Hey Everyone!

[unr3al]

I've read the site so often and never thought of joining the forum (not much of a forum joiner, I think I belong to 4 forums in total now LoL) but I was attracted by the heatsink competition from AMD and HIS and thought why not join since I've been here so many times ;)

I'm a total AMD fanboy (most people actually know me as a.m.d) and I have been overclocking since I fried my Cyrix 233 back in the day
Even though I'm an AMD fan that doesn't mean I'm going to go off on Intel though, I've owned quite a few intel systems in the past (my very first PC was a 100MHz 486DX after all!) and I think people who break down whatever others like/support is simply weak. Just agree to disagree and leave it at that.

My current system:
ASUS 690G M2A-VM HDMI mATX motherboard
3GHz AMD Athlon 2 250 dualcore at stock presently because I'm between motherboards but it has done 3.8GHz so far on my CoolerMaster HyperTX3 hsf.
4x 1GB Corsair XMS2 with latencies locked at 5-5-5-18 due to the motherboard.
1GB Force3D Radeon HD4850 graphics card also at stock, will see if I can overclock it with my new board, I installed a Zalman VF-700CU-LED hsf with RAM sinks.
500GB WD Caviar Green HDD
Gigabyte X4 Red chassis
470W Gigabyte Odin PSU
19" BenQ 8ms LCD
Logitech Media Keyboard
Logitech G3 Lasermouse
2.1ch Microlab V12 speakers

Not exactly state of the art but it does the job pretty fine and I haven't really encountered a game I can't play at decent settings ;)

What games do I play? Thats kind of random lol I play anything from FPS, to RPG, to RTS, to racing games. I hate turn based strategy though. I don't play WoW but that isn't through a dislike in the game/genre but more due to my internet connection and finances that wouldn't be able to handle the strain LoL

[shamrok3]

Welcome!
I personally prefer AMD myself (although my next system is probs gonna be an i5). I totally respect your opinions that pulling down others because of what they like or dislike is amazingly immature. 3.8GHz is pretty extreme for an Athlon, did you fiddle with the voltages and/or install an aftermarket CPU cooler? I'm interested because my OC'ing attempts have pretty much ground to a halt due to lack of understanding in terms of voltages etc...

[unr3al]

Great to meet another AMD fan ;) Yes I did change voltages but that's why I'm actually running stock right now, at the moment my mainboard is about as suitable for overclocking as a slate is for a hard drive; anything over stock voltages and it starts having random spasms at irregular intervals. I used to run my Brisbane AthlonX2 4000+ (it could do its stock 2.1GHz at 1V, 12h Orthos stable!) at 1.35V and 2.85GHz on the stock cooler, but it doesn't agree with my abuse these days My Athlon2 250 runs 3DMark06 at 3.8GHz and 1.45V (stock is 1.35V). The cooler I use is the CoolerMaster HyperTX3, here's a shot of it and excuse the cable clutter, still working on that. Modding underway heh:



The important things to remember when overclocking an Athlon64 is to keep the HT as close to 1000MHz x2 as possible and make sure your memory doesn't limit you. Of course a Phenom runs with an HT of 1600MHz so that should be your target. At 3.8GHz for instance, my memory is set to run at 667MHz in the bios but due to the CPU bus running at 253MHz it runs at 846MHz. And the HT multiplier is set to x4 to give me an HT frequency of 1012 x2. I also found the Athlon64 slightly tricky to overclock in the beginning because there are so many settings, but once you figure out what can actually hamper your performance and limits you can go quite far on relatively basic hardware.

EDIT:
If you overvolt your CPU, I would say keep shy from anything over 1.5V. I have done 1.55V on mine but the temperature was disturbing and you don't see any difference in overclockability at all.