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| Overclocking the AMD Athlon64 3200+ - ASUS K8V Deluxe For what it's worth | |
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(Review by MS, November 6, 2003) |
| AMD Athlon64 3200+ At: |
Summary
After the somewhat disappointing overclocking experience with the initial BIOS revision of the ASUS K8V and the Athlon64 3200+, we used the latest production BIOS Rev. 1003 that, amongst other new features allows manual changing of the frequency and voltage ID (FID and VID). Overall, the new BIOS greatly increases stability as well as overclocking potential, after all, we were able to crank up the speed to 240 MHz and run 100% stable at 235 MHz.
There were, however, a number of sacrifices that we had to make to get there, that is, lowering the multiplier, lowering the memory speed and by the end of the day, when we counted our scores, whatever was left was --- actually more than we can say in one sentence. Read on.
As innovative and challenging as the Athlon64 is, one thing that it is not (yet) is a great overclocker. It is not that anybody would really need the extra clock speed at this point, rather, it is a matter of principle for the overclocking community, maybe we should even call it bragging rights, that any processor or by extension, any system component needs to have the potential of being run out of spec, being souped up, decorated with rally stripes - as long as there is a gain in nominal speed. Performance is another story, though, since not every inch of extra overclocking results in true performance increase.
Athlon64 3200+ and Athlon64 3100+ Preproduction sample running at a 9 x Multiplier instead of the 10 x multiplier used in the 3200+ model.
Esoteric considerations aside, the issue at hand is the Athlon64 and, before going into overclocking, it is necessary to understand the limitations. That is, without knowing what kind of hardware lock-outs are there and what else is simply a matter of speed or timing parameters, it is likely to turn into a fishing expedition. Moreover, what looks good in theory may not even yield the performance equivalent of the stress that's added. Like everywhere else, there are BIOS parameters and BIOS versions to take into account as well, likewise, there are inherent chipset limitations, or maybe there aren't.
After all, the Athlon64 platform is rather unique, there is no more memory controller on the chipset that can screw things up. Rather, it is the memory controller on the CPU that can screw up things even worse. In addition, there are all the vagaries regarding the HyperTransport and the propagation of frequency increases across the rest of the system if the external CPU frequency is increased. Let's take things one step at the time though and see where the problematic points are and, moreover, what is to be gained with the different forms of workaround.
next page: => The Handicaps =>
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