Investigations into Athlon X2 Overclocking
by Jarred Walton on December 21, 2005 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Closing Thoughts
I'm certain that there are going to be plenty of you who've read this and think, "yeah - so what?" As I said at the outset, this article isn't targeting the hard-core enthusiast or overclocker. Everyone needs to learn how to overclock somewhere (at least if they're interested in that sort of thing), and if nothing else, this should give you an idea of what results to expect, as well as some reasonable starting settings. Again, your results may vary.
Looking at the different RAM options, it's difficult to make a good case for spending tons of money on memory. Yes, it can improve performance by 10% or more in some cases, but in many instances, you will be bottlenecked by some other component in the system. There is one other point to mention on the memory: overclocking with four 512MB DIMMs was almost a complete failure on the setup that we used. Other motherboards, or perhaps a BIOS update for this motherboard, might improve the results, but for now we would recommend caution with such attempts. If you want to run 2GB of RAM, two 1GB DIMMs would be a much better choice. Having that much memory certainly isn't required, but then again, neither is a dual core processor. Personally, I'm done purchasing 512MB DIMMs for myself.
Something many AMD users are concerned with right now is the pending switch to socket M2 and DDR2 memory. From my perspective, it's really not a big deal. Everything that we've heard indicates that the switch will be little more than a change in the memory controller in order to support the new RAM type. If we could compare a 2.4 GHz Athlon X2 with the future DDR2 equivalent right now, I would wager heavily that the difference will be less than 10%. Buying an X2 3800+ right now and overclocking it to 2.6 GHz will, in all likelihood, match the best official dual core processor that AMD will release during the next nine months. (You might also try to get one of the dual core Opteron chips, with which many people are overclocking to 2.8 GHz and beyond.)
I'm not yet done overclocking this Manchester chip, as I want to take a closer look at how the heatsink used affects overclocking performance. What can you reasonably expect from the stock HSF, what can you get with performance air cooling, and how much better is water cooling? I'm already working on gathering results covering these questions. If you have any specific requests or suggestions before then, let me know.
I'm certain that there are going to be plenty of you who've read this and think, "yeah - so what?" As I said at the outset, this article isn't targeting the hard-core enthusiast or overclocker. Everyone needs to learn how to overclock somewhere (at least if they're interested in that sort of thing), and if nothing else, this should give you an idea of what results to expect, as well as some reasonable starting settings. Again, your results may vary.
Looking at the different RAM options, it's difficult to make a good case for spending tons of money on memory. Yes, it can improve performance by 10% or more in some cases, but in many instances, you will be bottlenecked by some other component in the system. There is one other point to mention on the memory: overclocking with four 512MB DIMMs was almost a complete failure on the setup that we used. Other motherboards, or perhaps a BIOS update for this motherboard, might improve the results, but for now we would recommend caution with such attempts. If you want to run 2GB of RAM, two 1GB DIMMs would be a much better choice. Having that much memory certainly isn't required, but then again, neither is a dual core processor. Personally, I'm done purchasing 512MB DIMMs for myself.
Something many AMD users are concerned with right now is the pending switch to socket M2 and DDR2 memory. From my perspective, it's really not a big deal. Everything that we've heard indicates that the switch will be little more than a change in the memory controller in order to support the new RAM type. If we could compare a 2.4 GHz Athlon X2 with the future DDR2 equivalent right now, I would wager heavily that the difference will be less than 10%. Buying an X2 3800+ right now and overclocking it to 2.6 GHz will, in all likelihood, match the best official dual core processor that AMD will release during the next nine months. (You might also try to get one of the dual core Opteron chips, with which many people are overclocking to 2.8 GHz and beyond.)
I'm not yet done overclocking this Manchester chip, as I want to take a closer look at how the heatsink used affects overclocking performance. What can you reasonably expect from the stock HSF, what can you get with performance air cooling, and how much better is water cooling? I'm already working on gathering results covering these questions. If you have any specific requests or suggestions before then, let me know.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
This may seem like a stupid question, but you did copy the SuperPi executable into two separate folders, right? Otherwise, the two running processes overwrite each others' data and one will always fail. Anyway, I don't find SuperPi to be a very useful stress test compared to Folding@Home, Prime95, and several other utilities; it just doesn't stress the system out that much IMO.Yianaki - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Yes of course it is in two folders. I realized that the SECOND time I did it Heh.Leper Messiah - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Thats actually a good thing, my X2 3800 does 2.65 at 1.425 vcore stable a rock. Looks like this x2 test is a good average indicator instead of most reviews which have the nice cherry picked silicon.JustAnAverageGuy - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Yeah, My Opteron 165 seems to top off at around 2.6GHz with the stock cooler.Araemo - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
If you buy a socket 939 opteron, will it work in a normal NF4/etc mobo?A dual core opteron is tempting if it will work in the standard enthusiast motherboards. Get a nice heatsink and get it nice and toasty, I could turn my heater back off. :) And I hope 2GB RAM sticks go down in price within the next 9 months.. I'm still debating between a sweet laptop or a good overclocker desktop for my next computer, the desktop would be much cheaper, for sure, but it is a pain to take to LAN parties.
JustAnAverageGuy - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Most NF4 motherboards support the S939 Opteron, yes. Check the manufacturer's site to confirm though.Googer - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
I found it a bit humourous that this http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/athlon...">graphresembles a tent. It reminded me of the days in high school when kids would get fill in the bubble tests and use the answer sheets to do connect the dot drawings.
I wonder if Jarred had too much time on his hands?
kleinwl - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
If you are going to start testing various cooling systems and how they affect max overclock... go ahead and throw in a Seasonic PSU as well. The Seasonic should be rejecting less heat into the case which may make as much difference in overclock as a more efficent Heat Sink. In any case... try it out please!<Note I have a XP-90, with a Antec SmartPower 2.0, on a venice... and I'm curious how such a case temp difference could affect the overclocking potential>
BigLan - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
quote: Looking at the different RAM options, it's difficult to make a good case for spending tons of money on memory.I've always thought that spending a lot of extra cash on memory was a bad idea. It pretty much shows no improvement in Fear. It's nice to see a review of the everyday stuff.
Puddleglum - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
The results for Fear looked bizarre. After reading some of the charts where 4xAA is used on games like Battlefield2 and FEAR, which would be a nice feature to show off on a high-end system, the numbers reveal marginal performance.I confess, I'm still using a Ti4200, which is only performing well in games because it's not drawing the DX9 stuff, and I've truly been waiting for an ideal video card to come out that's worth purchasing; but the new cards that are out right now are making it easy to sit back and wait for the hardware/software ratio to become a little more price-competitive.
Also, why is the OCZ PC4800 freaking out with BF2 when the CPU is overclocked to 2.1GHz?