Investigations into Athlon X2 Overclocking
by Jarred Walton on December 21, 2005 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Introduction
Note: This is the second article in a series of overclocking articles. Our first article looked at overclocking a Venice 3200+ chip using two different types of RAM, and it laid the groundwork for what we're doing in this article. We've updated some of our component choices as well as our benchmarks. The major difference is that we're now using an X2 3800+ for the processor, and we also upgraded to a 7800 GTX graphics card. We'll be looking at performance with several types of RAM as well. These articles are not targeted at the advanced overclockers, nor are we going for extreme performance at any cost. The main objective is to use some cost-effective setups and show what sort of performance level can be achieved.
As we mentioned before, there is a risk in overclocking and we do not recommend it for everyone. A system that appears stable for weeks or even months can suddenly have problems, so we definitely wouldn't recommend overclocking for casual computer users who may not be able to recognize or deal with such issues. We take no responsibility for any difficulties or losses that you may experience by using the information in this article, and we certainly take no responsibility for any damage that may occur to any person, place, or object. The risk is yours alone, and a little bit of caution won't hurt. Since we are only using a small subset of parts from the available options, this is merely intended as a baseline performance measurement. Finally, there is no such thing as a "guaranteed result"; you may or may not match the results that we achieve.
We started our recent look at overclocking platforms with the Venice 3000+ and 3200+ processors. Using a $130-$180 processor, we showed that it was possible to come near the performance offered by the extremely fast and extremely expensive FX-57. Actually, we came closer to FX-55 performance, but for about 1/6 the price, that’s still very impressive. Having looked at the Venice core, the next worthwhile upgrade to the processor has to be the move to dual cores. The change also comes with a major increase in price, unfortunately, and depending on the task, it may or may not matter. Current games show no benefit from multiple cores, so unless you plan on running some other CPU intensive tasks in the background while gaming, the upgrade may not be worthwhile.
We’re looking at the Athlon X2 3800+, as you can probably already guess. However, we started work on the benchmarks quite a while back and there are actually a couple of newer options that are potentially higher performing. The new Opteron 165/170 chips use the Denmark core, which is basically the workstation version of the Toledo. While the 165 comes with a lower default clock speed, we would venture to say that it has the potential to overclock just as high as the X2 3800+ that we’ll be using in this article, and likely even higher. (The reasoning stems from the way CPUs are binned and tested. Workstation/server parts undergo much more rigorous validation processes, and typically, this means that the parts have more overclocking headroom. Most server chips are rated extremely conservatively, as component failure is far more undesirable – and uncommon – than in desktop computers.) Combined with the increased L2 cache, you potentially end up increasing performance without spending any more money.
Rather than abandoning all of the benchmarks that we’ve already run, though, we’re going to present the results along with some commentary on the overall experience of overclocking the Manchester core. Also note that retail supplies of the Opteron DC parts may dry up in the near future. So, while we have confidence that the X2 3800+ will be available for purchase six months from now, we can't say the same of the Opteron 165.
Our last article contained a massive amount of introductory material, covering the various components that you need to consider when building a system designed for overclocking. We can safely skip all that this time, though newcomers might find it helpful to review the material. Most of our setup remains unchanged, but let’s explain that in more detail.
Note: This is the second article in a series of overclocking articles. Our first article looked at overclocking a Venice 3200+ chip using two different types of RAM, and it laid the groundwork for what we're doing in this article. We've updated some of our component choices as well as our benchmarks. The major difference is that we're now using an X2 3800+ for the processor, and we also upgraded to a 7800 GTX graphics card. We'll be looking at performance with several types of RAM as well. These articles are not targeted at the advanced overclockers, nor are we going for extreme performance at any cost. The main objective is to use some cost-effective setups and show what sort of performance level can be achieved.
As we mentioned before, there is a risk in overclocking and we do not recommend it for everyone. A system that appears stable for weeks or even months can suddenly have problems, so we definitely wouldn't recommend overclocking for casual computer users who may not be able to recognize or deal with such issues. We take no responsibility for any difficulties or losses that you may experience by using the information in this article, and we certainly take no responsibility for any damage that may occur to any person, place, or object. The risk is yours alone, and a little bit of caution won't hurt. Since we are only using a small subset of parts from the available options, this is merely intended as a baseline performance measurement. Finally, there is no such thing as a "guaranteed result"; you may or may not match the results that we achieve.
We started our recent look at overclocking platforms with the Venice 3000+ and 3200+ processors. Using a $130-$180 processor, we showed that it was possible to come near the performance offered by the extremely fast and extremely expensive FX-57. Actually, we came closer to FX-55 performance, but for about 1/6 the price, that’s still very impressive. Having looked at the Venice core, the next worthwhile upgrade to the processor has to be the move to dual cores. The change also comes with a major increase in price, unfortunately, and depending on the task, it may or may not matter. Current games show no benefit from multiple cores, so unless you plan on running some other CPU intensive tasks in the background while gaming, the upgrade may not be worthwhile.
We’re looking at the Athlon X2 3800+, as you can probably already guess. However, we started work on the benchmarks quite a while back and there are actually a couple of newer options that are potentially higher performing. The new Opteron 165/170 chips use the Denmark core, which is basically the workstation version of the Toledo. While the 165 comes with a lower default clock speed, we would venture to say that it has the potential to overclock just as high as the X2 3800+ that we’ll be using in this article, and likely even higher. (The reasoning stems from the way CPUs are binned and tested. Workstation/server parts undergo much more rigorous validation processes, and typically, this means that the parts have more overclocking headroom. Most server chips are rated extremely conservatively, as component failure is far more undesirable – and uncommon – than in desktop computers.) Combined with the increased L2 cache, you potentially end up increasing performance without spending any more money.
Rather than abandoning all of the benchmarks that we’ve already run, though, we’re going to present the results along with some commentary on the overall experience of overclocking the Manchester core. Also note that retail supplies of the Opteron DC parts may dry up in the near future. So, while we have confidence that the X2 3800+ will be available for purchase six months from now, we can't say the same of the Opteron 165.
Our last article contained a massive amount of introductory material, covering the various components that you need to consider when building a system designed for overclocking. We can safely skip all that this time, though newcomers might find it helpful to review the material. Most of our setup remains unchanged, but let’s explain that in more detail.
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JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Ugh - at a comment on is an article that true special attention to the fact that the graphs aren't zeroed. I think in the process of tweaking article to get things to look right, I accidentally deleted that paragraph. I have now http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">added to paragraph back in.If I start all the graphs at zero, everything overlaps and you can't really see what's going on. In some cases, everything is still overlapped a lot (FEAR). I normally hate nonzero graphs, but when the results are all so close together, that's no good either for readability.
BigLan - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Well, if everything is overlapping that much, it's likely that the results are too close to be really meaningful. The FEAR graph is a pretty good example of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393310728/>Ho...">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393310728/"... to Lie With Statistics</a> ;)BigLan - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
^ Still need my edit function for comments. :pDammit
JustAnAverageGuy - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
:)JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
^ Still need my edit function for comments. :pThat was supposed to say, "I had a comment in this article that drew special...." That will teach me to trust my speech recognition software.
Hacp - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
I have found that past 2.6, the heat and temps increase dramatically. Nice to know that anandtech got the same results as well.Yianaki - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
SuperPI crashes help! I have a Opteron 165 with 1 gig of value PC4000 kingmax ram at 133 2.5-4-4-8 2t. Board is OC to 1.4v at 9x277 = 2.494. I have run two torture versions of prime 95 (one of the CPU intensive, one of the ram intensive) on each processor, for a total of 4 prime95's. At the same time I run 3dmark 2005. At the same time I run winamp with visualizations on. I leave this on all night 9hrs+ in a loop. No errors at all. No buggyness at all. I game for 3 or 4 hours at a time and no problems.But I just read this article and SuperPI was mentioned and I never used that before and I tried it. It wouldn't work unless I lowered my overclock to 2.00 which is unacceptable to my sorry ass. I KNOW my system is unstable. I just was wondering if it mattered as the computer is completely stable. I am guessing that prime95 just rounds off answers and they don't have to be exact whereas I am guessing that SuperPI's answers are already known to be exact. Actually SuperPI runs fine but if I open up a second copy from a second folder and attach the affinity to both processors SuperPI will have errors as soon as I start it 1second of starting the 2nd process. Any ideas??
Could it possibly be my motherboard or ram as both are 'value' versions not OC specialty items. I have already played around with rendering divx movies and playing doom no problem. Will I probably have some problem down the road or like some small encoding error or dvd writing error that is due to my overclock. I Overclocked my old PII too high and it was spewing out bad math. I did all these chem reports in college and was getting completly off the wall numbers (I never tested my PII oc in prim95). Is this the same or does the error correcting in my programs that I am running in XP make this point moot.
Man I wish I never read about superPI poo :<
Furen - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Superpi and prime95 work differently. I think superPI is more reliant on memory bandwidth (if you're doing something like 32M superPi) so your ram may be the problem (I, personally, like crucial ram, I've never had any problems with it at all, and its not much more expensive than the generic crap). If your system doesnt crash when you're doing whatever it is that you do on your computer then you're fine, though, but I'd still try to work on the ram to see if you can get it to be superpi stable.Yianaki - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
It just gets wierder and wierder... If I don't set the affinity manually in the task manager it will run through to the end and the CPU's will both be at 100%. But if I set them manually in the task manager before I start 32M the second one I start always crashes? I am guessing that the task manager isn't running the processors at 100% or something, as the windows task manager is automatically putting the loads on the two cpus and for a milisecond one isn't doing anything???? My Memory is up to 95% utilization... This proggie sucks if you ask me.Yianaki - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Thanks for the feedback. BTW it is Kingmax Super Ram, Dual channel mate. My motherboard is a ASRock 939 dual sata-2. Bought it because it runs AGP and PCIe quickly. I have my ram underclocked normally it can run at 200 but is running at 133 normally, I also lowered it to 100. I lowered all the timings lower than what the spd says. None of these things help... I am really confused. I run the Blend (ram intensive) test on each processor at the same time as the FFT test in prime 95. Memory usage goes up to 1.5 gigs total (I only have a gig), so that is using all the memory + page. But there is no error at all. I am a little dumbfounded but I have been thinking about it and my computer doesn't have any 'random' errors which is fine. Cept for firefox 1.5 and it had the same occasional problems before my upgrade. Oh well hope everything stays stable. Thanks for the feedback.