OCing the 3000+ Article Discussion

Brothernod said:
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.
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i tryed lowering my vdimm to 2.7 and magically i booted up 240htt bus synced. @2.75 vdimm i could not get past the post screen.
 
what do you all think of this featured board, KT800pro vs a NForce3 250? Im now in the market fir a A64 as i just put a system i had extra for sale.. for $450. . ..should be sold by this week...
 
I know waiting for things sucks. But I will wait until Abit puts a fan on the chipset and releases a piece like the nf7 out of the box.

Good review
 
I have the chaintech nforce3 250 (the 100$ board) and I'm only able to get 1:1 220 fsb with kingston hyperx pc3500. I've tried to do a ram divider, lower the HTT and lower the mult, but the system just seems to hit the wall at 2.2ghz. I have the vdimm at 2.9, however, I think I mihgt mess with it again and set it to default voltage and see if that does anything.

Still, 2.2ghz A64 is faster than my mobile at 2.6ghz and, it's just as quiet with out the headache of water cooling.
 
m3at,
I got the same board. It hated on my Corsair, so I got some PC4000 HyperX. I'm typing this at 2.5Ghz. I was not able to get over 2.3 until I took manual control over the ram timings and lowered them. It's very sensitive to RAM timings, and that seems to be an Athlon 64 thing in general.
 
so you brought the ram timings down? what are they at? mine are at 2 -3-3-8. did you lower the HTT also?

Did you notice a difference in performance by lowering your ram timings?
 
well..I've tried everything I could again and it's a no go. I set the mult to 10 (default) and set the ram at 166. I couldn't get it to anything higher than 2.2. I changed the HTT to 3 and still nothing.

I set everything back to defaults except instead of a 4*HT, I changed it to 5* . Does anyone know if this makes a difference? I guess that would put it at 1000 instead of 800?
 
Geezus, I swear choosing a motherboard for this A64 3400+ (CG rev) sitting on my desk is the hardest fricking choice I've ever tried to make.

Abit KV8Pro or MSI K8N Neo Platinum? I keep flipflopping back and forth and visits to BOTH manufacturer forums isnt really encouraging for either one.

And then I have to choose memory on top of that! Arrrrgh!! OCZ 3500EB or 3700EB or Kingston HyperX 3500 or 3700?
 
M3at said:
so you brought the ram timings down? what are they at? mine are at 2 -3-3-8. did you lower the HTT also?

Did you notice a difference in performance by lowering your ram timings?
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I tried 2 5-5-10. I could probably tweak it for lower.

I had mine at 3-3-8 and couldn't get past 2.35

As far as performance differences, I'm not sure, I'll have to run more tests, but I strongly suspect that the extra MHz more than offset any timing reductions. I will see if I can get some performance numbers posted soon.

What I do know is that for a $200 chip this thing is smoking fast.
 
HI,
I am in the same predicament, must have looked at virtually every damn review the the MSI Neo 250, Abit K8V pro and the cheap Chaintech znf-250. And it just seems all so bloody inconsistant. Some people are hitting 220mhz some 240 and other close to 300, and thats with all the boards. Also WTF is going on with Bios these days first the K8V pro and also the ZNF-250. Some reviews state or imply they have multiplier ajustments some state otherwise. If multiplier adjustments can be done why arent they in the first Bios release. And fair play to Kyle and whoever at Anandtech for getting such cool overclock but if the Bios isnt on release, and some of these boards have been avaible over here in the u.k. 6-8 weeks, when the hell is it gonna be avaible?

It never used to be this tough in the p2-3 and ealry athlon days.

Cant believe i am considering getting an MSI cos there is such a poor selection out there. We had machine room at work full of MSI 696D masters with dual 1ghz p3, 40 machines, the last one failed the other day, Caps failed on ever single one. And MSI must have know there was an issue cos my work station had a rev1.2 version of the same board. The difference? The caps were twice the size and Nychicon.

I rest my case.

Sorry back on topic can either M3at or The DarkBlade confir there Bios can chnage the Multipliers, also which Bios version you got and were did you get it cos Chaintech never seem to post updates

Cheers
 
I can change the Multipliers, but only in lower numbers and only with unofficial bios.
 
I(illa Bee said:
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...
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Hes probally refering to the fact that Azalia is supposed to replace AC'97- i.e. the same 16-bit, 48KHz onboard audio standard we've had for the past 7 years. Not the actual intel chips that impliment the standard itself.

Basicly I think we are all wanting our cake and wanting to eat it too :-p now that we have amazingly OCable chips, on the cheap, on a stable mobo (also on the cheap), that are easy to cool and 64-bit capable....now we must have our onboard 24-bit or 32-bit sound :-p.

It will be nice when it happens, but for now this is as good as it gets guys...just plunk down another $70 for an Audigy2ZS...im betting even with that factored in, it still makes the mobo cheaper than Intels new i915/925 chipset based stuff.
 
M3at cheers man very much appreciated. For better or worse you just sold a Cahintech board! You can't ask them to put higher multiplers anyway cos thats hardware locked. Still thats really good new.
You tried putting some active cooling on the chipset heatsink just thinking that it being passive cooled could limit overclocking at the higher ranges you seem to have got.

Also where did you get that Bios from? Is it the one from the Anandtech forum?
 
Cheers M3at , you are a master.

Just placed my order now. Some people are getting some pretty decent clock on that board. Sounds fun. And only £60 here vs £90 for the MSI. And the overclcoking ability of the boards seem about the same.
 
The Chaintech board is cheap, and great. The manual sucks though.

As I've stated before, I'm pretty much sold on nVidia over Via. I probably would have been very happy with the ABit board, but...I had actually initially ordered it instead, but I did a little more research and found a wealth of posts regarding the AGP/PCI lock and canceled my order. I'm glad Kyle pointed up that it wasn't a hardware issue, it was just too late for me as I already had my Chaintech in hand at that point.

Truth be told I don't mind patroning nVidia who seems to have been behind in the video card industry for a while. As long as ATi has competition...
 
when the k8n cooporates its awsome. the only thing holding this board back is the bios. many many peps are getting some amazingresults while others arent.
 
The DarkBlade said:
The Chaintech board is cheap, and great. The manual sucks though.

As I've stated before, I'm pretty much sold on nVidia over Via. I probably would have been very happy with the ABit board, but...I had actually initially ordered it instead, but I did a little more research and found a wealth of posts regarding the AGP/PCI lock and canceled my order. I'm glad Kyle pointed up that it wasn't a hardware issue, it was just too late for me as I already had my Chaintech in hand at that point.

Truth be told I don't mind patroning nVidia who seems to have been behind in the video card industry for a while. As long as ATi has competition...
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I still do'nt kno how you are getting 250x10. I can't get past 2.2ghz :( oh well. 2.2 is still faster than my mobile at 2.6 and runs cooler and quieter as well.
 
Well, answer me this, what are your temps? I am beginning to think the sensor might be screwed up on mine. Get this, it's reading only 29C under load! This is on a copper HSF w/80mm fan. The board itself is actually reading hotter than the CPU. It only gets up to 40 under load.
 
i think alot of the 250gb boards sensors are off. on my kn8 its 16c idle and 26c load i know thats not right
 
my temps are like negative something or other. Chaintech should probably get on the ball and get this fixed.
 
Has anyone given the Epox NF3 250GB a swirl? It's going for $96 at newegg and from anands mobo round up it seemed to be the best OCer of the Nvidia lot.
 
Heh, when I ordered a week ago from Newegg, I looked for the EPoX and it was nowhere to be found. I had an 8K7A which was a horrible overclocker. I took my 1.4GHz Tbird from it and for giggles dropped it in my A7N8X and it was able to overclock MUCH farther on the same voltage. I know alot of people swear by EPoX boards, but I think the draw is if you do extreme cooling because they usually allow for higher voltages than everybody else.
 
Quick question, do you think I could go 11x200mhz on a stock 3000+ mounted on an Asus K8V Deluxe with stock cooling?
I'll have Corsair valueselect, but that shouldn't make a difference as I wouldn't be touching the FSB.

Or is the multiplier locked at less than or equal to 10?
 
Vagrant Zero said:
Has anyone given the Epox NF3 250GB a swirl? It's going for $96 at newegg and from anands mobo round up it seemed to be the best OCer of the Nvidia lot.
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bump, i wanna know also
 
So far, the the EPoX EP-8KDA3+ seems to be the best OCing board (and possibly the best nforce3 250Gb board) for AMD 64's according to this article: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=2063&p=16
And another one:
http://www.epox.com/USA/download.asp?link=2r2y2VR2K3S2A30a0B0cZ00bv02vR22rj10YB1g00Ev23M3R0H0yf03M0dw00de00oG0h03P0wF11dM20T0gh01ct0c10K0Ed10Wc0Q3T00j1F2X0S0H0EZ00mE1r01AR0Z22Nm32Xm23H0F0Rx0K0b3r2&function=download&id=1720


Newegg, at the moment does not have this board yet (they have a stripped down version of the 8KDA3+ called the "8KDA3J") but with the appearance of the 8KDA3J, I'm sure the 8KDA3+ will available for purchase as well. I'm still deciding on the 8KDA3+ or the VNF-250gb from chaintech, but I'm leaning more towards epox
 
The DarkBlade said:
Right now, it seems pointless to have a FSB higher than your memory bandwidth. I dunno, more hard numbers are needed.
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Umm how the hell are you supposed to OC if you dont increase the FSB? If you cant get your memory up 1:1 at least you processor is running faster. With some of the 8x and 9x chips you need a pretty high FSB to get a good OC.
 
How do you guys think this would work:

Hyperx pc4000 1:1 with HTT@250 and 10x multi on a 3000NC?

Would I be better off with corsair xms 3200 with tighter timings and a 3200+ @ say 215 x 12?

Anyone had good experiences ocing the 3200 to ~2.5 ghz?
 
M3at said:
I set everything back to defaults except instead of a 4*HT, I changed it to 5* . Does anyone know if this makes a difference? I guess that would put it at 1000 instead of 800?
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what are you doing...you are supposed to lower the LDT multi for better stability not increase it to get more instability from the way out of spec HT bus.

jeff at XR got the Epox nForce3 250GB mobo...it works fine with his regular newcastle but with his mobile clawhammer it had a lot of trouble booting.

a64 mobiles are not completely unlocked like the FX series...only the lower multis are unlocked for cool 'n quiet to be enabled.

seems like with this new BIOS revision this Abit AV8 could be the killer board.
 
The Chaintech in action....
1:1 IS possible, just drop your timings, kids.
EDIT: I've backed down to 9 x 275 which seems to be stable.

1to1oc.jpg


This is aircooling, BTW :)
 
damm, them some loose timings....

Try some benchmarks... 10x250 titer timings, and your current setings...... all and all, thats a nice OC....
 
I(illa Bee said:
damm, them some loose timings....

Try some benchmarks... 10x250 titer timings, and your current setings...... all and all, thats a nice OC....
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I would like to, but it don't work that way. I ran some benchmarks and basically the only memory timing that seems to make any difference on measured bandwidth in Sandra is the Command Rate (1T or 2T). At 1T, it will NOT let the memory go past 220 MHz. Now 1T over 2T command rate makes a big difference, but 50MHz more at 2T seems to yield about 10% more bandwidth.

At 9 x 275 or originally 278, it runs stable thru 30 loops of 3DMark, but Prime95 still fails out after a while. I'll continue testing, I suspect if I drop back just a wee bit more I will get Prime95 stable. For the record, failing out P95 bothers me, but it bugs me because practical use (gaming) seems to be just fine.
 
wow, i just read the entire [H]ard review on the new intel stuff.....at this point and time, im happy im a AMD guy... a 3000+ clocked at 2.5 seem like it will own everytihg on the intel lineup!
 
I have the chaintech vnf3 250. I also have 1x80 SATA drive. Could this be the limiting factor in my oc?
 
I have another queastion. Is there a difference to overclock the "newcastle" or "clawhammer" cpu?
 
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