OverClocking AMD Athlon +3700?

[Gun Down]

Well i have a air cooled AMD Athlon +3700 on my backup rig.

Whats the most ill be able to overclock it too?

[.Maleficus.]

Back when AMD was king, the 3700+ could overclock great. I don't know what cooler you're using, but 2.7GHz wouldn't be too far off.

[Spawn-Inc]

having never used/oc'd amd's i would say 3.00GHz is a good target, unless your on stock air, un-modified.

[NightrainSrt4]

Assuming you have a decent motherboard 2.6Ghz seemed about average for that cpu at ~1.45+V.

You won't likely see anywhere near 3ghz on that chip, least not on a basic air setup. The conroe chips are like overclocking gods compared to most chips. A few hundred Mhz was insane on a lot of chips, nonetheless the 1.8Ghz+ I've gotten my e6300 increased by in the past. I don't see him getting anywhere near 3.00ghz on basic air less he has some serious ram and a very nice mobo.

[Spawn-Inc]

told ya i didn't know amd . ya those conroes are wicked chips, got my celeron to 3.1 from 1.6 as you may or may not have known.

[Gun Down]

Thanks guys....

I dont have that good of a cooler i have an Antec Performance CPU Cooler
and hoping to upgrade to liquid cooling

[NightrainSrt4]

Unless you have a lot of money to waste or are desperate for that "cool" factor, your not going to see much gains on that chip. To get past 2.6Ghz on that chip your going to need ~1.7V+ VCore. Even then your more likely than not going to be capped around 2.8Ghz on a nice watercooling setup assuming the chip cooperates and the hardware is up to par.

[Spawn-Inc]

Unless you have a lot of money to waste or are desperate for that "cool" factor, your not going to see much gains on that chip. To get past 2.6Ghz on that chip your going to need ~1.7V+ VCore. Even then your more likely than not going to be capped around 2.8Ghz on a nice watercooling setup assuming the chip cooperates and the hardware is up to par.

serious? wow, not wonder amd sucks so much... and to think 4 years ago i was wanting these x2 chips.

[NightrainSrt4]

They don't suck (currently losing in the performance department but they don't suck).
The Core architecture is just simply great. The new wolfdale cpu's have seen great overclocking potential. The 45nm e8500 has easily reached 4.25Ghz on AIR.

Netburst before it, was ass and needed HUGE clocks to deliver similar performance as AMD's offerings. Because the core was good to high clocks(simply because it was necessary) you could overclock by a bit, but then again it had serious temp issues.

Your just used to the 1Ghz+ overclocks that many of the Core cpu's have reached. 400-600Mhz was a huge amount for older cpu's, and was even unobtainable for generations prior. Take the huge overclocks as a blessing, because it really is ground breaking how high some of these cpu's can overclock as it wasn't the norm a few years ago. Hundreds of Mhz were awesome, now less than a Ghz is simply not pushing the limits of many of intel's cpus.

We are just lucky living in a time where cpu's have hugely shrunken dies, lower thermal output, lower Vcore, and lower power consumption. Things will continue to get better as well.

AMD wasn't always behind in the performance market. One of my old rigs has what was the TOP of the line chip for June 2001, a 1.4Ghz T-Bird. It replaced the 1.33Ghz t-bird as the top performing chip in the high end market. (not to mention this chip smoked the 1.7Ghz P4 that was out at the time). It wasn't till Intel had its die shrunk and clocks raised tremendously that this chip resigned the throne. AMD hasn't always had poor performance, they are just in a slump. No I am no fanboy I simply go with the best performance I can afford. Anything else is retarded. =)

[Spawn-Inc]

thats true, thankfully they are good at the whole price/performance thing.