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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TheHolyLancer - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
i that since this is an OC thread, they should have used a DFI NF4 Ultra-D or a Expert, they have a 4V jumper that allows you to take DRAM voltage into 4 V (i hope no one does though)JarredWalton - Thursday, December 22, 2005 - link
The higher voltages would have helped the VX RAM a bit. I may shift to a LanParty SLI-DR for the cooling test... or at least try it at some point to see how much of a difference it makes in performance.KingofCamelot - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
I noticed that the BF2 demo file for v1.12 did not work. The bf2bench.demo file needs to be changed for it to work. The bf2bench.demo file can be opened in Notepad, and the following changes need to be made.These lines:
demo.camerafile mods\bf2\Demos\jw112.bf2cam
demo.demofile mods\bf2\Demos\jw112.bf2demo
Need to be changed to:
demo.camerafile mods\bf2\Demos\jwanandtech112.bf2cam
demo.demofile mods\bf2\Demos\jwanandtech112.bf2demo
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 22, 2005 - link
Thanks! I've corrected the file and uploaded the new version.--Jarred Walton
tayhimself - Thursday, December 22, 2005 - link
Hey Jared,This was a very well written article. You were thorough with the benchmarks almost to a fault. I liked your introductory and ending commentary. Your first article was just as good.
Props!
sxr7171 - Thursday, December 22, 2005 - link
Agreed. This was a quality job for sure and the questions he raises at the end are very pertinent. I'm sure he'll come up with the answers.ElFenix - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
i assume you used the stock heat sink/fan unit?JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Er, sorry I forgot to mention that. I used an XP-90 with a 3000 RPM 92mm fan (generic fan). I'll make a note of that, since that's important information. The followup looking at cooling options will use a retail HSF as well as the XP-90, an Asetek MicroChill, and an Asetek WaterChill. (Why Asetek? Because they asked me to review their two products.)Furen - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
How come the graphs arent zeroed? I suppose it'd be pretty much a bunch of overlapping straight lines if they were but having a graph that shows framerate from 63.5 to 65.0 is not much better.JustAnAverageGuy - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Yeah, the graphs could be a bit misleading unless you look at what the lines actually represent.The difference between the OCZ PC4800 and everything else looks huge in the http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/athlon...">Doom 3 graph @ 1600x1200 4xAA, but if you actually look at the lines, the difference is less than 1 frame per second.