I'm trying to overclock my old pc:
Motherboard: Asus M3A32-MVP DELUXE/WIFI-AP
CPU: AMD Phenom 9500 2.2GHz
RAM: Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel 400MHz

The old system has a nice quad core cpu but it's clock speed lets it down. I'm not after mad speeds for the old thing, I was hoping for 2.5GHz but I'm not having much luck. Everytime that I increase the FSB speed above 210MHz the system fails to POST. I think the problem might be the RAM but I'm no expert (see topic title). My next step I suppose would be to increase DRAM valtages but I have no idea what they are currenty set to or what limits to give myself.

Help!You'll need to set your DRAM speed and latencies to match its advertised specs, or a little below.  Set the DRAM voltage to what it needs, too, which will likely be 1.8V-2.1V for your DDR2.
Then start to increase the bus speed, and CPU voltage if necessary, adjusting the CPU-NB speed too.

Here's a handy guide for your platform, which should explain in more detail.  I could repeat it all here but it's probably simpler to link to the above

Bear in mind that the original Phenoms were not known for being great overclockers, so don't expect fantastic results.  2.5GHz at least should be achievable, obviously depending on your particular CPU, your cooling, and the rest of your system, but again an extra 200MHz is unlikely to make much real-world difference.I recently ( few months ago ) overclocked my older system an Athlon II x4 620 AM3 quadcore 2600Mhz to 2795Mhz in a Biostar MCP6PB M2+ motherboard and I ended up bringing it back to native clock of 2.6Ghz due to the fact that the performance gain was not beneficial enough to be worth the chance stressing aged components to the point of failure.

To overclock my AMD CPU, I increased my FSB from 200Mhz x 13 multiplier to 215Mhz x 13 multiplier and it brought my CPU up 195Mhz, but this small increase of 195Mhz also increased its heat output of the CPU by a good amount with stock heatsink. I added a better $30 heatsink and got my temps down ( when overclocked ) from ( 55C to 60C ) to ( 40C to 45C ), but the 195Mhz increase was not as much of a performance boost as I had wanted it to be.

* Running Overclocked,  It was noticable in slightly faster boot time ( maybe 1.5 seconds faster to get to the logon prompt ) and programs starting /opening up slightly faster when using a stop watch to compare before and after, but the performamnce increase was not like making the older CPU system into a speed demon out of a normally POWERFUL in its DAY, but aged CPU among todays current processing power which is more than 4x more powerful in higher end CPUs than what I have.

Stability testing is important when overclocking as for it may boot up fine and act fine in the Windows Desktop environment, but then you load a game and you start to see issues or it crashes etc. The fastest I got my CPU up to that it would boot from post withouit crashing was 219Mhz FSB x 13 multiplier for 2847Mhz on a normally 2600Mhz CPU. But at 219Mhz FSB which is normally 200Mhz on DDR2 800Mhz RAM, games would crash. I backed it down to 218, and the games would run, but there seemed to be surging between the GPU and CPU to where my frames per second were jumping from 60fps to like 20 fps on timed intervals, so in a game such as World of Warcraft, I'd be on my drake flying and would have surges of moving fast followed by equally timed intervals in which the flying mount would slow, causing a surging like feeling with the game. Lowering the FSB further to 217, then 216, at 216Mhz there was very little surging noticed, and when dropping down to 215Mhz, the game, and all other games ran flawless. So for a few days I ran at 215Mhz FSB for an overclock to 2795Mhz.

I saw some claims of getting +600Mhz out of the Athlon II x4 620 quadcore to 3.2Ghz for the 2.6Ghz CPU, but I was not able to get my CPU to overclock that high and boot. Calum also helped me greatly with my overclocking questions and offered suggestions, but the Biostar MCP6PB M2+ just could not be configured in a way to break the 2847Mhz barrier and remain stable. Maybe with a different motherboard its achievable, but with multiplier maxed out at 13x with no ability to get 13.5 or 14x or more of a multiplier, I was stuck to just an around 200Mhz overclock. Also tried playing with voltages and dropping memory from 800Mhz to 667Mhz to gain some ground to drive the CPU higher, but couldnt get board to post trying suggestions here as well as online with what others have done to find an operational formula that allows the system to boot and run at a fast overclock. My RAM is 2 x 2GB sticks ( 4GB ) Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800Mhz RAM was used in a PRIOR gaming setup of my brothers in which he ran a Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz E6600 at 3.4Ghz with these same RAM sticks and liquid cooling for the CPU. So I know the memory is not the issue.  Here is the reference I saw that gave me false hopes for a sweet overclock... http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/255794-29-overclocking-athlon


I have since started to retire this Athlon II x4 620 Quadcore from my old gaming system with a AM2+ socket and stuffed it temporarily into my new gaming system with an AM3+ socket. My plans are to buy the http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113284 in September, an AMD FX-8350 8-core piledriver running at 4.0Ghz for my new build. (The most powerful CPU my new motherboard can handle ). And to make my original old system functional, I stuffed a cheap AMD Athlon 64 X2 4450B 2.3Ghz Socket AM2 Dual-core CPU into it for just $10 off of ebay.Alas I don't think that my motherboard will allow any real overclocking, no matter what I do the FSB cannot be increased above 210 and the multiplier only goes to X11 (I don't know if that's a CPU of mobo limitation). THANKS for the help though guys, although some of the recommended settings in that guide would have probably recked the computer. Don't forget you don't know how noobish I might be :p

I'm still keeping the extra 110Mhz.Just make sure your temps look good with use of Speedfan a free took to monitor temps. 50C or lower is what you want to be for CPU temp for that AMD CPU. If you are running too hot you may have to replace thermal compound or get a better heatsink to draw the heat away.

2310Mhz isnt bad vs 2200MhzIt's about a 4-5°C  increase at most, up to 64°C but I think that the cooler needs cleaning out. I am considering a replacment cooler anyway as I think that the bearings are on there way out on the current one anyway.

As evidenced by my recent CPU upgrade that seems to have cured my noisy fan problem.


I'm still struggling to understand something though:
The FSB is basicaly the input clock (a pulse provided by an ocsilator on the motherboard)?
The multiplier is part of the CPU that steps up the clock frequency separatly from the north bridge (is part of the CPU)?

How does one go about looking up what the FSB and multiplier limits and default values are before buying a system? (Not that I'm going to, just curious) Quote from: Accessless on July 12, 2013, 04:24:47 AM

How does one go about looking up what the FSB and multiplier limits and default values are before buying a system? (Not that I'm going to, just curious)

It's about a 4-5°C  increase at most, up to 64°C

Thats running too hot and I'd get a replacement heatsink for it asap, and drop your CPU back to 2200Mhz until the new heatsink is installed to avoid killing the CPU.