AMD Athlon64 3800+ Venice

Overclocking

AMD's Athlon64 CPUs are known for their overclockability. We want to find out now, if that is the case with the Venice as well.
We reduced the multiplier to 11 for realistic results, since most overclockers use DDR500 and faster, a higher memory clock increases performance as well.

2400 MHz is the default clock speed. With settings at default, the board supplies 1.36V VCore to the CPU. Unfortunately it is unclear what the default voltage for the processor is, because AMD lists it as "variable".

Clock Freq.	CPU Clock & Memory Ratio	Voltage	Temperature
2400Mhz (default)	12 x 200 1:1	1.36v	44°C
2436Mhz	12 x 203 1:1	1.20v	38°C
2684Mhz	11 x 244 1:1	1.36v	46°C
2750Mhz	11 x 250 1:1	1.40v	47°C
2794Mhz	11 x 254 1:1	1.45v	49°C
2816Mhz	11 x 256 1:1	1.50v	51°C
2838Mhz	11 x 258 1:1	1.54	54°C
2860Mhz	11 x 260 1:1	1.57	56°C

2860Mhz; 286x10; 1:1; 2,5-3-3-5-1T

Very good results. Even at 1.2V, which is almost 0.2V below standard voltage, it was possible to overclock the processor a little bit. This is important for people who want a silent system.
When overclocking, we could increase the clocks by almost 20%, and this on AMD's top model.

During overclocking the Venice got pretty warm. That's why we reduced water temperature to 25°C (in a normal water cooling system, it is not possible to reach this temperature).
This made a difference. Now, with a voltage of 1.62V, we were able to run stable at 2900 MHz, SuperPi even ran fine at 2950 Mhz. The CPU reached a temperature of 53°C. It might be possible that if the heatspreader is removed, temperatures drop enough to be able to get these results with regular 30°C water cooling.
The big temperature difference between water and CPU suggests that the contact between IHS and CPU core is not ideal, so the CPU temperature rises because heat can not be removed fast enough.


2900Mhz; 290x10; 1:1; 2.5-3-3-5-1T 2950Mhz; 295x10; 1:1; 2.5-3-3-5-1T