# Overclocking AMD Sempron 2200+



## somedude (Oct 16, 2005)

Ok, heres the deal, I have a AMD Sempron 2200+, its rated at 166mhz @ 9 mult=1494MHZ

What I want I have done is OCed it up to 190mhz FSB @ 9 mult= 1710MHZ 
It is running at about 105 F at idle and 111 F on 3-D load. If I raise it any more I will experience crashes during intensive gameplay after at least 3 hours, at 199mhz FSB it runs but may crash at idle in roughly 30 mins.

What I was thinking of doing is lowering the 9 multiplyer to 8.5 and upping the FSB to 199mhz to try and get a bit better throughput out of it and keep the heat down. That would be 1691.5MHZ.

My motherboard doesn't support clock speeds over 199mhz so that is why I want to max it out, I'll perform a 3d mark test to see which is better, the higher FSB or the higher Mult.

Let me know if you have any suggestions...

BTW I am running winxp
Maxtor 7200rpm ata/133 120gb, 8mb cache
768mb of pc3200 ddr ram (which is underclocked with my bus speed)
ATI radeon 9600 pro AGP 8X, Overclocked about 10% higher
A lot of fans 

So my question is, "How do I unlock the Sempron?"  

Thanks for any help, Derek


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## somedude (Oct 17, 2005)

Comon, _Anyone _ Do any one you think the higher bus would perform better?

Thanks, Derek


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## somedude (Oct 19, 2005)

Oh comon, plz  Anyone have any ideas.... is it possible!?  

I need to get more memory throughput!


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## wazzledoozle (Oct 19, 2005)

The reason its not stable over a fsb of 166 is because your motherboard probably doesnt have an agp/pci frequency lock. The agp frequency should be 66.66 mhz, and the pci freqency should be 33.33 mhz. Any more/less can really mess things up, since the hard drive controller is connected to the pci bus, you can corrupt the data on your hard drive among other things like breaking pci cards and video cards using the agp bus. You need an overclocking motherboard that allows you to set the agp/pci frequnecy, almost any Nforce2 ultra 400 chipset based motherboard will do that. Also, you will need to increase the core voltage the higher you clock. On a motherboard with the proper oc settings and supporting at least 200 fsb, that chip WILL hit 200 fsb as it is just a re-branded barton core (Athlon xp 3200+)


I would recommend the NF7-S revision 2.0, but they are very hard to find these days. These look like the best options now-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813170144
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813123233
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130512
Google for reviews on each and see which has the best options for overclocking and stability etc.

What motherboard are you running now? There may be some third party bios that allow more overclocking options.


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## M. Mellough (Oct 19, 2005)

wazzledoozle said:
			
		

> that chip WILL hit 200 fsb as it is just a re-branded barton core (Athlon xp 3200+)



There is actually quite a difference between Semprons and Bartons. While Semprons have the same FSB clock as most Bartons (166MHz) their L2 cache (256K) is that of the Thoroughbred, Bartons have 512K. Also even if the Sempron core was more like the Barton's it wouldn't automatically mean it could hit 200 fsb. Among the Bartons only the 3200+ and a restricted number of 3000+'s have a native 200MHz fsb. I would be surprised if the considerably slower Sempron 2200+ could achieve this on its original multiplier while remaining stable. Anyway, higher FSB clock doesn't always mean superior performance considering that the XP 3000+ with 166Mhz fsb is slightly faster than the 3000+/200Mhz, maybe due to its higher multiplier.     

With regards to Somedude's original question: Semprons are "superlocked" which means there is no easy way to unlock them. It can still be done though, if you're willing to tinker with magnifying glasses, filling putty, conductive silver paint and microscopic brushes. Be aware that it's a very tedious task and doesn't always work on the first trial. Or second, or third...

But as wazzledoozle states, if your motherboard doesn't support AGP/PCI locking then unlocking your multiplier is the only way for you to obtain stable overclocks. If you're willing to try it then you may want to have a look at this:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=23010


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## wazzledoozle (Oct 19, 2005)

M. Mellough said:
			
		

> There is actually quite a difference between Semprons and Bartons. While Semprons have the same FSB clock as most Bartons (166MHz) their L2 cache (256K) is that of the Thoroughbred, Bartons have 512K. Also even if the Sempron core was more like the Barton's it wouldn't automatically mean it could hit 200 fsb. Among the Bartons only the 3200+ and a restricted number of 3000+'s have a native 200MHz fsb. I would be surprised if the considerably slower Sempron 2200+ could achieve this on its original multiplier while remaining stable. Anyway, higher FSB clock doesn't always mean superior performance considering that the XP 3000+ with 166Mhz fsb is slightly faster than the 3000+/200Mhz, maybe due to its higher multiplier.
> 
> With regards to Somedude's original question: Semprons are "superlocked" which means there is no easy way to unlock them. It can still be done though, if you're willing to tinker with magnifying glasses, filling putty, conductive silver paint and microscopic brushes. Be aware that it's a very tedious task and doesn't always work on the first trial. Or second, or third...
> 
> ...



No semprons cant be unlocked at all, you can do the powernow mod and use software to change the clocks since you have a Via motherboard. I dont have any links, but do some googling and find out.


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## somedude (Oct 23, 2005)

"But as wazzledoozle states, if your motherboard doesn't support AGP/PCI locking then unlocking your multiplier is the only way for you to obtain stable overclocks."

Ok I unlock the multiplier, raise the FSB, won't that make my computer unstable since I thought the pci and agp speed is based upon the FSB, or is it based upon the multiplier?

What about upping the multiplier and lowering the FSB?, or would that produce some serious heat??

Anyways, my motherboard is this... http://www.biostar-usa.com/mbdetails.asp?model=m7vig+400

It is the pro, it does not offer voltage changes, I was thinking about getting an asus, is it possible that this motherboard locks it automatically without an option?

Also, what is the AGP Skew, it is set to normal right now.

Another thing, my temps are down to 95 F cause of the cool weather  or does anyone here even use Fehrenheit


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## wazzledoozle (Oct 23, 2005)

somedude said:
			
		

> "But as wazzledoozle states, if your motherboard doesn't support AGP/PCI locking then unlocking your multiplier is the only way for you to obtain stable overclocks."
> 
> Ok I unlock the multiplier, raise the FSB, won't that make my computer unstable since I thought the pci and agp speed is based upon the FSB, or is it based upon the multiplier?
> 
> ...



The way FSB/multiplier works is this:
FSB is the speed set on the northbridge of the motherboard which links everything together. Things have dividers/multipliers to change this speed to a clockspeed, the ram runs at twice the FSB because it is DDR; or Double Data Rate.
The CPU then has a multiplier, which multiplys against the FSB to get its clock speed. The multiplier is on the chip itself, so it can be locked to prevent people from buying a low end chip and just clocking it up easily.

Since everything runs on the FSB, raising it over a preset (100/133/166 usually) will also make the chipsets run at their regular multiple of it, which can break things. So running the fsb at 170, the agp and pci bus are running overclocked which can break things.

There is a way to modify Athlon XP's with barton cores to a mode that allows the changing of the multiplier in windows, but I dont have any links to it anymroe and cant find it. I dont know if it would even work for a sempron as they are newer.

If you get a motherboard that supports 200 fsb, you can run your chip at 1.8 GHz. Get a good overclocking motherboard that has agp/pci locks and you can go as far as the chip is capable of.

::edit:: 
I found the mod-
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/guides/unlockbartonwk43/unlockbartonwk43-1.htm
I dont know if it will work on a sempron.

This guy also seems to have found a way to unlock semprons-
http://forums.amd.com/lofiversion/index.php/t40753.html


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## somedude (Oct 23, 2005)

My board is supposedly capable of running up to 533mhz, or technically 266mhz FSB. So how does my motherboard determine how fast the agp will go? Does it look at the FSB or the Multiplier?

And also, what is AGP Skewing?

I also tried to find a program that supported my motherboard multiplier, but no dice, speedfan says it is supported, by nothing matches my numbers on my multiplier. They say they support my motherboard model for bus speeds, because I would like to have throttling to manage heat.

And my AGP is only running at 4x too, my card and motherboard is capable at 8x 

Also, is there something to read my pci and agp clocks and see what they are running at?, just to make sure that there is a need to buy another board?

Thanks again, Derek


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## somedude (Oct 23, 2005)

BTW I do notice my southbridge chip gets real hot when I OC it, much hotter than normal. So I put a large heatsink on it, I can't use my 1st or 2nd pci slot though, although short cards work in it.

And I also just notice my chipset on my 24bit soundcard is hot as hell, maybe I'll listen and throttle it down a little 

Or just put a heatsink on every chipset or hot chip I find


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