Overclocking Athlon 64 2800+

This thing comes clocked at 1.8 GHz. Does anyone know what's a good overclock for it. I've turned it up to 2.1 GHz ... and it doesn't really make that much of a difference I don't think. Also, what about the AGP speed. It was set to 66 ... and I turned it up to 70 ... I suppose it's also multiplied? That would make it a jump from like 594 to 630 MHz I guess? Not really sure about that one.

I have an Athlon64 3200+ and would also like some advice on overclocking - I've pumped it up a bit (10% or so), but don't know where to go next. There must be some good websites out there with this kind of info on - any recommendations?

10% is considered generally acceptable as a standard for air-cooled overclocking. You can acheive more, but the extra heat (from the extra voltage required to drive the CPU) will start to degrade the longevity of your CPU in an exponentially increasing manner.

Personally, I overclocked my 3700 when I first got it but dropped back when I realised that I didn't really need the extra speed. What I needed above all else was stability and a long life for the CPU (it has to last at least 3 years, before my next upgrade).

I dropped mine back to 1.8 ... because I thought it was causing Doom 3 to lock up at 2.1. Of course ... I also had the AGP aperture set to 512 ... and after turning the clock speed back down ... I realized Battlefield 2 was really slow ... just because the aperture was set too high. Hmmm ... perhaps a little overclock (only 10% this time) will help.

I was recently very interested in this too but after some playing with different settings I decided that the tiny speed gain was not worth sending my CPU to an early grave.

Jason.

Overclocking is pointless with new processors. As in, really pointless.

not really worth doing OC. Your better off getting decent ram and optimixzing the ram timings in the bios to get as efficient data throughput as you can.

Makes a big difference if your still using system defaults

Like if you have 400 ram, make sure its 400 in the bios and not running at half that. Plus a lot of ram is at least CAS 2.5 and good ram will be 2 where system bios will often default to 3

Of course when overclocking and messing with ram make sure you read up on it and check out the manufacturers specs for that ram. Changing things like FSB can ruin PCI cards and things.

While we`re on this topic if I were to upgrade from my current AthlonXP 1.5ghz (1800+) processor would that mean a whole new motherboard or is it possible to simply upgrade only the processor?

Jason.

It depends on the socket. If your motherboard takes Socket 939, you can probably upgrade to most newer processors. I'm pretty sure that even the previous socket (don't recall it's 'name') can have faster processors...

However, you should also check what chipset your motherboard uses too, it's possible there may be a dependency there, although depending on the board / processor combo, a BIOS update may help you upgrade further. I have an s939 nForce4 mobo, safe in the knowledge that I can and will be updgrading to a fast dual core as soon as they drop under £100.

Thanks to the rest of you re: not bothering to OC. I must admit to being sceptical myself, but wondered what other's experience was.

You can still have a lot of reasonnably fast new CPUs on socket 754.

you can get athlon64 3200+ on socket 754. not sure about higher

you can overclock an A64 3000+ to near FX51 speeds if you have water cooling... Your main bottleneck on one of those systems is going to be your video card though. If you don't have a 6800 ultra or better I wouldn't worry about overclocking the CPU.

Other than running an original Celeron 300A CPU @ 600MHz, there are very few situations where it's worth messing with overclocking.

If you do, don't go blaming Microsoft for all those bluescreens and added instability, there's a reason components are rated at the speeds they are. there's some safety margins, but if you start trying to squeeze every last bit out of them, you'll be running into timing problems, overheating issues, and significant shorter lifespan for your components. All for a ~10% speed increase which is near imperceptible anyway.

Yeah, I think it's my video card mainly. I took the CPU down to stock since it only gave me about a 5 FPS increase in my own project and caused Doom 3 to lock up maybe ... although that could have been the too large AGP aperture I set. Now that I have one system with a 7800 in it though the old Radeon 9600XT really shows it's age. I thought that card was amazing too when I first got it ... but now it's like nothing.

Anyone in the uk fancy buying a cut - price 3000mhz athlon 64 + mobo + ati radeon 9800 pro?

reason: just upgraded