Overclocking Unlocked Multiplier

What's the big advantage of having an unlocked multiplier? Is the overclocking process simplified? Are the overclocking limits simply higher than that of locked multipliers?

I have a 3GHz Phenom II X2 545. Since it is not a Black Edition, it does not have an unlocked multiplier. I'm thinking of investing in an ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro so that I can overclock, as my current stock cooler is a bit too hot. (idles at 45°C)

I have a Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H AM3 board with ACC (but my extra cores are faulty, unfortunately, so it's useless). I have a very limited budget.

Also, would it be correct of me to sum up the overclocking process as "tweaking and managing the core frequency, FSB frequency, and VCore?" Because that's pretty much what I've found when looking up how to do it. Also, are there any exact formulas which would tell me what to set what at? (say, if I wanted to up it to 3.7GHz)

 

I'm horrible at explaining, so I will leave that to someone else, however an idle of 45C, while a little high, isn't too bad. My 6000+ (which admittedly is a 129W TDP processor) idles at 35-41C with a Freezer 7 Pro.

I was going to attempt to go into some detail about overclocking, but I cannot brain today. You can work out what the result will be, however. For example, my 6000+ runs at 3ghz. The bus speed is 200mhz, and the multiplier is x15. If I bumped the bus speed up to, say, 222mhz, this would then resolve to a higher core speed, in this case 3.33ghz. This would have the knock on effect of making my RAM run a little faster, to 888mhz from the stock 800mhz.

Having an unlocked multiplier takes the RAM and such out of the equation. If I were able to knock my multi from x15 to x16, my CPU would run at 3.2ghz, or 3.4ghz if I took it to x17.

You often have to raise the voltages going to the processor when overclocking. This is because the processor is running a higher amount of cycles, and the voltage required for your processor to register this needs to be higher. How much by and when varies from processor to processor, but on bigger overclocks, it's usually a given.

I'm bad at explaining, someone else take over.

 

You can bump up the multplier instead of upping the clocks. In other words, overclocking becomes much easier since the FSB wall(or w/e they call it now) is now eliminated.

 

It's much easier. You don't have to worry about the whole memory divider thing for starters, which makes the whole process easier to understand (well it did for me anyway!). Traditionally it was better to overclock with a low multiplier and higher FSB, because that way you also increased the speed at which the CPU communicated with the rest of the system. That's no longer an issue because of hypertransport etc, so overclocking using just the multiplier is just as good.

For a black edition, reaching 3.7Ghz is as simple as pushing the multiplier up to 18.5x and tweaking the voltage to get it stable with as few volts as possible.

With a non-BE CPU you are stuck with the multiplier you paid for, which is 15x in your case. You'll have to push the core clock speed up to about 245Mhz to get there; I've no idea if that's possible or not, have a google and see what other people have managed and what voltage they had to use etc.

With voltages check AMD's max for the CPU, then check forums and find out what everyone else has decided the max is. There's usually a specific voltage you should stick below if you want to use the overclock 24/7.

 

It only becomes easier if the FSB wall is limiting your overclock, which it doesn't really with i7 processors.

 

If you are using extreme cooling RAM can get in the way, so can the QPI on the i7 9xx.

For normal people an unlocked multiplier is only good if you have cheap slow ram like DDR3 1066mhz which can't be overclocked at all. Then again the price difference for RAM of that speed and some mid ranged sticks at 1600mhz is reletively small. Only when you get something like 2000mhz+ would it become pricey.