Tyan Tomkat K8E (S2865) Overclocking

[Connoisseur]

So I have my Opteron 165 and Tyan K8E (that I got from last year's AMD Tech Tour BTW) and it's been running absolutely stable for me since my purchase. However, i'm seeing the relatively low price on all these new processors and I want to avoid pulling the trigger on purchasing a new one just to get a CPU speed boost. I recall that my stepping of the 165 has a reputation for very high OCs on stock cooling and was hoping to get it in the >2ghz range so I don't make a silly purchase. I tried pushing the CPU frequency to 250mhz (with the default 9x multiplier from the opteron) to what I hoped would be a safe 2.2 ghz speed but when I reboot it gives me a repeated long beep, which indicates a DRAM error. When I reset the CMOS to default everything works beautifully again. I haven't tried messing with the DRAM timings or the CPU vCore. Anybody have suggestions on overclocking with this board?

P.S. I realize that this board was meant for stability which it has delivered in spades so far. However, I want to spend the extra savings on perhaps a new vid card so was hoping to get a nice stable overclock.

 

[praeses]

I do not know the specifics of that motherboard but I believe you're going to hit the bus limitation of those chips. You should keep the HTT Close to stock, ie 1000mhz, or 200x5. If you boost the HTT to 250, then its 250x5, which is 1250. Try reducing the multiplier if you can in the bios to 4 which should put the net back to 1000mhz. With mine I'm running 267mhzx4 = 1087 or so for the HTT on an ASRock 939DualSATA (hate that name) with the same chip, Opteron 165. The chip churns along at 2.4ghz, but its fairly toasty, going over 60C in my Zalman HD160 case.

In regards to the memory beepcode, chances are its probably right there as well. You should decrease your memory multiplier until you can guage how well your cpu/motherboard overclocks first. I'ld suggest using the 4/6 (133mhz) multiplier to start with. Some motherboards have been known to be buggy with the unofficial 3/6 (100mhz) multiplier. It basically works off your HTT speed or "FSB" if you'ld prefer. at 4/6 and 250mhz HTT you'ld be basically running within spec of pc2700 which chances are you have. Afterwards you can have fun playing with all sorts of timings/voltages to see what provides you with the best balance.

From my understanding 2.2ghz is almost surefire with these chips at stock voltage and usually leaves plenty of room for comfort.

 

[praeses]

I hope you're taking it in babysteps, ie boosting it 5mhz at a time, benchmarking/stability testing as you go. Benchmarking can be incredibly useful as when you can notice when your results start to drop long before you often see stability issues. Its because your system is compensating for few concurrent errors that it can recover from, they are occuring but its able to compensate. Once you notice this, you know you're over extending your system and need to either back it off a bit or need to be a bit more aggressive in voltages/cooling or slacken timings.

A quick check around google, and you'll prolly hit the 250mark that you're aiming for now with that setup but you may need to slacken off to 2T.