There's no doubt AMD has fine tuned its Athlon64 0.13 micron manufacturing process, but even with that said I didn't have much hope for overclocking with the Athlon64 3800+. Without the ability to raise the multiplier, we had to increase the motherboard frequency in order to overclock the chip.

Starting at 200 MHz we began to raise the clock speed slowly. Not surprisingly, at around 207 MHz the CPU started to become unstable and we had to raise the voltage to 1.55V. Continuing onwards, we ran into problems again at 212 MHz.

Raising the voltage to 1.6V solved that. In the end, we hit the wall at 214 MHz motherboard clock speed which equals 2.57 GHz CPU speed. Not bad considering the original Athlon64 3200+ on the same manufacturing process could only hit 2.4 GHz.

During testing we had to lower the memory divider from 1:1 to 5:4 when overclocking. I'm not sure what the problem was, but when the memory was running 1:1 it would blue screen randomly.

PCStats Test System Specs:

processor: intel pentium 4 3.0c intel pentium 4 540 (3.2e) amd athlonxp 3200+ amd athlon64 3200+ amd athlon64 3800+ clock speed: 15 x 200 mhz = 3.0 ghz 16 x 200 mhz = 3.2 ghz 11 x 200 mhz = 2.2 ghz 12 x 200 mhz = 2.4 ghz 12 x 214 mhz = 2.58 ghz motherboards: dfi lanparty 875b (i875p) gigabyte ga-8gpnxp (i915p) gigabyte ga-8anxp-d (i925x) msi k8n neo-fis2r (nf3-250gb) asus a8v (k8t800 pro) gigabyte k8nsnxp-939 (nf3-250gb) videocard: asus ax800xt msi rx800 memory: 2x 512mb corsair twinx 3200 xl hard drive: 40gb western digital special ed cdrom: nec 52x cd-rom powersupply: vantec 400b ion software setup windowsxp build 2600 intel inf 5.10.1012 via 4in1 4.51 forceware 4 catalyst 4.6 workstation benchmarks sysmark 2004 business winstone 2002 content creation 2002 super pi povray sciencemark sisoft sandra 2004 pcmark2002 pcmark04 3dmark2001se aquamark3 comanche 4 x2: the threat ut2003

note, the overclocked results are based upon the (via k8t800 pro) asus a8v motherboard.

SYSmark 2004	Source: Bapco

SYSmark 2004 is BAPCo's latest revision of the mainstream office productivity and Internet content creation benchmark used to characterize the performance of the business client. It is based on a foundation of extensive research into emerging usage models and computing trends and incorporates the latest benchmarking methodologies to evaluate platform technologies. SYSmark 2004 contains scientifically designed workloads that represent the range of activities that an office productivity or Internet content creation work may encounter. In addition with extensive validation across multiple platforms, users can be sure of a consistent and reliable performance comparison.

SysMark 2004
Overall:	Points	Ranking
Pentium 4 3.0C (i875P 200/400)	198
Pentium 4 540 (915P 200/400)	206
Pentium 4 540 (925X 200/533)	203
AthlonXP 3200+ (NF2 Ultra 200/400)	167
Athlon64 3200+ (NF3-250 200/400)	189
Athlon64 3800+ (K8T800 Pro 200/400)	222
Athlon64 3800+ (NF3 Ultra 200/400)	228
Internet Overall:	Points	Ranking
Pentium 4 3.0C (i875P 200/400)	198
Pentium 4 540 (915P 200/400)	225
Pentium 4 540 (925X 200/533)	217
AthlonXP 3200+ (NF2 Ultra 200/400)	174
Athlon64 3200+ (NF3-250 200/400)	189
Athlon64 3800+ (K8T800 Pro 200/400)	209
Athlon64 3800+ (NF3 Ultra 200/400)	212
3D Creation:	Points	Ranking
Pentium 4 3.0C (i875P 200/400)	193
Pentium 4 540 (915P 200/400)	215
Pentium 4 540 (925X 200/533)	207
AthlonXP 3200+ (NF2 Ultra 200/400)	176
Athlon64 3200+ (NF3-250 200/400)	189
Athlon64 3800+ (K8T800 Pro 200/400)	273
Athlon64 3800+ (NF3 Ultra 200/400)	274
2D Creation:	Points	Ranking
Pentium 4 3.0C (i875P 200/400)	227
Pentium 4 540 (915P 200/400)	266
Pentium 4 540 (925X 200/533)	256
AthlonXP 3200+ (NF2 Ultra 200/400)	188
Athlon64 3200+ (NF3-250 200/400)	219
Athlon64 3800+ (K8T800 Pro 200/400)	193
Athlon64 3800+ (NF3 Ultra 200/400)	196
Web Publication	Points	Ranking
Pentium 4 3.0C (i875P 200/400)	174
Pentium 4 540 (915P 200/400)	199
Pentium 4 540 (925X 200/533)	192
AthlonXP 3200+ (NF2 Ultra 200/400)	160
Athlon64 3200+ (NF3-250 200/400)	169
Athlon64 3800+ (K8T800 Pro 200/400)	193
Athlon64 3800+ (NF3 Ultra 200/400)	196
Office Overall:	Points	Ranking
Pentium 4 3.0C (i875P 200/400)	178
Pentium 4 540 (915P 200/400)	189
Pentium 4 540 (925X 200/533)	190
AthlonXP 3200+ (NF2 Ultra 200/400)	160
Athlon64 3200+ (NF3-250 200/400)	177
Athlon64 3800+ (K8T800 Pro 200/400)	200
Athlon64 3800+ (NF3 Ultra 200/400)	204
Communication:	Points	Ranking
Pentium 4 3.0C (i875P 200/400)	184
Pentium 4 540 (915P 200/400)	183
Pentium 4 540 (925X 200/533)	180
AthlonXP 3200+ (NF2 Ultra 200/400)	184
Athlon64 3200+ (NF3-250 200/400)	196
Athlon64 3800+ (K8T800 Pro 200/400)	209
Athlon64 3800+ (NF3 Ultra 200/400)	212
Document Creation:	Points	Ranking
Pentium 4 3.0C (i875P 200/400)	179
Pentium 4 540 (915P 200/400)	196
Pentium 4 540 (925X 200/533)	197
AthlonXP 3200+ (NF2 Ultra 200/400)	170
Athlon64 3200+ (NF3-250 200/400)	182
Athlon64 3800+ (K8T800 Pro 200/400)	215
Athlon64 3800+ (NF3 Ultra 200/400)	215
Data Analysis:	Points	Ranking
Pentium 4 3.0C (i875P 200/400)	173
Pentium 4 540 (915P 200/400)	188
Pentium 4 540 (925X 200/533)	192
AthlonXP 3200+ (NF2 Ultra 200/400)	131
Athlon64 3200+ (NF3-250 200/400)	156
Athlon64 3800+ (K8T800 Pro 200/400)	179
Athlon64 3800+ (NF3 Ultra 200/400)	185

The Athlon64 3800+ performs quite a bit better than the older AMD offerings like the AthlonXP 3200+ or Athlon64 3200+. It looks like office based programs benefit from greatly from the integrated dual channel memory controller. Performance between nVIDIA's NF3-250Gb and VIA's K8T800 Pro chipsets is very close and a "winner" cannot be determined.

The Athlon64 3800+ performed quite a bit better than the older AMD offerings like the AthlonXP 3200+ or Athlon64 3200+. It looks like office based programs benefit greatly from the integrated dual channel memory controller.