Chris Fay & Jennie Fay’s Webportal

I recently picked up a new AMD Opteron 165 Dual Core 1.8ghz processor off NewEgg.com to replace my Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2ghz. I was amazed at the cost which ended up aprx $30 less than the 3500 was six months ago, for a dual core no less! These things are traveling at lightening fast replacement cycles! This is a bummer though considering my 939 board is now deprecated and my next upgrade will require both a new processor and a new mobo…damn AM2’s!!

Anyhow, my frustration lasted only a moment and was quickly replaced with anticipation regarding the overclocking goodness ahead. I bought this processor specifically for its reviews regarding the magnificent overclocking abilities, and boy were those reviews dead on. I was able to get the stock cpu frequency up from 1800 to over 2600 via the standard 9x multiplier. I had to drop the HT multi to 3 and adjust my memory divider to a 2:3 ratio to maintain < DDR400 levels (I kept bsoding around 199mhz. Apparently my ram doesn’t like overclocking in the slightest).To give you a quick overview of the end result:

AMD Opteron 165 Dual Core
1.8ghz stock. 1.8ghz / 200 = 9x multiplier
Oc’d to 2600mhz (289 HTT/FSB x 9 = 2600mhz)
Final HT = 867 (289 x 3 multi)
Final memory = DDR377 (9/ (2/3 mem divider)) = 14, 2600/ 14 = 185.71 x 2 = DDR377
Vcore = 1.488 (up from 1.344)
Idle temp = 32C
Full load @ large FFT/maximum heat Prime95 for 12 hours = never topped 48C

My Bigwater liquid cooling kit did a fine job keeping the temps under control for these speeds. All in all, I am extremely happy with the results. Too bad my HT freaked out over 290 or I coulda pushed her to 2.7 or 2.8 no problem. Oh well, the computer is BLAZING fast - can’t complain.