X2 3800+. Nice overclock but wonder why it works.

[VoRogue]

I have been playing around with an X2 3800+ on a Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 board - almost 2 years old so an early board - rev1.0.

The final overclock is 2,612.5 Ghz on a stock fan. It fails POST at 2,660 Ghz and while I might be able to fiddle a bit more 2,612.5 Ghz and max temp of 52 Degrees is ok running at 1.425volts. Ram times are also really good so it runs quite well.

Anyway, what I am puzzled about is that leaving the Multiplyer at 10 very little overclock was available but reducing it from 10 to 9.5 and then pushing the clock to 275 ( x 9.5 ---> 2,612.5) was easy. In fact it went all the way to 2,470 at 1.4 Volts and only needed the extra .25 Volts on the core from then on up.

HT is set to 3 x and the 3200 Ram is running at just over 360 Mhz quite happily.

 

[VoRogue]

Good question and one that I will be able to answer for sure in the morning.

My board has the stock passive gold colored NForce 4 cooler and quite interesting given that you have asked the question, it is hot even now - probably ~ 45 degrees or so. Also, yes while fiddling around with the x 10 multiplyer over the past couple of days before I stumbled on the x 9.5 settings I couldnt figure out why it would only start erratically but fairly reliably when it had been on for a while. Now that has not been an issue yet with the x 9.5 settings but perhaps there are some thermal issues with this board or some of the components. Another possibility is that for some strange reason it pulls more power when cold and that generates enough voltage drop somewhere that something doesnt work.

 

[xeni]

I have been playing around with an X2 3800+ on a Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 board - almost 2 years old so an early board - rev1.0.

The final overclock is 2,612.5 Ghz on a stock fan. It fails POST at 2,660 Ghz and while I might be able to fiddle a bit more 2,612.5 Ghz and max temp of 52 Degrees is ok running at 1.425volts. Ram times are also really good so it runs quite well.

Anyway, what I am puzzled about is that leaving the Multiplyer at 10 very little overclock was available but reducing it from 10 to 9.5 and then pushing the clock to 275 ( x 9.5 ---> 2,612.5) was easy. In fact it went all the way to 2,470 at 1.4 Volts and only needed the extra .25 Volts on the core from then on up.

HT is set to 3 x and the 3200 Ram is running at just over 360 Mhz quite happily.

I am pretty sure 52C is very high for the X2 3800+. My parents have a Gateway with that processor and i installed coretemp and it read 35C with a tjunction of 55/62 i think something like that.

 

[VoRogue]

Come the morning while cold no boot until back to stock. Then overclocked again perfectly happily which is illogical. Perhaps I will send an email to Gigabyte and ask them what the problem might be.