I purchased an AMD 3500+ Venice with a MSI K8N Neo4 MOBO. My Ram is 1GB OCZ Dual Channel PC3200 (from the old system). This is my second AMD, the first was a 386/40 iirc. So it's been some time.

What are the chances of getting a good OC with stock cooling, and what would be the best steps with this system.

Cheers and Thanks!


PS I should add that CPUZ is showing 2210.1 Core, x11 Multiplyer and 200.9 HTT.

The latest AMD CPUs seem to overclock rather well with stock cooling, until you start to overvolt. Once you crank up the Vcore, the stock CPU generally can't take the added thermal load.

As with any overclock, the best steps are to isolate various parts of the system and stress test them individually. This means using a large memory divider while finding the CPU max, a 1:1 memory ratio or a multiplier when finding the memory max, and a large memory divider and a low multiplier when finding the motherboard max.

Keep your HTT around 1000 (right now you are at 200x5 = 1000).

Thanks Joe!

Very good.
You probably want to drop the HT/LDT Multi down to 4x or even 3x to keep the HT bandwidth under 1000 as Joe said, stick your RAM on the 166 divider unless you know that it's good for 240fsb & start increasing the system reference clock.