Athlon64 3000+: 64-bit at Half the Price

Overclocking Results

One of the questions many are asking about Newcastle is how it overclocks. It will be a while until we can really answer the question of how well the Athlon64 3000+ will overclock. However, we can tell you that early testing is very encouraging.

Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed
Maximum Overclock
Processor:	Athlon64 3000+ 2.0GHz — 512k L2 Cache
CPU Voltage:	1.6V (1.5V default)
Cooling:	Cooler Master Silent K8 Heatsink/Fan
Power Supply:	Enermax 465W
Maximum OC:	2200MHz (+10.0%) 10x220 or 9x239

While we have not been pleased so far with the overclocking abilities of the VIA K8T800 on the Socket 754 platform, our 3000+ was able to reach a stable overclock of 220 (880HT) at 1.6V. The latest Soltek BIOS on the SL-K8AV2-RL also has multiplier adjustments to allow setting lower multipliers on Athlon64 chips. The Socket 754 chips are apparently top-locked, but clever programmers have found ways to choose lower multipliers. Using a 9.0 multiplier, we were able to boot in Windows XP and run a few basic tests at a setting of 9x239. It is too early to draw hard conclusions about the overclocking ability of the 3000+, but these results, compared to our testing of the 3200+, are pretty impressive.