AMD Athlon 3800+ Speed Question

BrandoMow

Distinguished
Jul 19, 2010
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I have an AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3800+ in a Compaq Presario SR1950NX computer. The processor speed is 2.4 GHz. I have had the computer for 5 years now. In BIOS the CPU speed and information is all greyed out so I cant change it but registers the correct speed. When I open System Properties it seems to be registering different speeds. Anywhere from 986 MHz to 2.4 GHz.

1. Is this normal?

2. Can I overclock this system?

 
Solution
1) Yes, its called Cool N Quiet.

2) Probably not. First its a Compaq, so they usually don't offer a lot of options. Why should they, they want you to buy a new system. Second, if the speed and other info is grayed out, then the ability to change them probably doesn't exist. Theres a chance that you might find a different area in the bios that will let you but the odds are slim. There might exist a software overclocking option ala "softFSB", but I doubt that program will work with "modern" systems.

4745454b

Titan
Moderator
1) Yes, its called Cool N Quiet.

2) Probably not. First its a Compaq, so they usually don't offer a lot of options. Why should they, they want you to buy a new system. Second, if the speed and other info is grayed out, then the ability to change them probably doesn't exist. Theres a chance that you might find a different area in the bios that will let you but the odds are slim. There might exist a software overclocking option ala "softFSB", but I doubt that program will work with "modern" systems.
 
Solution
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/284126-28-showing-correct-speeds
^ please try reading through the stickies before posting
Although, I don't blame you because the way they are posted now, it's more difficult to spot what you need.

As for your second question, like 4745454b said, you cannot overclock OEM systems. Those options are set.
An like he said, there are programs. On is SetFSB. I looked into it a long time ago but found my system wasn't supported. You need to know the model you have of some chip on the motherboard, then run the program, select the chip and change the settings. It will write them. It's dangerous to use because you cannot reset anything, like you can with the bios, if something goes wrong and you don't have access to the OS, and setFSB. Few chips are supported by the program anyway, so it is unlikely it will work.
 
I realized I couldn't overclock my Dell Precison 450 so I found the fasted cpus that my OEM mobo supported (lots of googling system configs, matching fsb and volts of chip etc).
I updated my bios first and then swapped in Xeon 3.2 533/1mb L2/1.5 v in place of the old 3.06 and got a stable speed boost. The chips on ebay were 20 bucks for a pair shipping. The service manual on manafacturers website will explain how to swap cpu's. it is really just picking the correct processor that is hard. Pop off the stock HeatSink,pop the latche, match the chip in slot with mark, drop in slowly,reset the latch,pop in your HS and fire her up. The chips for older models are cheap enough and depending on your series computer you can get a nice boost in speed really cheap.