Quirky Overclocking Conundrum

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

Hey guys,I've got a quirky overclocking conundrum. Which is better (both option suck but I must make either).I have 4 sticks of DDR2-800 (all Kingston RAM). My processor is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+. Current voltage locked at 1.25V.In order to achieve 2.8 GHz, I must run the RAM at 312 MHz or else the machine fails to POST. It also makes the HT speed at 1020 MHz.However, in order to achieve close to full DDR2-800, I can only clock the system at 2.69 GHz (HT at 980 MHz) or else it fails to POST.So, the question is, which is the lesser evil?Thanks,xboxrulzP.S: On full load and idle, my temperature sits at 44-48C.

[wutske 0]

The best way to see what's best is to test this . The problem is to find a good benchmark that take the cpu and the memory in account (most synthetic test only stress on of the two). Futurmark PCMark Vantage is probably the best test.

Btw. have you tried increase the memory latencies to get higher memory frequencies at 2.8GHz ?


//edit: ps. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Edited December 30, 2008 by wutske (see edit history)

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

The best way to see what's best is to test this . The problem is to find a good benchmark that take the cpu and the memory in account (most synthetic test only stress on of the two). Futurmark PCMark Vantage is probably the best test.

 

Btw. have you tried increase the memory latencies to get higher memory frequencies at 2.8GHz ?

 

 

//edit: ps. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

uhh... how do I put on more latency? Wouldn't that nullify the point of overclocking which is to make the machine to go faster?

 

btw, the link is dead.

 

Thanks,

xboxrulz

[wutske 0]

You can change the latency in the bios.

The point of overclocking is indeed to up the speeds, but sometimes you can even achieve higher spees by reducing some stuff.

A good example is the good old BH5 memory. It was one of the few memory chips that could achive 2.0-2-2-11 latencies (whereas most were stuck at 2.0-2-3-11). However, at 2.0-2-2-11 they couldn't achieve high frequencies. By lowering the latencies to 2.5-3-3-11 you could get close to 300Mhz (instead of 200), which was still a lot faster compared to 220Mhz 2.0-2-2-11.

 

It's a matter of finding the right balance.

 

//edit: the link works fine here. It's the first article (AMD Phenom In-Depth Performance Scaling Analysis) at http://www.madshrimps.be/

Edited December 31, 2008 by wutske (see edit history)

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

Apparently, my BIOS doesn't allow me to change the latency on my memory modules.I have an American Megatrends BIOS. My motherboard is an ASUS M3A.xboxrulz

[sakmac 0]

I would say to keep it at 2.60 ghz because you don't actually need that extra .11 herts, and also because the ddr2 is more useful.However, I would say you should ask at a more computer hardware centric forum such as pc pro, or pc world because they would be more likely to help you because half the members there have done this sort of thing.But in my opinion sacrificing a bit of processor speed is worthwhile.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

I finally found the setting in my BIOS, it was hidden and I played around with it. The extra speed boost caused by the latency did not justify the latency that the processor had to go under.I left the system clocked at 2.66 GHz at 380 MHz DDR2. At least that's 460 MHz faster than stock clock speed.xboxrulz