OC'ing an AMD 3500+

it runs at 2.2 stock, right now ive oc'ed up to 2.42, my question is, how high should i be able to go?

2.6 for sure, possibly 2.8 too.


Use this guide (http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1497607&enterthread=y) to find out.

im cooling with air...Venus 12 5600rpm's

ok, so ill try cranking it up some more, i hope my epox mobo doesnt go unstable on me though...

and i almost understood that guide :P ill try it.

What Epox mobo? The 9NPA+ Ultra? That took 3200+'s to 2.8 GHz. One of the best overclockers.

9NPAJ nForce-4

Well, that may hold you back some. I still think it should have no problems reaching 2.6, but the AT guide covers it pretty well.

2.6 as a minimum should be doable with a modern core. Is it a Venice or a San Diego? Both these cores do nice clocks. Without knowing your exact hardware your RAM is going to be what holds you back. Keeping tight timings on RAM in 1:1 sync with your 'FSB' (Read HTT for A64's) is the hardest part. The Athlon will go all day.

You must have high quality ram, you must have a high quality PSU. You need to find out what the most stable BIOS is for your motherboard (read forums of other OCers with the same board) You MUST have sufficient cooling. If its one of the 90nm ~1.4v Venice/San Diego cores they run pretty cool anyway and any decent cooler will do the job.

Follow this guide and do not skip parts, if you want a good OC then follow it to the letter. Its got both the technical information, the tools and the basics on Overclocking an Athlon 64. OCing changes with 64bit AMDS primarily because of the onboard memory controller.

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20823

i just need to figure out everthing, ive got good ram, corsair xms pc3200 (will have 2 gigs in dual channel when it ships on wednsday) so i dont think its holding me back besides the fact that i havent changed the timings or voltage at the moment. also i have good cooling, when i was just trying it out and got the processors frequency up to 2.5 without changing anything else i was still running at 30ºc so heat is not an issue (ive got a xazerIII super tower with 7 case fans, and a venus 12 heatsink).

You don't need to keep a 1:1 ratio. The higher the clock speed, the better, but it's CPU speed that takes the cake. Max out your CPU speed, and adjust your memory settings accordingly.

at least 5.6