OC AMD X2 3800 Socket 939-Manchester

geotech

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This is my first time overclocking so I have a bunch of questions.
Here is my setup.

ASUS A8N-Sli Premium
AMD Athlon X2 3800+ Stock 2.0Ghz (Stock Cooling)
Corsair 2x1Gb memory
7600GT BFG 256MB
Aspire 520watt PSu
All wrapped in a Thermal take Armor Full tower.

I am using clock gen to OC because I don't know where to do it from the bios, I couldn't find the options. I kept bumping it up a little at a tim, maybe 50Mhz and then running SuperPi and misc. programs to check stability. I got it to around 2.225 before it froze. On restart it was stock voltage. I have gotten it up to 2.45 running stable. Every other time or so when I start up I get a sequence of beeps followed by "System Failed VGA Test." My video card is NOT overclocked. And I have already dropped my multiplier from 5 to 4 to keep the HT Link at around 950Mhz.

So here are my questions:
What is a reliable program to check the temp?
Is there a danger zone that I should not go past with my stock Heatsink?
Should I be worried about the VGA test error?

If I could just get some guideance it would really help, thanks for you time.
-Geo
 

badnob

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I suggest you have a nother look in the BIOS for the actual overclocking settings. I'm sure it's better to use those.

I have an ASROCK Dual SATAII Motherboard, x2 3800 Manchester and managed to get it to 2.5 easy on stock cooling, no heat issues.

I didn't have to mess with the voltage but I did drop the memory speed from DDR400 to DDR333 (with the 250mhz bus rather than 200 though, it runs the memory at 416mhz).

I also locked my PCIe frequency to 100mhz (Asynchronous to the FSB) and I have no stability problems.

I had a quick look at the online manual for your motherboard and I think your overclocking option are in the Advanced->Jumperfree BIOS settings.
 

badnob

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Oh, and the last ASUS board I had came with ASUS pcprobe which was a good tool for checking and logging CPU temps. And your VGA problem may be fixed by the PCIe Frequency lock mentioned above.

Hope this is of some use to you.
 

geotech

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Update:

Core Speed: 2406.38Mhz
bus Speed 240.7Mhz
HT Link 962.7Mhz

33c Idle
40c Load

How's it looking.
How far should I push this on stock cooling?
 

frankienyc123

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You should download Orthos and CoreTemp if your going to be overclocking. Coretmp is the most accurate way to monitor your tempatures and Orthos will test your stability. If your gonna use SuperPi to test stability you have to run it twice or else your only putting a 50% load on your cpu. Orthos is a much better test of stability IMO.

Core Speed: 2406.38Mhz
bus Speed 240.7Mhz
HT Link 962.7Mhz

33c Idle
40c Load

How's it looking.
How far should I push this on stock cooling?

Are you sure that tempature is correct it seems to cool for a stock cooler. Is that a 100% load? What programs do you use to load the cp and monitor temps?
 

frankienyc123

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What are you using to test stability? The pc shutting down at 2.5ghz isnt any sort of fail safe it means that something isnt stable, what voltage are you running, you might need to up the voltage to get it stable at 2.5+. If your only getting a 40c at 100% load your very lucky , whats your ambient temp? You can push the cpu as far as you want with stock hsf as long as it keeps the cpu cool. I finally got my 4200x2 stable at 2.8ghz today, im going to try a high end cooling and see if I can get it to reach 3ghz. Good luck