ASUS M3A78-EMH - new at OCing AM2 ...

[artless1]

Hi All

I've got the ASUS M3A78-EMH mATX AM2+ board with a Brisbane 5000+

Back with socket 754, I decided to try my hand at AMD64 hardware to go
with the 2 P4 machines I already had in my home office/shop/lounge area.

The P4s beat the the 754 setup hands down, so I stayed with Intel then.

After playing with my ABIT AW9D-MAX + Pentium D940 machine a year,
I decided to give AMD's new AM2 socket and Spider platform a go.

I realize that I need to deal with the HTT system as well as the Bus Speed
when overclocking my 5000+ (not BE), but I got a little disappointed when
the highest Bus Speed I could get to load under Windows was about 245MHz

Of course, as a mainstream motherboard, the M3A78-EMH is a BiiiiiiiT scanty
on the OCing features, I can set minimum VID for the CPU, the RAM clock as
200/266/333/400(/533 for Phenoms), RAM timings, RAM voltage up to 2.2v,
and the Bus Speed from 200 to 300 in 1MHz increments (this is actually a big
win over the MSI 690G I tried first BLEH! none at all, natch ...

So what am I missing besides a better board for OCing? I set the HTT multiplier
to 4X (800MHz) to keep the HTT around 1000MHz with the upped Bus Speed,
but no matter what I try, 245 won't even boot, goes back to default, and a BIOS
message pops up "Over Clock Failed Press F1 To Continue F2 To Reset Defaults"

I appreciate any insight or instruction you can provide me here.

I am using a Scythe Mine HSF, so the CPU temps are no problem...

 

[The Pharaoh]

Even with a bus speed of 245MHz you should have some nice OC options available on that 5000+ such as:
13x245 = 3185mhz
13x240 = 3120mhz
12x245 = 2940mhz
and so on. My non-BE 5000+ maxed out at 2.9 so you probably won't need much more than that. if you have no overvolting option as you implied in your post than you might want to choose another board for OCing but I would think that the board would have at least a small amount.

 

[artless1]

nope - sadly, the only cpu coltage control is to set the min VID

also, there is no option for dropping the bus multiplier, sooo ... 13 it is!

Still, for basically a mainstream/HTPC board it does ok, plus it does

support the Hybrid CrossFireX with the onboard + a PCI-E card ...

that is, it WILL, once ATI/AMD get the drivers out for it