Whats the best value OCing cpu? Sempron 3100+?

[Kumagoro]

What is the top AMD dog chip in terms of OCing and value for low amounts
of money? This includes getting a mobo which can do the job and on air.

I doubt that i will need to upgrade the cpu in the future im more likely
to just buy a new set of bits. 64 bit as in running 64bit windows isnt
important either.

So its either a Sempron 3100+ which is £76 approx
or a winchester AMD 64 3000+ which is £104 approx

What typical easy clocks are people getting with these?
Does the 3100+ need messing with to unlock extra cache?

How much are boards which can OC without modding for each of these?
they dont have to be able to get the very best out of them but you know.

Saving money is good as i will be buying two or three sets
(that way i have the same parts available for testing.)

[RoGuE|SaBeR]

All your Winny information can be found here...

Clicky Clicky

[Kumagoro]

Cheers Saber,

I had a read of that and also one in the other "is 64 worth it" thread about the 3100+
sempron. I havent yet found an ocing comparison of the sempron 3100 vs the
2800 or 3000 winnies, I read in the other posts link that a winchester sempron will be
out soon.

Anyone know how true and when?

[RDL]

Get the 3000 Winnie, it is way better. It can overclock to 3800 speeds on air, and will mince a Sempron anyday. Also it has a better upgrade path.

[Kumagoro]

Why do the sempron 3100 and winchester AMD64s all come with HSF now...
are there no OEM ones from ebuyer and the like?

Now i take it from this,

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...3100-oc_5.html

From reading other threads i will need good ram to get a good oc with a winnie 3000

Now does the sempron run default at 166 MHz DDR333? or is it 200 MHz DDR400?
ebuyer classes them as having an FSB of 333 MHz but other places its 400...
Whats that all about?

I wonder which one i can get away with having cheapo ram and getting an OC.
Thats if they are not actually running at the same default clock gen.

Reading other threads it seems using a winnie 3200 is better if you are using duff
ram.

[|{££|"]

xp-m or 3000/3200 amd 64

[Rave]

From reading other threads i will need good ram to get a good oc with a winnie 3000

Now does the sempron run default at 166 MHz DDR333? or is it 200 MHz DDR400?
ebuyer classes them as having an FSB of 333 MHz but other places its 400...
Whats that all about?

I wonder which one i can get away with having cheapo ram and getting an OC.
Thats if they are not actually running at the same default clock gen.

Reading other threads it seems using a winnie 3200 is better if you are using duff
ram.

Well- it depends exactly how cheapo your RAM is. If it's PC3200 you'll be fine. AFAIK all S754/939 A64s and Semprons can run RAM from PC2100 to PC3200. If you set the RAM to run at PC2100 and then overclock the HTT to 300MHz (which can be up to a 50% OC depending on the multi) then your RAM would be running at PC3200 speeds.

You can't enable the extra cache on the Sempron 3100, and decent S939 boards can be had for not much more than S754 ones now (Abit AV8 for example). I reckon the 3000+ Winnie is the one to go for. AMD are due a price cut on Feb 14th so if you can wait until then you might get a better deal; you might also get a wider choice of motherboards and even processors. It's a possibility that AMD will launch some new models at the same time.

Rich :¬)

[Kumagoro]

I will wait and see about the price cuts but i need some clarification on the differences
between the sempron and 3000+ winnie 64. I dont mean features as in more cache
64 bit dual channel etc. I mean when over clocking them, i.e will the settings be
exactly the same for a given mem and hyper transport speed (regardless of cpu multi)

What gives better performance? at a set cpu freq. higher mem or higher
hyper transport? is there an optimal balance?

[StormPC]

3000+ Winnies will beat up the 3100+ Sempron pretty badly in most applications, and it will almost always overclock better.

Sempron=best performance for a cheap CPU
Winchester=best bang for the buck
ClawHammer=best performance regardless of price

Don't really know what your question is Kumagoro, but all of those things matter. You really need to check out some A64 overclocking threads so you can learn how to find the optimal settings for your rig.

In general you always want to run a 1T command rate, your memory at the highest MHz possible (divider doesn't matter since A64s always run ASYNC anyway) and the tightest timings possible. On A64s you always want to run the HT as high as possible, LDT multi as high as possible, etc...

You might approach it like this:

1) Set your VCORE and VDIMM at a place you feel comfortable running them 24/7.
2) Find your RAM's MHz and timing limits (lower CPU multi to 4). (430MHz at 6-3-3-2.5 for instance).
3) Find your HTT max (loosen up memory timings, use mem divider, lower LDT to 2, etc...)
4) Find your CPU max MHz (again set BIOS so DDR and chipset are not limiting the CPU).

Once you find out these things you can play with different combinations always remembering to stay within the limits you discovered earlier. This is just basic stuff. There is much more tweaking that can be done, but these things are what you need to find out first.

[Kumagoro]

What i was trying to say was which chip can i get the best performance out of, for as
little money as possible. If i get a sempron, which is a reasonable price ,will i need to
spend more money on gettting decent ram thus making the savings on the cpu
pointless.

The original barton 2500+ was the best value for money as you only needed that
and cheapo pc3200 ram with a cheap Nforce2 board to get it up to the 3200+
It seems there isnt a well known cheap oc on the amd 64 so im trying to find out
which is.

Reading other similar posts it seems the 3200 winchester gets recommended for cheap
ram. But then the price in pounds for a 3200 is £132 a 3000 is £99 and a semp 3100
is £79. If i spend that extra £50 on better spec ram can i push the sempron above the
performance of the 3200+

for only £20 the 3000 does seem like its worth getting because of the other benefits of
being 64bit and on 939.

What spec ram am I going to need to get a good oc on these? on air remember

[conan]

Not got my winnie yet but another thing to bear in mind is the multiplier. The 3000 has a 9x multi and the 3200 has a 10x multi. So, if you can get a good fsb/ht or max out at say 250Mhz, then 9x will give you 2250 and 10x will give you 2500. NO way to tell until you get your kit and try it but as siad earlie, read the relevant threads and see what results peeps are getting with the different combinations of kit

[Rave]

What spec ram am I going to need to get a good oc on these? on air remember

As I said, it doesn't really matter, although ideally you want at least PC3200. RAM speed does make a difference to the performance of A64 systems but it's not nearly as important as is is for P4 systems because the A64 architecture is much less bandwidth limited. You would have to be running VERY crap RAM to make a sempron faster than a Winnie just through having faster RAM- S939 chips are dual channel which gives them a 100% memory speed advantage, all else being equal.

If you're into benchmarking for the fun of it then fast RAM is well worth the money. In all honesty for normal users it isn't really. Do you really care about the 1 or 2 more FPS you'll get in games if you double the amount you spend on memory? I don't, that's for sure.

Oh, and the HT speed makes basically no difference to the performance of the system. One guy compared the performance of his system running a 1x HT multiplier to a 5x multi and the difference was tiny, again in the region of 1-2%. If you have to turn it down to 3x or even 2x to get a good OC then don;t worry about it, the benefits of OCing will easily outweigh the loss of HT speed.q

Rich :¬)