Quick Overclock Guide

Introduction Warning: Overclocking your components may result in damage to your components, loss of life expectancy, or even frying them. Overclocking is done at your own risk and DK Design takes no responsibility for any damage you inflict upon your computer due to this guide. Now that we got that out of the way we can being the tutorial. Overclocking is taking your components and running them at higher speeds than the factory (stock) settings. The advatages to overclocking is that you can get much better performance out of the parts you have. This will make your gaming and general computing experience much more enjoyable. This guide is to be used for AMD 64 socket 939 based systems. •

HTT= Front side bus or HTT, this is the main highway on your motherboard.

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CPU= Central Processing Unit, this is the brain of your system. RAM= Random Access Memory

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CPU multiplier= The speed of your CPU is equal to the speed of the FSB times the CPU multiplier. EX: I set my FSB to 200 (stock) and my CPU has a 10x multiplier. The speed of the CPU will be 2000MHz or 2.0Ghz. Most CPUs have a maximum multiplier, for a 144 opteron it is 9x, 146 opteron is 10x, 148 is 11x and so on. The only exception to this rule is the FX series, their multipliers are unlocked upwards.

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CPU voltage= How many volts are being sent from the power supply to power the CPU, stock is usually around 1.4v. Later in the overclock you will be able to raise this voltage, be carefull because more voltage means more heat, more heat could mean less efficient or stable overclock.

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Ram Divider= 200,166,133 and 100 are common dividers, these allow you to slow down the ram in comparison to the FSB. Not all ram can run at 300Mhz.

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Ram Voltage=Same as CPU voltage, stock is usually around 2.6-2.7v

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Motherboard Multiplier (LDT/HTT) = This is usually at 5x, it has to be changed to keep the speed of the motherboard around 2000. Ex: 200x5=1000(2x)=2000

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If at any time during the use of this guide you go past the maximum you PC can handle and it won't boot all you have to do is reset the CMOS. This will reset all the settings in your bios to default (removing the OC). Most motherboards have a jumper that you have to move for a few seconds or a little button that you press. See your motherboard manual to find the reset CMOS switch.

Step 1 Finding your motherboards maximum FSB The first step to overclocking is to find out what kind of motherboard we are working with. Hopefully it will be able to push past 300Mhz. The speed of the FSB on your motherboard is what controls the speed of the rest of your components. Now we need to find out what the fastest possible speed is. To do that you should follow these steps: 1. Reboot your computer and enter your bios. (Most new motherboards use the Delete button, check your motherboard manual for yours) 2. Now you will want to go to your overclocking menu, It could be called Cell Menu or Advanced configuration etc. 3. Find a setting called HTT Multiplier, it should be at 5x right now, set it to 3x. We do this so that we dont go over the 2000 limit when pushing up our HTT. 4. Find the CPU multiplier and lower it down to about 6x, this way the CPU won't be bottlenecking us. 5. Find the RAM dividers and set it to 100 (2;1) This way the ram wont be holding us back.

6. Now that we have removed any possible bottlenecks or restraints on the motherboard all we have to do is crank up the HTT. 7. Find the HTT speed and bring it up in increments of about 10Mhz. until you get to about 270 then I would slow it down to about 5Mhz each step. Everytime go into windows and run some stability tests, like superpi 1M or Prime95. Sooner or later you will hit the maximum speed, it could be somewhere near the 300 mark. Once you have find that bring it back a bit and find the maximum STABLE speed. If it passes SuperPi 32M I would consider it pretty stable. Write down the maximum speed you got to and reboot into the bios.

Step 2 Finding the CPU's maximum speed Now that we know the motherboards maximum speed we will want to see how far the CPU itself can go. The CPU speed is very important in A64 systems. For now we are going to do this at stock voltage. 1. Reboot and get back into the good old BIOS 1. Go to the overclocking settings and leave the HTT multiplier to 3x, leave the ram divider at 100Mhz (2;1) 2. Move the CPU multiplier to its highest multiplier, usually around 9x,10x or 11x 3. Set the HTT speed to 200Mhz and start by moving up in 10Mhz increments. 4. Keep going until 260 then start using 5Mhz increments. 5. Once you hit the limit back it up a few MHz then go into windows, run Super Pi 32M, if it passes try a few more mhz. Do this until you find the maximum speed that passes super pi 32m. If you really want to make sure it is stable you can run Prime95 overnight. 6. Now right down the speed and proceed to step #3

Step 3 Finding the RAM's maximum speed Their are 2 extremes to RAM overclocking, you can have tight timings and a slower speeds or looser timings with faster speeds. It all depends how you want to set up the system. 1. Go into the bios and set the HTT multiplier to 3x 1. Set the CPU multiplier back to 6x 2. Set the RAM divider to 200Mhz (1;1) 3. Leave the ram timings at the stock settings (ex: 2-2-2-5) 4. Move the FSB up in increments of 5Mhz and see how far you can go at these timings. Once you hit the limit try adding .1v or .2v and see how far it will go. 5. Now set the volts back to stock and try loosening the timings a bit (ex: 2-3-2-6) and repeat step 6. You can keep going until you hit (3-4-4-10) I wouldnt recommend setting anything looser than that because you will not get better performance than tighter/slower timings. 7. Now you have to decide how you want to set up the RAM, I preffer running the RAM fast and a bit looser timings on about 2.8v, its really your decision. Once you find the settings you want reboot the PC and run memtest, this will make sure that the RAM is stable. 8. Ok we are almost there, now we just need to put all of it together.

Step 4 Putting it all together Now that you know the fastest stable speeds of each of your components we need to put it all together into one fine tuned overclocked beast. 1. Go into the bios and set the CPU multiplier to the highest multiplier and set the HTT to make the highest stable speed you found earlier. 1. Set the HTT multiplier to 3x 2. 2. Go to your ram and use whichever divider will make the MHz of the ram equal the speed you want. (ex: if the HTT is at 280 for the CPU but the ram can only do slower than 280 you might want to put it on a 166 divider, this will slow the ram down a bit) 3. 3. Set the timings that match the speed you are going to use. 4. 4. Boot that thing up and pray to the overclocking gods that it all works together. 5. 5. In some cases you won't be able to use all the max speeds, if so you can try increasing the voltages a bit or slowing it down a bit. Remember that whenever you are adding voltages to watch the temps. Never let the CPU get over 50C. Hopefully you are in windows and everything will be overclocked to its fullest potential. Run SuperPi 32M and see if it passes. If it does you are probably in good shape but you could also run Prime95 overnight to be safe.