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Love your socket 754?

(cf)Eclipse said:
not a huge difference unless you overclock.
Click to expand...
I beg to differ, a 500MHz jump in clock speed can make a big difference depending on what your doing. For example, upgrading from a 3200+ to my 3400+ and overclocking it to 2.7GHz knocked about 10 minutes off of the time it takes to copy a DVD.

Edit: let me add a little disclaimer to this post. I copy only my own DVD's, and for backup purposes only. I've had more than one disc ruined by careless handling over the years, and I would rather not have to re-buy a product I have already purchased because the storage media failed.
 
take note of the last 3 words :p
yeah, there is a difference in some long time consuming things, but overclocking will bring out the most of the newark :D
 
Well, my decision turned out to be a wise one :) I just hit 2.53ghz without even really trying, using the new scythe ninja with -no fan-. Just turned my RAM down a tad and cranked FSB up to 230. Still nice and cool at 34c, 20c cooler and 130mhz faster than the Clawhammer it replaced. I'm going to try for more tomorrow before work, but man, I am impressed. My computer is so much quieter now too, I got the ninja and a VF-900 to replace the turbine stock ATI cooler on my video card. Now the only sound coming from my PC is that of the power supply (which is pretty quiet).
 
Heh - I just finished the installation of my new 200 gb Maxtor hard drives. Staples had them on sale last week for $39.95 after a $5 instant rebate and $50 manufacturer's rebate so I bought 3 - 1 for work and 2 for home.
Since my hard drive at work died and I had a Maxtor 200 gb hard drive I had gotten for my home system from Newegg a few weeks ago I decided to grab 3 of the Maxtors from Staples and install 2 in each system (home and work). I duplicated each primary hard drive onto the secondary drive so I would never again have to worry about a hard drive failure. I couldn't pass on the price since the manufacturer's rebate was good for 5 units per household.
Anyway, I installed brand new Win XP Pro SP2 on each system and I must say they both are honking now. The home system is especially sweet and is running much better now.
I have installed HLDM (my favorite) and just installed F.E.A.R. this morning and played for a couple of hours. Very nice indeed. Just playing on easy difficulty for now until I can get accustomed to the controls. So far, so good. I will say it is quite the psychological thriller and at times makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up - creepy!
Now I just need to download HL2 and I'll be back 100%.

The old s754 3400+ Venice is really running a lot better now that my Frankenstein Win XP Pro SP1 installation on my old 250 gb hdd has been replaced. I'll be looking to oc some more to see if the new OS installation affords me some additional stability. Hopefully I can push it some more.
 
Zarni said:
The 3200+ is on sale at newegg for $45 with the promo code of ---> PPALATHLON

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail/promo031507in/index.html
Click to expand...
Ugh.... I just bought one on Wednesday, a whopping 4 days ago. Oh well, I paid $49 for it, the $4 isn't worth bothering Newegg about. They have treated me well, so I won't complain (not for so little money, if it was $20+, they'd get an email or a phone call).

I just put that 3200+ in my daughters rig yesterday. She had a Sempron 3100+ / ECS Nforce3 combo (from Outpost for $80+$10 shipping) for just under a year now (April 7, 2006). I can't complain, I sold the Sempron 3100+ for $40 to a guy at work (with an Asus K8V SE Deluxe for $25), and spent $49 shipped on this Athlon 3200+. I bumped the Vcore up by %3.1 (the ECS is funny that way, +1.7%, +3.4%, or +5.1%) and have it running at 2600Mhz (11 x 236). So far it has passed 22hrs of P95, she just needs to make it another 2hours and I will stop the test. Anything over 24hrs and I call it "STABLE".

How high have people gotten these 3200+ Venice cores? I run my 3400+ Venice w/an Epox 8NPASLI @ 2650. I had it up to 2750, but decided 2650 was enough for daily use.
 
Well I finally bit the bullet and upgraded. I was still running a Barton 3200+ until the Mobo fried on me. The Caps blew, killed the CPU and took out my P/S. I built this rig for under $200 with a combo of new and used parts. So what do you all think?
 
How high have people gotten these 3200+ Venice cores? I run my 3400+ Venice w/an Epox 8NPASLI @ 2650. I had it up to 2750, but decided 2650 was enough for daily use.
Click to expand...

Well BigMacAttack on here was the first to test the 3000, 3200, & 3400+ and said they all max out about the same spot... ~2.75 depending on voltages, but the did say that it's still better to get the higher ones, just for the multi & stuff.

Well I finally bit the bullet and upgraded. I was still running a Barton 3200+ until the Mobo fried on me. The Caps blew, killed the CPU and took out my P/S. I built this rig for under $200 with a combo of new and used parts. So what do you all think?
Click to expand...

That's a pretty great deal & a nice upgrade. If it wasn't for the ram, I would have said to get a X2 3600+ AMX... but great deal for a rig for under 200!
 
Russ_9502 said:
Well I finally bit the bullet and upgraded. I was still running a Barton 3200+ until the Mobo fried on me. The Caps blew, killed the CPU and took out my P/S. I built this rig for under $200 with a combo of new and used parts. So what do you all think?
Click to expand...

Looks like a nice rig for the money.
I'm having some problems with my 3400+ setup atm - F.E.A.R. was bombing out on me yesterday on difficult mode. I checked the system out and defragged the hard drive so maybe that will help. Otherwise I'll be looking at the ram since it seems to always give me a memory error. I'm running at sig specs. Looks like its time to run memtest86 again to see if I'm having problems with one of the sticks since I backed it back down the the DDR400 divider and 2T command rate with no improvement. Perhaps its time to try the DDR333 divider on F.E.A.R. The last time I played F.E.A.R. on medium difficulty it sailed right through the game with no crashes.
I got a little cash and a 3000+ Venice awhile back for my 1st 3200+ Venice so I may try installing it and seeing how high it will go. My mobo is goofy though and will not cold boot above certain cpu frequencies so I'll have to play around with it and see what happens. I'm kinda bummed by my 3400+ right now. It use to run 250x11 with zero issues but here lately I've had to back it off a smidge.
As Noobtech has said, all the s754 Venices seem to max out at 2.65-2.75 on air cooling. I've seen some getting 2.8-2.85 but I don't think that's on air. I wish I'd bought the DFI mobo instead of this Abit back when I upgraded but that's life. The Abit has been ok but I think the DFI would have been just a bit better. Such is life.
EDIT
Heh - figured it out. My Sapphire X800Pro has taken to running hot. I did not have ATItool configured correctly and the card was basically hitting the temp threshold and either causing the game to kick out or the system to just shut down. Once I configured ATItool (v2.6) I had no further problems. I like simple fixes :)
 
Recently I had a question about the s754 3200+ Venice's oc abilities. Well, since I just happen to have one of those cpu's I broke it out and put it in the trusty rig to see what it would do. After much cajoling the best I could get it to was 2.61 ghz game stable (HLDM). This was very disappointing to me because the 1st one I had would do 2.7 easily.
I also have (2) s754 3000+ Venices so I decided to swap the one in that I got for $$$ and my old 3200+ Venice in a swap. The guy said he couldn't get more than 2.5 ghz out of it. After getting it installed I went to town and the guy was right. The best it would do was 250x10 (2.5). It wouldn't boot at higher speeds - the Windows welcome screen would just scroll and scroll, so for kicks I gave a good buddy in my gaming clan a call. Mind you, he's not a big overclocker but when I commented that the system would just scroll at the Windows screen and not boot up he said "why don't you try a different multiplier?" Well DUH!!! Why didn't I think of that? Oy vay! So while I had him on the phone I tried the 9.5x multiplier with no success - still no boot up. Then I tried the 9x multiplier and booted it up at 290x9 ((2.61 ghz) and lo and behold it booted right into Windows! SWEET!!!!! I played with the ram timings and cpu/ram voltages a bit and she ran like a top! It even booted into Windows at 295x9 (2.655 ghz) too!!! Unfortunately it wasn't game stable at 295x9 but it sure was at 290x9. I played a good bit of HLDM at that setting and it was perfect; smooth and fast.
Now, being the inquisitive type, I decided to revisit the original 3000+ Venice I bought back in Feb of '06 that started all this serious overclocking madness. I remembered that this chip would do 2.65 (265x10) so I was hoping for a little bit more since I've learned a thing or two since then. I popped it in last night and went to work. I tried the 9x multiplier since that is what the other 3000+ liked and quickly found this chip didn't like it at all - no boot at 290x9 - so I cleared the CMOS, reset it and tried the 9.5x multiplier. Still no go. OK, stock 10x multiplier it is. I set it up at 240x10 @ 1.44v and began. She booted right up no problem. OK now 255x10 - piece of cake. Alright, time to go for the gusto - 270x10 @1.7v (1.4v is stock), ram at the DDR333 divider, ram voltage 3.1v and timings at 2.5-3-3-8 1T, nForce4 chipset voltage at 1.7v and HT voltage bumped 12%. It booted up and I ran Superpi 1M in a best of 33.54 seconds which isn't too bad. Not as fast as my 3400+ Venice but still respectable. I then booted it at 275x10 and tried to play HLDM but it crashed so I backed it back down to 270x10 and played for 3 hours non-stop without so much as a hiccup. That's a 700 mhz (AMD clocks) overclock (2.0 stock to 2.7)! Not too bad if I do say so myself! I'll be keeping this little gem in for a while to give my 3400+ a break.
I was also having issues with my PCI-e Sapphire X800Pro VIVO video card as well. It was running really hot (78-80C under load) while testing with ATItool. When I first got the card it would overclock from 475 mhz core/450 mhz memory to 560/560 which is pretty good but not as good as my work VisionTek AGP X800Pro which does 570/570. Lately the Sapphire card at home was maxing at 550/530 due to the heat issues. I was almost ready to pull the trigger on a used X800XL card or a new vga cooler for the card but then decided I'd pull the card out, clean it up and apply some new heatsink paste to it. Sure enough there was some dirt and debris in it so I blew it all out. When I pulled the cooler off the card I immediately saw what the problem was. The paste that the Sapphire factory applied was hardened and most of it was off to the sides of the core - not much of it was on the gpu chip so I cleaned it all up and applied some Arctic Silver Ceramique paste to the gpu chip, reassembled the cooler to the card and dropped it back in place. Would you believe that just from doing that 20 minute maintenance I was able to oc to 585 mhz on the memory (that's 135 mhz more than stock, 55 mhz more than prior to the cleaning and 25 mhz more than my previous best!) and drop nearly 16C at the same time? The gpu temp never went over 64C during load testing with ATItool. This card uses GDDR3 memory which is supposed to be blazing fast. Well, it is now! This card uses 12 pixel pipelines for moving data while the X800XL, XT and XT/PE cards use 16. The XT and XT/PE cards also run their memory at faster stock speeds but can't oc too well because they are nearly maxed out. I'm going to flash the bios on my card to activate the 4 locked pipelines and then oc the card to XT/PE speeds and I'll have the equivalent of an X800XT/PE card for $0 dollars invested! I'm cheap so I love saving money.
 
I messed around with my 3200+ Venice recently to see what it would do. Its a late '06 manufacture date (0649 - 49th week of '06) cpu. After much cajoling the best I could get it to was 2.61 ghz game stable (HLDM). This was very disappointing to me because the 1st one I had (early manufacture date 0605 - 5th week of '06) would do 2.7 easily.
I also have (2) s754 3000+ Venices so I decided to swap the one in that I got for $$$ and my old 3200+ Venice in a swap. The guy said he couldn't get more than 2.5 ghz out of it. After getting it installed I went to town and the guy was right. The best it would do was 250x10 (2.5). It wouldn't boot at higher speeds - the Windows welcome screen would just scroll and scroll, so for kicks I gave a good buddy in my gaming clan a call. Mind you, he's not a big overclocker but when I commented that the system would just scroll at the Windows screen and not boot up he said "why don't you try a different multiplier?" Well DUH!!! Why didn't I think of that? Oy vay! So while I had him on the phone I tried the 9.5x multiplier with no success - still no boot up. Then I tried the 9x multiplier and booted it up at 290x9 ((2.61 ghz) and lo and behold it booted right into Windows! SWEET!!!!! I played with the ram timings and cpu/ram voltages a bit and she ran like a top! It even booted into Windows at 295x9 (2.655 ghz) too!!! Unfortunately it wasn't game stable at 295x9 but it sure was at 290x9. I played a good bit of HLDM at that setting and it was perfect; smooth and fast.
Now, being the inquisitive type, I decided to revisit the original 3000+ Venice I bought back in Feb of '06 that started all this serious overclocking madness. I remembered that this chip would do 2.65 (265x10) so I was hoping for a little bit more since I've learned a thing or two since then. I popped it in last night and went to work. I tried the 9x multiplier since that is what the other 3000+ liked and quickly found this chip didn't like it at all - no boot at 290x9 - so I cleared the CMOS, reset it and tried the 9.5x multiplier. Still no go. OK, stock 10x multiplier it is. I set it up at 240x10 @ 1.44v and began. She booted right up no problem. OK now 255x10 - piece of cake. Alright, time to go for the gusto - 270x10 @1.7v (1.4v is stock), ram at the DDR333 divider, ram voltage 3.1v and timings at 2.5-3-3-8 1T, nForce4 chipset voltage at 1.7v and HT voltage bumped 12%. It booted up and I ran Superpi 1M in a best of 33.54 seconds which isn't too bad. Not as fast as my 3400+ Venice but still respectable. I then booted it at 275x10 and tried to play HLDM but it crashed so I backed it back down to 270x10 and played for 3 hours non-stop without so much as a hiccup. That's a 700 mhz (AMD clocks) overclock (2.0 stock to 2.7)! Not too bad if I do say so myself! I'll be keeping this little gem in for a while to give my 3400+ a break.
I was also having issues with my PCI-e Sapphire X800Pro VIVO video card as well. It was running really hot (78-80C under load) while testing with ATItool. When I first got the card it would overclock from 475 mhz core/450 mhz memory to 560/560 which is pretty good but not as good as my work VisionTek AGP X800Pro which does 570/570. Lately the Sapphire card at home was maxing at 550/530 due to the heat issues. I was almost ready to pull the trigger on a used X800XL card or a new vga cooler for the card but then decided I'd pull the card out, clean it up and apply some new heatsink paste to it. Sure enough there was some dirt and debris in it so I blew it all out. When I pulled the cooler off the card I immediately saw what the problem was. The paste that the Sapphire factory applied was hardened and most of it was off to the sides of the core - not much of it was on the gpu chip so I cleaned it all up and applied some Arctic Silver Ceramique paste to the gpu chip, reassembled the cooler to the card and dropped it back in place. Would you believe that just from doing that 20 minute maintenance I was able to oc to 585 mhz on the memory (that's 135 mhz more than stock, 55 mhz more than prior to the cleaning and 25 mhz more than my previous best!) and drop nearly 16C at the same time? The gpu temp never went over 64C during load testing with ATItool. This card uses GDDR3 memory which is supposed to be blazing fast. Well, it is now! This card uses 12 pixel pipelines for moving data while the X800XL, XT and XT/PE cards use 16. The XT and XT/PE cards also run their memory at faster stock speeds but can't oc too well because they are nearly maxed out. I'm going to flash the bios on my card to activate the 4 locked pipelines and then oc the card to XT/PE speeds and I'll have the equivalent of an X800XT/PE card for $0 dollars invested! I'm cheap so I love saving money
 
Thanks for sharing your info Mac! I recently purchased one of the 3200+ processors myself from Newegg. I will be installing it in about a month after finals. My 3000+ Venice is chugging right along at 2.61GHz (261x10) on my Biostar TForce 6100 mb. I will be posting my results when I get an overclock I can live with. ;)

P.S. I love this thread!! :D
 
Sounds good Jeeper. Yeah - I've enjoyed messing around with the venerable old s754 platform. The best thing to happen to s754 was the Venice cpu's and the lower prices make it even better! But I must confess the x2 3600+ Brisbane for $65 has me intrugued. Together with an Abit KN9 and some Geil DDR2 800 ram for $140 at Newegg I could build a killer dual core setup for $278. I just can't seem to pull the trigger though since my s754 system is running so well and meets my needs ATM.
 
BigMacAttack said:
Sounds good Jeeper. Yeah - I've enjoyed messing around with the venerable old s754 platform. The best thing to happen to s754 was the Venice cpu's and the lower prices make it even better! But I must confess the x2 3600+ Brisbane for $65 has me intrugued. Together with an Abit KN9 and some Geil DDR2 800 ram for $140 at Newegg I could build a killer dual core setup for $278. I just can't seem to pull the trigger though since my s754 system is running so well and meets my needs ATM.
Click to expand...

Big Mac, pull the trigger!! LoL... well at least wait until after the 9th to make sure you get the best deal possible.. but then they might not have free mobo combo. LoL. I feel like upgrading my wifes rig too (as seen in sig)... she has a 3400+ 754 venice too, but since she only surfs the net... I think she's good and it's fun to keep a rare processor. As for me, I think it will hold me until AMD releases something else that kicks ass to slap in the am2 socket.
 
I'm still running s754, see my setup in my sig.

Actually, what's the best s754 mobo with support for PCI-express video card?

Also, would it be worth upgrading my 3000+ Newcastle to the 3200+ Venice (for about $40).
 
Thanks for the info BigMac, I'll try some lower multipliers on my 3400+ and see if I can get her above 2.7GHz.

Speaking of upgrading, I'm sooo very close to pulling the trigger on an 8800GTS 640mb. I'm just waiting for a next-gen game to come out so I can gauge where my system's bottleneck is, I don't want to be so CPU limited in UT2007 that I'm stuck down at 12FPS with an 8800GTS :p
 
Gusty987 said:
I'm still running s754, see my setup in my sig.

Actually, what's the best s754 mobo with support for PCI-express video card?

Also, would it be worth upgrading my 3000+ Newcastle to the 3200+ Venice (for about $40).
Click to expand...

Well Gusty i'd say if you do get a PCI-e mobo then yes it would be worth it but if you keep that Asus K8V then no it wouldn't be. I have the same mobo in my work system and the VIA chipset is not a great oc'ing chipset - plus that mobo has no AGP lock that I know of.
My Abit NV8 (nForce4 4X chipset) is a good PCI-e mobo. DFI, Biostar, MSI, ECS and EPoX all make good ones as well. Stay away from Asus as they limit the max vcore in bios to 1.55v and that isn't enough when dealing with the Venice cpu's. I also had a bad experience with a Gigabyte nForce4 mobo so I don't recommend them either. Go with either nForce4 or tForce 6100 chipsets and you'll be good to go. There are many good deals on ebay ATM and of course there is always Newegg, ZipZoomFly, Tigerdirect and Mwave. You should be able to find a nice mobo at a reasonable price.
If you already have a PCI-e video card and just want an inexpensive upgrade then go for it, but honestly, as I mentioned above with AM2 setups so inexpensive nowadays it would be better to go that route. The Geil DDR2 800 ram at Newegg at $140 for a 2 gb kit is out of this world cheap (the price, not the ram). It is low latency (4-4-4-12) for DDR2 800 and a $65 Brisbane with an inexpensive mobo is hard to pass up.
 
Unknown-One said:
Thanks for the info BigMac, I'll try some lower multipliers on my 3400+ and see if I can get her above 2.7GHz.

Speaking of upgrading, I'm sooo very close to pulling the trigger on an 8800GTS 640mb. I'm just waiting for a next-gen game to come out so I can gauge where my system's bottleneck is, I don't want to be so CPU limited in UT2007 that I'm stuck down at 12FPS with an 8800GTS :p
Click to expand...

I've had my best success at the 11x multi. It did 250x11 there for awhile but has recently slipped to 248x11. With my Crucial Ballistix ram I can run at the DDR433 divider which means my ram is running exactly 1/10 as fast as my cpu. At 248x11=2728 my ram runs at 273 mhz at 2.5-2-2-8 1T timings. Its outrageous stuff.

Heh - I'm still running my trusty old X800Pro VIVO card and it plays HLDM and FEAR without any problems at all - especially now that its running a lot cooler. I just had the little ATI at 540/540 and it purred right along.
 
BigMacAttack said:
Well Gusty i'd say if you do get a PCI-e mobo then yes it would be worth it but if you keep that Asus K8V then no it wouldn't be. I have the same mobo in my work system and the VIA chipset is not a great oc'ing chipset - plus that mobo has no AGP lock that I know of.
My Abit NV8 (nForce4 4X chipset) is a good PCI-e mobo. DFI, Biostar, MSI, ECS and EPoX all make good ones as well. Stay away from Asus as they limit the max vcore in bios to 1.55v and that isn't enough when dealing with the Venice cpu's. I also had a bad experience with a Gigabyte nForce4 mobo so I don't recommend them either. Go with either nForce4 or tForce 6100 chipsets and you'll be good to go. There are many good deals on ebay ATM and of course there is always Newegg, ZipZoomFly, Tigerdirect and Mwave. You should be able to find a nice mobo at a reasonable price.
If you already have a PCI-e video card and just want an inexpensive upgrade then go for it, but honestly, as I mentioned above with AM2 setups so inexpensive nowadays it would be better to go that route. The Geil DDR2 800 ram at Newegg at $140 for a 2 gb kit is out of this world cheap (the price, not the ram). It is low latency (4-4-4-12) for DDR2 800 and a $65 Brisbane with an inexpensive mobo is hard to pass up.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice! I looked around for the NV8 but couldn't find one in stock anywhere, but what do you think of the Epox EP-8NPA? Is it a good board and do you think I could get max. potential out of a 3200+ Venice with it??

Or would it be better to move to 939 for a future dual-core upgrade?? Is the X2 939 that much faster than an OC'd 754 Venice anyway??
 
If you're planning on moving away from s754, then don't even think about s939. Most s939 parts are getting more and more expensive as time goes by, not to mention that no faster processors will be released for that socket. At this point I would go to sAM2, if you plan on sticking with AMD at all that is.

As far as speed goes, having two cored does offer a noticeable performance improvement. I just picked up a laptop with a Turion 64 X2 @ 1.6GHz, and apart from feeling a little bit more responsive, it also kicks the crap out of my main rig while it's runing anything that's multithreaded, despite being a full 1.1GHz slower.
 
Unknown-One said:
If you're planning on moving away from s754, then don't even think about s939. Most s939 parts are getting more and more expensive as time goes by, not to mention that no faster processors will be released for that socket. At this point I would go to sAM2, if you plan on sticking with AMD at all that is.

As far as speed goes, having two cored does offer a noticeable performance improvement. I just picked up a laptop with a Turion 64 X2 @ 1.6GHz, and apart from feeling a little bit more responsive, it also kicks the crap out of my main rig while it's runing anything that's multithreaded, despite being a full 1.1GHz slower.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm really just looking for PCI-e support and better CPU OC'ing for this system (will be building a new C2D system eventually), so maybe I should just stick with s754, but get a new mobo with PCI-e and better OC controls. How does that sound?

I just want to squeeze a little more life out of my almost-3-year-old computer in the best way possible.
 
I have a biostar tforce 754. The 3400 venice core runs comfortable at 2.6. I bought it because eventually I can move it to some sort of application server, it is a micro atx with an onboard 6100 and 1 pcie16 slot. The pci slot is useless with the x1900xt.

Your only drawback is that it only has two ram slots. So you would be stuck at 1gb. If that is not a big deal you can get a nice second computer when you upgrade.

I looked around, they seem to have become scarce.
 
Gusty987 said:
Thanks for the advice! I looked around for the NV8 but couldn't find one in stock anywhere, but what do you think of the Epox EP-8NPA? Is it a good board and do you think I could get max. potential out of a 3200+ Venice with it??

Or would it be better to move to 939 for a future dual-core upgrade?? Is the X2 939 that much faster than an OC'd 754 Venice anyway??
Click to expand...

Gusty, like BigMac stated in a previous post about different mobo's & staying away from Asus because of a max voltage of 1.55... I am not sure if he meant ePox... because I owned the EP-8NPA and it doesn't allow you to put more than 1.55 volts... so if your CPU is 1.5 stock, you can only add .05... which is crazy because a lot of processor sweet spots are 1.65. It's a great Board if you go SLi, but overclocking will be limited. I had a 3400+ Venice in it and was able to run 2.6 stable, but didn't have enough umph (extra voltage option) to take it further... so I just kept it at 2.4ghz (stock)

But yeah, I ended up selling them recently on eBay to pay for my move to the Brisbane & 2GB Giel Combo.. (It was worth it) haha
 
If the EPoX is voltage limited I wouldn't get it. I've found that of the 5 Venice cpu's I've had (I still own 4 of them) they all require at least 1.65v to really see the good oc'ing numbers. You'll need to play with the cpu multi and voltage to find the sweet spot. My two 3000+'s are different creatures. This one likes the 10x multi (270x10) and 1.7v (1.4 is stock for Venice cpu's) while my other one likes the 9x multi and (290x9 @ 1.7v - it won't hit 300x9 unfortunately). My 1st 3200+ liked the stock 11x multi and so does my present one but the present one won't clock as high. My 3400+ will do 2.75/2.76 on either the 11x or 12x multi but it requires 1.66-1.68v to get there. A lot of the oc'ing potential in the chips is the ability of the onboard mem controller to hit high ram speeds as well. Your oc will not only depend on your cpu but your ram's max. speed. Some guys ditch a "bad" cpu while in reality it is their ram holding them back.
I have a spare ECS mobo that I bought for our youth group because it was advertised as a nForce3 (AGP) board but when it arrived the board in the box was an nForce4 (PCI-e) board. I've never used it yet. It came without the manual but I have looked over the manual online at the ECS website and it looks like it has good voltage options for ram and cpu and has the PCI-e slot. The model number is NFORCE4-A754 REV: 1.0. You may want to give it a look at ECS's website and see if it is something you might want to find. It has 3 ram slots vs. the Abit NV8's 2. I'm going to give it a try one day and see how well it works but I just have not gotten around to it yet. Of course I'll post here when I do install it,
I was bidding on noobtech's 3400+ but it got away :) Glad I pushed the price up for him though. I originally set my bid at $85 then upped it to $90 but I guess that increase to $90 didn't register. Oh well ;)
 
Yeah it looks like that EPoX board is limited to 1.55v.

So then what's the best s754, PCI-e board that is actually still available to purchase somewhere?
 
Gusty987 said:
Yeah it looks like that EPoX board is limited to 1.55v.

So then what's the best s754, PCI-e board that is actually still available to purchase somewhere?
Click to expand...

I looked around and a lot of reviews and from the experience me & big mac has had with lots of 754 mobo's... and you want PCI-Express... You might want to try two things... The ECS Nforce 4 mobo he mentioned above (which he didn't try yet) or a DFI nF4X Infinity... A review of it can be found here http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=206&page=1

I saw one on fleabay for sale for 60 shipped which is pretty decent. The max voltage is 1.85 or something which is high enough... it just doesn't have a gig-ethernet... but you can always purchase one as a pci or pci-e slot type. I know from my experiences with ECS Boards... they don't have as many tuning options in the bios as DFI or other brands, but are still fairly decent. If I had a choice between the two, I would jump towards the DFI board.
 
Yes, the DFI is definitely the best there is. They have LOTS of oc options though so they can be pretty intimidating. Still, you can't go wrong with DFI.
EDIT
I found an Abit NV8 here: http://www.atacom.com/program/atacom.cgi?KEYWORDS=MBA6_ABIT_NV_80&USER_ID=www&SEARCH=SEARCH_ALL
I've dealt with ATACOM and they are ok. They have the cheapest price on the NV8 that I have found. ATACOM also has the DFI mentioned above for even less than the NV8 (!) I am really surprised by this price ($53.95) http://www.atacom.com/program/ataco...&USER_ID=www&SEARCH=SEARCH_ALL&CODE=7857A0406 You can't go wrong with a DFI for $54.
 
Heh

id like to join again, after being out of the 754 club for almost a year (went 939 this time last year) today i slapped some old parts and some new lucky finds together with a cheap ass sempron 3000 on a 754 board :D

didnt try much OCing yet, as i currently have to share power cables with my lil brother, so i only had an hour to play today, but it does boot at 2.25 GHz (9x250) but it doesnt even POST at 2.7 (9x300), big surprise....

once i get some more power leads i can start messing with it big time :D can hardly wait
 
well to be perfectly honest i never was in the club officially, since i havent actually joined these forums till a few months back, but you know, i was a 754 owner!

and as a side-comment, my lil brother still runs 754 as well, and is very happy with it, amidst all the dual core-Dx10 gaming he does his frags on a sempy 2600 with a 6600GT

my previous 754 machine had a asus k8n with first a sempy 2600 (guess where that went ;) ) and later a clawhammer 3400, right now im on a x2 3800+

i have to say, i do love the mobo i picked up for todays build, its an asrock k8nf6g or something, and while its basic and doesnt have mad bios options, it is quite complete, is very compact and doesnt cost shit :D
 
Is that a PCI-e board? We've got a guy in another thread looking for a PCI-e s754 mobo. I found an ABIT NV8 for $70 at ATACOM and a DFI NF4 Infinity at the same place for $54! I remember when those things were ove $100 not too long ago. I just might be tempted to grab one mysel - wellll...maybe not. :) AM2 is so inexpensive anymore it isn't even funny. I can rebuild my system with an X2 3600, ABIT mobo and Geil ram for $278. Don't need to but its nice to know I could do it on the cheap.
 
The EPoX 8NPA SLI has +0.05v of padding, so it's maximum vCore is in fact 1.6v, not 1.55v. I can confirm this through both the BIOS "PC Health Status" screen, as well as with a multi-meter.

It hasn't limited me all that much, once I put a bigger northbridge heatsink on it I was able to get my 3400+ up to 2.7GHz.
 
Unknown-One said:
The EPoX 8NPA SLI has +0.05v of padding, so it's maximum vCore is in fact 1.6v, not 1.55v. I can confirm this through both the BIOS "PC Health Status" screen, as well as with a multi-meter.

It hasn't limited me all that much, once I put a bigger northbridge heatsink on it I was able to get my 3400+ up to 2.7GHz.
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That's wierd, did you get a modified bios or something? I own the board as well and we had a whole thread discussion on this where people were trying everything they could to get passed 1.55 Volts....

LoL, I just looked for old threads and it looks like I was the person who talked of the 8NPA the most. This one is classic...http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=991024&highlight=epox+8npa+voltage
 
BigMacAttack said:
Is that a PCI-e board? We've got a guy in another thread looking for a PCI-e s754 mobo. I found an ABIT NV8 for $70 at ATACOM and a DFI NF4 Infinity at the same place for $54! I remember when those things were ove $100 not too long ago. I just might be tempted to grab one mysel - wellll...maybe not. :) AM2 is so inexpensive anymore it isn't even funny. I can rebuild my system with an X2 3600, ABIT mobo and Geil ram for $278. Don't need to but its nice to know I could do it on the cheap.
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yes it is a pci-e board, but for anyone looking for serious performance i would not suggest it:
1. nvidia 6100-405 chipset means only PCI-e 8x instead of 16x
2. max Vcore seems to be 1.45 volt in my bios, but im not sure if this is cpu dependant
3. Vdimm options are labelled "normal" "high"etc.. a bit unclear

the main reason i got this board is that i needed a pci-e board with a 20 pin psu connector, as i still had a good 400 w zalman around, and didnt feel like paying for a new 24 pin, plus it was quite cheap and has everything i need personally

all in all its a very nice board, but not something i would recommend for anyone with a highish end 754 setup looking to OC and use high end pci-e stuff
 
I've been playing around with lower multipliers, and things look good so far. Thankfully, the 8NPA can take some fairly high FSB clocks, making overclocking on low multipliers fairly painless.

I'm currently at 2.61GHz (290x9), and it checks out as prime stable. This past where this chip fails when running on a 12x multi, so I'm already over the first hurtle.

cpuz2610oq5.png


Now, lets see if I can break my previous 2.7GHz (245x11) overclock :D
 
Unknown-One said:
I've been playing around with lower multipliers, and things look good so far. Thankfully, the 8NPA can take some fairly high FSB clocks, making overclocking on low multipliers fairly painless.

I'm currently at 2.61GHz (290x9), and it checks out as prime stable. This past where this chip fails when running on a 12x multi, so I'm already over the first hurtle.

cpuz2610oq5.png


Now, lets see if I can break my previous 2.7GHz (245x11) overclock :D
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Why not try with your HTT @ 3X? You will be at 870 instead of 580..

OH yeah, are those on stock voltages? That is a nice OC. :)
 
Well, 2.655GHz (295x9) and it wont even boot, time to test out some other multipliers...
noobtech said:
Why not try with your HTT @ 3X? You will be at 870 instead of 580..
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I was playing around at 8x with some uber-high FSB speeds, and I forgot to change it back. Thanks for pointing it out, I'll turn it back up...although I have yet to see how it impacts performance.
noobtech said:
OH yeah, are those on stock voltages? That is a nice OC. :)
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, CPUz is misreporting my voltages, I'm actually running at 1.6v.
 
Unknown-One said:
Well, 2.655GHz (295x9) and it wont even boot, time to test out some other multipliers...
I was playing around at 8x with some uber-high FSB speeds, and I forgot to change it back. Thanks for pointing it out, I'll turn it back up...although I have yet to see how it impacts performance.
Click to expand...

HT Link speed has almost zero effect on performance. Check out this for some more info.
 
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