Clockgen for Dummies (I found this very useful)

I'm writing this in response to a query by Ramos in understanding the Bus speeds of the A64 based PC on the NF4 chipset.

Clockgen also supports several other chipsets

Clockgen is a cute little utility that has "special powers".

First you will need the version that is compatible with your mainboard, if your board isn't listed then try the generic one for your chipset.

http://www.cpuid.org/clockgen.php

Once downloaded, unzip it into a folder and run the .exe and you'll see 3 options, click all three.

The rest of this post deals with nForce4 boards only.

The first section deals with CPU multiplier and voltage, the second, Clocks, deals with the bus speeds.

Click "Get Values" and your true bus speeds are calculated and displayed on the clocks.

Moving the HTT slider will demonstrate the relationships between the different bus speeds on the PC. Note that if the PCI or PCIe clocks move when you use the slider, that those clockspeeds are following the HTT speed and are therefore NOT LOCKED.

Moving the slider has no effect on your bus speeds until the APPLY button is clicked. More on this later, leave it be for the time being.

The ability to Lock the PCI and PCIe buses is BIOS or board dependent and also a prerequisite to successful high overclocks. The inability to lock the PCI buses may cause system instability or damage to components.

For purposes of understanding the bus speeds only, this is not important, as long as you don't APPLY the changes which affect immediately the button is clicked.

For those who wish to overclock their systems, a BIOS which supports PCI and/or PCIe bus locking needs to be available, installed and set to locked.

Failing to have the ability to lock the PCI buses means that those buses will overclock along with the HTT speed and they will reach a limit where stability becomes an issue. Any PCI or PCIe component fitted to those slots will be overclocked as well.

The main advantage of Clockgen is that it shows realtime system info in a graphical display which also shows comparisons and relationships of the different bus speeds on the mainboard.

You can play around with the HTT slider and see what happens to the other bus speeds on your PC.

If one of those clocks is set beyond the capacity of your hardware, the PC will most likely crash if the setting is applied , this utility is more than a toy. No harm should come of this however, and the PC will reboot normally I have found.

CPU voltage control is available in the top section, as is CPU multiplier control. A64 CPU's are "top locked" but lesser multipliers can be set.

HTT speed should never go far over 1000mhz, but this won't be reflected easily in clockgen. You need to KNOW what your HT multiplier is to calculate the True speed.

In BIOS, if your HT multplier is set to 4x, you can easily use 250mhz HTT in Clockgen (4 x 250 = 1000). If you use the HTT slider and see the HTT value rise much above   N x HTT = 1000   (where N is your HT multiplier), then you need to reduce your HT multiplier for a stable overclock.

Danger! Will Robinson!

Knowledge must be used when adjusting CPU voltage, as this could lead to overheating or CPU damage. Using Clockgen on my PC, this is impossible because the range of voltage doesn't go high enough in Clockgen to cause damage. I'm not holding your hand, so you'll have to determine that for yourself and at your own risk. Suffice to say, that an accurate CPU temperature monitor in software should be used when messing about with CPU voltage. You also need to know what sort of voltages you can apply with your Specific CPU. Specialist Overclocking forums are a good place to seek that info.

Now have a great big party with that software and get to know your rig. It will effect bus speed changes, CPU multipliers and voltages in real time, you can reach the limits of your overclocking potentials quickly and see exactly what is happening on the buses when you do it.

After you get everything stable and the way you want it, you can effect the changes permanently by setting the parameters in BIOS, or you can just overclock whenever you want by quickly running this lovely little utility.

This is not the be all and end all in overclocking, there is much to consider, Ram timings, Cooling etc. But Clockgen is a fairly easy and informative way to get aquainted with the architecture, whether you use it to overclock or not.


Power saving and longevity of components

Indeed, this program can be used to REDUCE performance and power consumption.

Why? Well, let's say most of the time you are running your PC, it's doing mundane work like surfing the web. There is no need for a massive beast of thing grinding out the Gigahertz...... simply a waste of power and wear and tear on the system.

Use clockgen to find the lowest settings your PC is stable at and set those in BIOS so you boot at low speeds and power usage. When you want to game or sim, up the CPU volts and multiplier and wind the HTT up to a nice little overclock, any wear and tear from the overclock will easily be offset by the lower speeds the pc is running at most of the time.



Cheers!

There must be a CPU voltage control, it's possibly in a hidden advanced option, check the Asus Mobo Forums for your board.
Your Vcore is at 1.1v there which is very low.

PCIe gets locked at 100mhz, PCI at 33mhz. These buses don't run Double Data Rate (DDR) like the system bus so you take them at face value. It's a wonder your PC even works at all if those settings are correct, but they aren't and you've managed to completely baffle me.

How did......... oh, nevermind.

Ok, I don't think clockgen is working for one of two reasons, either you are missing some of it's files in the install folder or your PC is so far out of spec that clockgen won't work right.  
Possibly Cool and Quiet or some other software is dropping the specs automatically?

You can set the bios for auto and it should configure correctly to default values.

You have an AMD64 3500+, I'm guessing it's a Venice core,

DEFAULT: volts are 1.4v, HTT speed is 200mhz, HT multiplier is 5x, CPU multiplier is 11x. PCIe = 100mhz, PCI = 33mhz

Clockgen controls the chipset clocks, voltages and the CPU multplier, which is on your mainboard. The CPU derives it's configuration from the mainboard's chipset parameters.

Here is a very interesting article which exposes some raw truths about the NF4 SLI x16 chipset that the A8N32 uses and it's not all good news.   
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/asus-a8n32-sli-deluxe.html

Found more things:-      It is VENICE ,    whatever that means.

All Bios settings were found in Auto, default I gues.

In Cnfg Freq/V, changed Auto to MANUAL:
"CPU Freq"                           [200] ……up to 500
"Adjust PCIE Freq"               [100] …… going up

In FID/VID,       changed Auto to MANUAL:
"Processor Freq Multiplier"  [8x] ..6, 6.5, 7, 7.5...up to 10.ONLY !
(Yet elsewre shows 11x & clockgen gives current x11 & Max x11)
 --“--        Voltage             [1.425]….1.4625, 1.475, 1.4075….to 1.5625

In CPU Confg:  all grayed out, including
“Current FSB Multiplier         11x,”
“               FSB     -- “ --   Max 11x”
“Able to change Freq :    YES”

In Advance Chipset Settings:
"Grafix Adapter"                       [PciE 1 – PCI -  PciE 2] or
                       [PciE 2 – PCI -  PciE 1]

I chanced it and left the above to MANUAL & rebooted, thus the readings in this foto.

The Vcore now shows 1.47V,  due to Manual settings? Will recheck after defaulting.

Did not notice anything on PCI 33, only PCI Latency Timer [64]

No HTT reference in Bios.

Cool & Quiet & Q Fan Control are Disabled.

What is HTT & FSB? not in depth.

Can you advice whether I leave them to Manual now, & on what changes to make to the figures above for some overlocking to take place. I will carry the responsibility.
I suppose I can always boot the bios & default?
luke

BTW after I defaulted the Bios changes, that "Processor Freq Multiplier"  [8x] shown above stayed so, and the speed of the CPU lowered to 1.6ghz
So back to Bios, changed it to [11x], then Auto again to raise the CPU to 2.21ghz.  MY FIRST UNDER/OVERlock ?

Note this gave CPU 1.6ghz (multiplier 8x)

On this bootup any Auto found in Bios I altered to Manual, the only thing I understood in N.Nick's sientific lectures.

The times I rebooted to Bios, but no Hypertransport multiplier is visible, nor HTT, nor PCI speeds.

Perhaps with other name?

I am posting help on corrupted Clockgen in all overlocking forums.

PS. while writing this, I thought of trying CGen with all in Manual, and presto the right hand one in foto.

I hate to think how much more this will exasperate you.

It showed a slider in full swing, and is that Current 8.06 GHZ ?.

The R/Hand one is after I moved the top slider to my 2.2ghz & the PCI to 100, to much a bit the figures I got the fist time with A8N-sli, the left hand in foto.

Temted to click "Set Values" just for the hell of it, but I do not dare to.

Please see next reply for figures my PC gives in CPU-Z.

<- Left one with A8N-sli  &                                                 right one now ->

this one after I moved the sliders

Open Everest, click Computer from the left side menu and then click "Sensor".

You'll see the CPU, mainboard and video chip temps displayed.

Download Stress Prime 2004 from:

http://sp2004.fre3.com/download.htm

Run a blend test and with Stress Prime and monitor your  temperatures with Everest, write the temps down after five minutes.

Now run Clockgen and select, "get values". Now move the HTT slider slightly up and fine tune the frequency to 220mhz with the arrow buttons on the edges of the slider.

Click "set values". Run the tests as above and write down the temperatures and send the results back here if you like, we'll see if it looks ok. Don't change anything on your PC other than the slider between the two tests. We need to determine the effect of the 10% overclock on system temps.

IF your PC crashes when you set values to 220mhz, reboot and try 215mhz on the HTT, then 210 if it still crashes. The PC could crash because the RAM needs to be tweaked or a number of other reasons.

Don't go over 220mhz yet, report back with the temps.

Note: Stress Prime reports system info saved at bootup or on first run of SP2004.  The second run of SP2004 will report erroneous sys info if you have altered any bus speeds, but the tests will run normally, just dont rely on this sys info that SP2004 provides.