flow.

[Jowdy]

Bah. Alright. While that may have been an awesome, well-put-together read on the DFI BIOS Settings, it didn't exactly help me, as it wasn't quite specific.

 

I don't suppose there's a chance you could take a look at the screens I posted, and fill in some of the options with the hardware I have?

 

Hopefully I'm not asking too much. :'(

[Jowdy]

I'm almost certain this hinges on my DRAM settings, and I have completely NO idea what to use when overclocking.

 

Again, I have 4x 512MB DDR400 PC3200 Patriot "Extreme Performance" 2-3-2-5 1T RAM.

 

:'(

[Jowdy]

Alright, so..I've been at this for a good day and a half now.

 

Here's my attempt at 2.6GHz:

 

And here's my attempt at 2.7GHz:

 

The only problem I can see is the temperature when running Prime95 more than 15+ minutes. The processor seems to spike at 70+ degrees Celsius. I'm pretty concerned about this. BUT..just to test something, I clearned the min/max settings on the CPUID HWMONITOR program, and ran Team Fortress 2 for a while, on full graphical settings. After an hour of game play, I closed the game, and noticed the max temperature the CPU reached was about 60C.

 

I'd appreciate it if someone could look over this, and get back to me if I'm doing something wrong. I feel like I could increase my DRAM ratio a bit or something. I was told I should be able to increase it a little bit, at least. (I can take pictures of my BIOS settings again too, if anyone is interested.)

 

Also, I'm being told I should use 1T timings on my RAM as well, but I think because I have 4x sticks of it, it won't work? At least, when I turn it on, the system won't even POST. So, who knows..

 

Thank you!

[Jowdy]

Latest attempt: 2.8GHz, running stable for over 2 hours now:

 

 

I think I'm happy. Hopefully this stays stable for a long while.

 

Side Note: The CPU never sees anything over 60C when I'm normally using it. For whatever reason, Prime95 makes that thing SUPER HOT.

 

I've ran some pretty hardware intensive games (GTA4, TF2, Counter Strike: Source, World of Warcraft, etc), and according to HWMonitor, it never goes over 60C. For whatever reason, Prime95 is able to spike it over 70C easily. *shrug* Oh well.

 

Let me know what everyone thinks! (I wish I had water cooling and better RAM, because I feel like this could go higher..)

 

-Jowdy