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OCing the 3000+ Article Discussion

great article. This is most likely what i'm gonna buy in the upcoming days
Do you think a A64 2800+ could achieve a similar OC?
 
Great news and article!

While i may be laughed out with this comment/request... especially since its the first reply...

What kind of heat are we talking about when overclocking this processor? I would love to know what kind of overclocking can be done with both stock as well as cheaper aftermarket fans on this processor. Some of us on very cheap budgets and/or lack of ingenuity can't/won't be able to water cool the CPU, but still enjoy doing the little they can to tweak their PC's. I could of course try it myself (which i will) but im still trying to save up the cash to be able to get a 64. :) Also any chance of trying a 64 2.8+ and see how she does?
 
I just got home from work, and am about to plug up my Athlon 64 3000+ that came yesterday. I have Corsair 3200 as well, so I am hoping for similar results. Just a note, I went with the Chaintech nForce 3 250 board. I considered getting the similarly priced Abit board, but...frankly, I don't want to touch a Via product. There's alot of rumors going around about problems with the AGP/PCI lock at the KT800Pro, and to be honest, I didn't feel like getting stuck with a crappy product from VIA.

Kyle, if you have any comments, I'd be glad to hear 'em. Perhaps most specifically with regards to nForce 3.
 
Koslov said:
great article. This is most likely what i'm gonna buy in the upcoming days
Do you think a A64 2800+ could achieve a similar OC?
Click to expand...


I dont KNOW, but I would guess YES. I will share information as I get it.
 
Maybe the mobile 2800+ thats 1.6Ghz and 1mb cache at the same price as the 3000+ ... :)
that would be nice even if it didn't clock quite that high.
 
The DarkBlade said:
There's alot of rumors going around about problems with the AGP/PCI lock at the KT800Pro, and to be honest, I didn't feel like getting stuck with a crappy product from VIA. .
Click to expand...

The article states that this will be fixed in the next BIOS release :)

Kyle do you know if this board works with the mobile A64 chips? I know that the K8N Neo works with them right out of the box, but have not seen anything on this board.
 
The DarkBlade said:
There's alot of rumors going around about problems with the AGP/PCI lock at the KT800Pro, and to be honest, I didn't feel like getting stuck with a crappy product from VIA.

Kyle, if you have any comments, I'd be glad to hear 'em. Perhaps most specifically with regards to nForce 3.
Click to expand...


The "problem" with the K8T800Pro is not a hardware problem, it was a documentation problem. The feature was not in the dev kit that was given out to motherboard builders. So now, all the motherboard builders are going back and putting the AGP/PCI lock in. Asus will require a hardware change, but it looks as though ABIT will not. My VIA boards have been AWESOME when it comes to stability although there are some other issues that need to worked on before prime time, but that should all about be done now.

As for the NF3 Ultra boards, the only one I have had that worked right was the Ref sample. I got the MSI board out again last night but I could not get an OS on it. This was NOT a production motherboard, but rather and engineering sample.

So all in all, the boards are coming and I think there are going to be great products on all sides of the fence. We did have our ref sample NF3 Ultra up to 300MHz FSB. :)
 
NeoGodzilla said:
The article states that this will be fixed in the next BIOS release :)

Kyle do you know if this board works with the mobile A64 chips? I know that the K8N Neo works with them right out of the box, but have not seen anything on this board.
Click to expand...

I dont know.
 
Well I have both a K8N Neo Platinum and a Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ 1MB CG revision that DOES NOT work right out of the box. It will post at 4x200 but you must use clockgen to get the proper voltage set in windows. I'm pretty sure the multiplier will work in the bios if you set it to 10 but it will not boot as it only shows .91volts in the bios. I wonder where you read it works. I'm one of the only people I know with the combination. I have searched high and low trust me.
 
infinity9 said:
Well I have both a K8N Neo Platinum and a Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ 1MB CG revision that DOES NOT work right out of the box. It will post at 4x200 but you must use clockgen to get the proper voltage set in windows. I'm pretty sure the multiplier will work in the bios if you set it to 10 but it will not boot as it only shows .91volts in the bios. I wonder where you read it works. I'm one of the only people I know with the combination. I have searched high and low trust me.
Click to expand...

Here
 
Yeah Tedine is returning his MSI because it doesn't work right with the mobiles. He states once early on that he fixed the voltage problem and later concluded that it was only if you don't power the machine down. I have spoken with him about it. It does not work correctly. If you turn off the computer or change the voltage in the bios it will revert to .91 volts. Also sometimes it will not save the voltage change sometimes it will. If it does it will reboot at 2400 (240x10 1.65v) or at 960 (240x4 .91v). This does not work correctly. Booting at 800mhz is a little painful.

Also the .91volts will vary based on what you have it set at. Setting 1.80 volts in bios will result in 1.17 reading in the bios. After you set clockgen for any voltage above 1.45 it will start working at whatever you really have it set at in the bios. Clockgen will only allow up to 1.55 but it just uses what the bios is set at. Setting clockgen to 1.40 and below i believe will set it to 1.40v or below. Honestly it seems like its a hardware issue and not a bios issue but the fact you can get it set at the right voltage at all is encouraging. I don't think there is an easy fix though.
 
I read through that thread at 3AM so I might have missed Tedine saying he was going to return the board. Hopefully the Abit board will work with the mobiles as you can get great OCs out of them.
 
What about the 1.4v and the 1.5v DTR mobiles? are they defaulting to .91 or is it just the lower voltage mobiles.
 
Thats a pretty good article. I do have some questions about the board used and with heat output. How would you compare the feature set of the Abit board with the MSI K8N Neo Platinum? I like the features on the MSI board thinking that it would make a great "highend" HTPC foundation. You touched on the heat issue so I was wondering how hot the OC was? I assume from your comments that your comfortable with the heat, right?
As I alluded to I would like to use something similiar in a HTPC setup (yes, CPU prowess can be a need if you use the right filters ;) ) so heat and feature set would be great to know. Thanks for the great article.
 
NeoGodzilla said:
I read through that thread at 3AM so I might have missed Tedine saying he was going to return the board. Hopefully the Abit board will work with the mobiles as you can get great OCs out of them.
Click to expand...


I think that he may have mentioned it in another forum. The freak has articles going at like 4 different forums about it hahah.

Spammy1984 said:
What about the 1.4v and the 1.5v DTR mobiles? are they defaulting to .91 or is it just the lower voltage mobiles.
Click to expand...

I believe the DTR's are in the same boat. I think they have a different microcode (mobiles and dtr vs. desktop)
 
I'd still like to see what one of These can do ... especially if there is a motherboard that doesn't have the weird low voltage with it.
 
Howdy all, nice review Kyle. Too bad Abit has not at least released the BETA BIOS yet. I considered a VIA socket 754 soloution but the current lack of AGP/PCI lock and the release of the retail MSI K8N Neo Platinum pushed me over to a NF3-250GB MOBO. Hopefully you get a retail board from MSI soon as I would love to see a side by side OC'ing comparison between the two chipsets with working locks. I had a bad time with the K8N initially bit the new v.125 BETA BIOS fixed a lot of issues I was having. I was able to hit 2600Mhz/1.65v with my A64 3000 in a Vapochill PE. I noticed in your article you are using 1.75/1.8 Vcore. In your opinion how safe are Vcores over 1.7v as long as temps. stay reasonable? Do you remember what the break point was with voltage increase vs.Mhz?? Example, on my A64 3000 over 2400Mhz from stock Vcore took about .05v for every additional 50Mhz. And lastly...... at what Mhz do you think the HT link would start to suffer a performance hit?? FYI, the A64 shared common parts with the P4 rig in my sig with the A64 and NF3 MOBO being the only differences.


You touched on the heat issue so I was wondering how hot the OC was
Click to expand...

Temps for the A64's seem to be all over the place. With mine running at 2600Mhz/1.65v the BIOS reported 22c load and 8c idle. What is odd is the fact the temps at idle never dropped past 8c no matter what the cooling head on my Vapochill was reporting. -25c at the head = 8c idle on the CPU?? I don't think so. To add a comparison. My P4 at 4Ghz/1.65v would run at 15~17c load and -2~2c idle. So I have no idea at this point what the actual temps on my A64 were at.

A few screenshots from my A64 fun...


10x260%201.7v%20CBI.gif


7x300%203xHT%20166.233MEM%201.55v%202100Mhz%20Air%20CB.gif
 
Edit: beat me to it :mad:

What video card did you use in the review? You stated that "with the right video card" the combo would be a great Doom 3 box, so I'm sure your preference for this review will have no effect on readers' opinions.
 
does the board come with the via vinyl sound or whatever they call it? I didn't notice a spdif connector on the board...
I'd also like to know A) what vid card was used in the tests and B) how did you have the cooling setup??

good review though seriously considering this for my next upgrade now, but onboard sound is a must.
 
Okay, I'll change my question. Did you use a next generation card for this article?
 
If there's anyone out there that can either confirm/deny that this board works properly with a Mobile 2800+ please make sure to speak up. I think we're all hopeful that the voltage strangeness spoken of earlier on the other mobo doesn't rear it's ugly head here.

I think that there's more than a few of us out there that are on the edge of our seats to know if this will work or not.

Lockable pci/agp mobo and a mobile 64cpu with 1 full meg..... mmmmm good....

If this turns out like I hope then there's going to be quite a few people like me that will be glad they waited until now to make the move to 64.
 
What was the ram that was used?

Also could you do a quick video encoding test against a 3ghz p4. I woudd like to know since I may be building a video encoding rig for HD.
 
P4 almost always win in the encoding tests...but the margin is something like a few seconds though ;)
 
Spammy1984 said:
Maybe the mobile 2800+ thats 1.6Ghz and 1mb cache at the same price as the 3000+ ... :)
that would be nice even if it didn't clock quite that high.
Click to expand...


yes, this looks liek it could be a good chip.. but only time will tell. I was goinf to upgrade from my Peice of crap DFI infinty..to a AN7 or Nf7, but now ill just go with a 64... )

my only concern is that the multiplyer are locked from stock up, and i dont think the board can do a FSB that high to get 2.4Ghz, even if the chip can go that high. your talking about a 300 FSB jsut to get 2.4.... I think we now need to buy a bit higher CPU jsut to get the higher multiplyer option...

But i may be willin to stop at 2.2, just for the 1mb cache...
 
I am thinking of buying a SN85G4. Has any one any experience of OCing this.
Found a good deal here in UK. At this link

Any help would be appreciated.
 
I'd like to see an oc'ed Barton@ ~2400MHz on those graphs.

It would be nice to know how much more performance you'd get for roughly half of what even that OC'ed A64 3000+ rig cost.
 
CrimandEvil said:
P4 almost always win in the encoding tests...but the margin is something like a few seconds though ;)
Click to expand...
well when it takes 2 days to encode a 2 hour HD movie a few seconds isn't going to matter. FPS in movies will though.
 
I really appreciate this article, as I have been looking for another Mother Board to replace my MSI Neo-FIS2R. Many swear by this board and consider it "rock solid;" I've had no ends of problems with it and it took me over a month to resolve all the issues and get it stable. It still gives me the occasional error with Internet Explorer. I think it is a hit or miss product, and unfortunately I've landed a "miss" sample.

Long story short, I'm looking to replace the board. (and then burn it, oh yes, yes, you will be purified by my righteous flame!)

The mainboard pickings are indeed slim when it comes to Socket 754, and I've yet to find a true stand-out amongst the current crop. And OCing? Fuggedaboudit.

So this is definetly what I've been waiting for. I'm running a 64 3200+ Clawhammer - do you think it would overclock to similar levels? I don't even really need it that high, but it would be nice to have the option of bringing it up there.

Please advise.
 
Ruiner said:
I'd like to see an oc'ed Barton@ ~2400MHz on those graphs.

It would be nice to know how much more performance you'd get for roughly half of what even that OC'ed A64 3000+ rig cost.
Click to expand...

Childs play... i agree though, but i think they should graph a Barton @ 2.7 with a 230+ FSB....
 
Also do you know if the "bios issues" in the KV8 pro are also evident in the Abit AV8 939 board?
 
With the release of the new BIOS, will there be an abjustable multiplier? Not just down? I really don't want to spend the premium on PC4000 RAM with higher latencies.
 
Athlon 64's are locked from setting a higher multi. The FX are the only ones that allow any multi.
 
So here are my thoughts on the subject

The lockable pci/agp bus was the major hurdle everyone was waiting for when it comes to overclocking.

Obviously the athlon 64s have some headroom if amd is starting to release newer higher clocked ones.

But there are 2 possible problem areas, and I'm curious what everyone else thinks.

Kyle mentioned hitting a ceiling on the FSB and my guess is that's obviously caused by the memmory controller being on the processor. Won't think cause problems with overclocking, and introduce a lot more heat to the cpu area? I think this is going to impose limitations for real overclocking on this platform. Opinions?

The other possible problem is going to be the hypertransport bus. Is there a way to add cooling to a chip for this like people used to do with the northbridge since it had the memmory controller? How does adjusting the speed of the hypertransport effect overall performance? I don't see this one being as big a problem though since hypertransport already has speed increases planned for soon.


As much as I'm drooling over the athlon 64, I am forcing myself to wait for pci express before I upgrade. I want to setup a raid 5 with my sata drives and that would just crush the pci bus. That and I need to set something to wait for or i'd be upgrading every 4 months just cause new stuff is always coming out and always soo cool.
 
DoubleJesus said:
good review though seriously considering this for my next upgrade now, but onboard sound is a must.
Click to expand...

Abit has displayed little competence in implementing the onboard sound on the boards of theirs I've owned and used. Hopefully the AMD64 platform will pick up the new Intel "Azalia" HD onboard Audio standard, possibly alleviating such problems.
 
what kind of mods did you do to mount a docket 478 HSF onto the althlon...and did you see any benfits over cooling it with water...

im looking to mod my homemade block from my AlthlonXP to fit on the 64...
 
leukotriene said:
Abit has displayed little competence in implementing the onboard sound on the boards of theirs I've owned and used. Hopefully the AMD64 platform will pick up the new Intel "Azalia" HD onboard Audio standard, possibly alleviating such problems.
Click to expand...


did you just ask if a AMD platform will be getting a Intel onboard sound...?

speacking of sound.....im gonna cry if i have to get rid of my Soundstorm...and go back to my crappy Adugity2 with there shitty drivers...
 
Great article wish my CG 3200+ would clock that high, but i think its this K8N holding me back the bios on it is pure crap. hopefully msi will get this ironed out
 
I'm using a 3200+ 2g 1mb cache. I've mad it to 240 x 10 1:1 memory on this board and that seems to be my limit. I havent tried voltage over 1.7 though. I'm using watercooling, a 9800xt and geil pc4000. It will do 250 x 9 but the performance doesnt seem to be as good.
 
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