Overclocking A64 2800+ - Breaking the barrier

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jamesrb

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Jul 29, 2004
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Ok, here are my current settings:
Gigabyte GA-K8NS (nforce3 250)

Athlon 64 2800+ (DH7-CG) - 255mhz HTT x 9 = 2295mhz
Corsair Value Ram - 2295/11 = 208.6mhz (DDR417) @ 2.5-4-3-10 - 2T

Voltages:
1.325v (Prime95 stable for 24 hours)(Load temp = 42 o C, stock cooling)(also stable at 1.30v, but i bumped it up for good measure)

There seems to be a barrier at the 260mhz HTT mark for me. For the following, I moved the memory divider to 14, to allow for plenty of room. Also had a 3x HTT multiplier.

At CPU voltage of 1.5v and a HTT of 260, the Nvidia RAID Bios will appear during boot and hang during the "detecting raid" part. All RAID features are disabled in the Bios and the RAID Bios part does not appear during boot at anything but 260 or greater HTT.

If I bump it up a few more mhz to 267 HTT, then the POST hangs before the RAID Bios part even appears. If I restart several times it will eventually boot/and or let me into the bios (at which point it is stable in Prime95 in a 3 hour test).

At 259HTT, the CPU hits a max of 51 o C, and is Prime95 stable for 36+ hours (longest ive tested it). I tried raising vcore and vcc12_HT, neither of which worked. I find it hard to believe that 1mhz HTT will make my CPU go from stable to unbootable. I think it is something else.

Anybody have any ideas?



Also, I dont feel like starting a new thread, but my memory was getting at max 410mhz which was to be expected since its just Value ram. I heard a suggestion of upping the voltage to 2.7v, which did nothing. I then tried raising the VDDQ by + .2v... This has allowed me greater overclockability on the RAM, but I have no idea what it does so I moved it back down. By raising the VDDQ + .2v, is this likely to fry my RAM easily or is it relatively "safe"? (Theres also a +.3v option, would that be safe?)
 
bump the HTT to 2.5x No performance difference from 3.0 from my experience
 
aZn_plyR said:
bump the HTT to 2.5x No performance difference from 3.0 from my experience
Click to expand...

there are no half multipliers on it. I bumped it down to 2x and it wont even POST, monitor wont come on. I do not think it could be an issue though since even at 3x and 267 it is just getting to 800, which is the spec..
 
Ok, If I turn on the system, change the FSB to something higher than 260, then it will boot into windows fine, I am able to reboot even. If I run prime95 and let it get nice and toasty then restart, i get the problems mentioned in the first post.

Anybody else think the nforce3 chipset could be overheating? It only has a heatsink on it :(
I could pull it off and put some AS3 on it and see if that helps. I have a couple extra 80mm Sunon's laying around, anybody have a good idea for getting it pointed at the nforce3?
 
you should be able to monitor chipset temps. i found that a little 40mm fan did the trick in keeping my k8n neo cool (rarely goes over 30c now)

however, it could be that there is actually a limit of the board at 260mhz.
did you try setting the agp speed to 67mhz?
 
AGP, is set at 66 in bios, and clockgen shows that its locked at 66.78 or something like that.

Any idea how to find which temp is the chipset? Speed fan shows Temp1, Temp2, Temp3, Temp, HDD01, and HDD02.

Obviously HDD01 and HDD02, are the hard drives. I am 99% sure that Temp2 is the CPU.
 
well, im thinking that you mighta hit the wall with your chip. some can only get to 260, where as some can get all the way to 280-90(hopefully that where my 2800+ is :D). it might be your board maxing out too. what kinda power supply do you have, under all the stress, it might droop the vcore. about the ram, whats the stock vdimm? value ram caan usually take +.2V as a rule of thumb. if you have some good cooling, such as fans blowing right on them, they were looking at +.3-4V and youll still be good. as a test, just put your hand on the chips when the computer is under full load or during a prime 95 test that uses large ammounts of memory. if it burns you after a few seconds then it needs fans.
 
all the voltages are good, i am running 259 HTT @ 1.325 vcore... I upped it to 1.55 vcore, and speedfan shows 1.6 and it is still a no go at 260 HTT. Speedfan shows that its running at .05v more than what I set in the BIOS..

For memory I set the divider at 14, so the memory is nowhere near being maxed out.

I do not think it is a wall for the CPU since at 1mhz less I am able to run very cool at below stock voltages.

All that is left is the motherboard...
 
Well, I give up. I reapplied the chipset heatsink with some Artic Silver 3 replacing this stock sticky pad thing and it actually is now showing problems at 257 HTT instead of 260.

I guess I'm going to stop now. Running at 2250mhz @ 1.30v. (Prime95 stable, 41 o C max, stock cooling including the sticky stuff)


From what I can tell most people need 1.5 - 1.6v to run at this speed, and better cooling to get these temps. I bet this CPU overclocks like mad with a real motherboard, but I guess its something I will have to live in wonder about, because I am sick of messing with it.
 
OK, I am back with an update. For anybody running a Gigabyte GA-K8NS, I have the low down.

All of the issues stated above were a combination of 2 problems:

1. F11 Bios - I do not know what it is, but the F11 bios seems to have stability problems around 260mhz. Going to F10 (or the new F12) work much better.

2. Keyboard/Mouse - The motherboard has a problem of randomly restarting during POST. I experienced it at all stock settings where it would go into an infinite loop of reboots. Each time this would happen, it resets the memory timings to auto. Very inconvenient. It only happens with my Logitech MX Duo plugged in on a USB port. I have not tested other keyboards or mice yet. Putting on the PS2 adapters solved the problem 100%.


A few other helpful hints:

1. The heatsink on the chipset is stuck on with the worst possible thermal interface material (other than velcro). Change it, NOW.

2. (With my PSU at least) The computer overvolts the CPU core from .01 at idle to .05 at full load, from what is set in the bios.

3. If the cpu voltage is set to Default (on a 1.5v chip) the board is actually using 1.55v (it then overvolts additional to that as mentioned above). If you change the setting from Default to 1.5, it actually uses 1.5v (+ the aforementioned overvolting). It is frustrating because if you set it to Default, you get higher temps, but Cool & Quiet is only enabled if the setting is Default.

4. This motherboard is stable at HTT up to ~1100 HTT. At default of 200 to 205 I use a HTT multi of 5. From 205 to 255 I use an HTT multi of 4. From 255 to ??? I use an HTT multi of 3.

5. The bios for this board seems to have one less errata stored in the CPU microcode than almost all other Athlon 64 bios. It is possible to swap the microcode with the code from another board.

6. With the latest (F12) bios, the nvraid bios has been updated to v4.59. Considering other boards are now using v4.81, it seems somewhat dated. It is possible to swap the nvraid component with newer versions from other boards.

7. This board is a relatively good overclocker; an HTT of 300 is no problem. It has the ability to set it up to 455 (if i remember correctly), but the max I have tried is 300.

8. In the bios, VDDQ voltage = AGP voltage, Htt_12 voltage (or something like that) = chipset voltage.
 
sounds awesome! How high have you gotten it stable? temps?
 
jamesrb said:
Ok, If I turn on the system, change the FSB to something higher than 260, then it will boot into windows fine, I am able to reboot even. If I run prime95 and let it get nice and toasty then restart, i get the problems mentioned in the first post.

Anybody else think the nforce3 chipset could be overheating? It only has a heatsink on it :(
I could pull it off and put some AS3 on it and see if that helps. I have a couple extra 80mm Sunon's laying around, anybody have a good idea for getting it pointed at the nforce3?
Click to expand...

What psu you running? Maybe the drives spinning up is causing the psu to drop a lot of 12V, meaning your cpu voltage is drooping.
 
Russ said:
sounds awesome! How high have you gotten it stable? temps?
Click to expand...

Well, I have gotten 2.5ghz stable @ 1.55 vcore, but temps were hitting 55 Celcius.

For 24/7 running, I dropped the multiplier to 8 and am running the following:

CPU: 8 x 300 = 2400 @ 1.45vcore (Idle - 33 o C; Load - 51 o C)
HTT: 3 x 300 = 900
MEM: 2400 / 12 = 200 (DDR400) @ 2.5-3-3-10 (1T) (2.7v)

I am using the stock AMD cooler and TIM so I figure a real heatsink would let me get 2.6ghz @ 1.6... Even some AS5 would probably help a lot...


@Herulach
You obviously did not read down to post #10
 
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