help with overclocking an opteron 165

Hey all,

When I first got this system I didn't know much about dual core and tried to overclock it right away. I couldn't get it to pass superpi 32m calculation when I did two instances of it, and prime 95 was getting an error as well. I went back to my default settings and still couldn't get it to pass superpi. I figured I might have a dud but I'd try to let it burn in for a while.

Later I found out that I needed to manually set superpis affinity to each processor, once I did that two instances of it passed every time. I was however using prime95 correctly (it's how I got the idea to try the same thing with super pi) so the overclock was not stable, but I'm not sure at what cpu voltage I tried prime 95 at. Anyways, currently my system is very stable in superpi, I ran 8 hours of prime 95 on it and about 5 hours of memtest, all went well, so I'm thinking of giving overclocking a shot again.

On my first attempt heres the settings I tried:

CPU Frequency: 245
PCI Express Clock: 100MHz
DDR Voltage: 2.9V
CPU Multiplier: 9x
CPU Voltage: 1.45v
HTT: 4x

DRAM Config:
Max Memclock: DDR333
CAS# Latency: 3.0
Min RAS#: 8
RAS# to CAS#: 4
Row Precharge: 4
1T/2T Timing: 1T

I tried upping the voltage to 1.5v I believe and it was not stable afaik. 3d mark 06 and all that worked but I do remember prime95 having an error I'm just not sure at what voltage I tried it. I'd like to give this another shot, can anyone recommend a milder overclock or possibly a tweak to the overclock I tried above. Maybe I should just try the same thing again now that the systems had time to burn in?

I want to be VERY careful, I can afford if something goes wrong but it would be a huge pain in the ass and I'd really like to avoid it.

Thanks for any help!

Great thread, I just read that whole 939 overclocking guide at short media, feel I've got a pretty good grasp of the subject now.

Hey I noticed something about my ram, cpu-z is reporting its memory rating incorrectly on the tab, this is what I'm getting:



According to newegg where I bought the sticks from it should be 3-4-4-8 @ 250 mhz. Is this something to worry about or just a bug?

Currently my memory is running at 3-4-4-8 @ 200 mhz. In a review of this ram though the reviewer posts a cpu-z screenshot on the SPD tab and it says 3-4-4-8 @ 250 mhz which is what this ram is supposed to be rated for.