1st time OC

[Rick26]

I haven't a clue what I'm doing.
I went out and bought a bunch of parts and threw together a new rig.

Antec Sonata Case 380psu
Asus A7N8X Mobo. (rev 2.xx)
Asus V9560 v43045D 256mb vid card ( I know I should have read more)
2x256 meg. mem (No Name el-cheapo)
AMD Athlon 2500+ Barton core.
Stock Heatsink and fan.

I threw everything together and fired it up. Posted fine. Loaded Windoze XP Pro and all drivers everything was good. I checked the system properties and realized I hadn't set the Bios up. (duh) My 2500+ was screaming along at a blazing 1.09GHz. Here's where the cluless part comes in. I set all the bios settings to optimal and the FSB to 200 saved the settings and rebooted.

Now the dumb luck kicks in. I ran CPU-Z and this is what I ended up with,

AMD AThlon XP 3200@ 2205.0 MHz
FSB 200.5
Bus speed 400.9

Memory 200.5 MHz
FSB: DRAM 1.1
Settings 3-3-3-8.

I've been up and running for a week with no problems so far. I also ran Prime 95 for 11 hours and all is fine.

Now the question is, How much more can I expect to get from this setup?

Thanks for reading. And thanks in advance for any and all replies.

Rick

 

[myocardia]

It sounds as if you could get quite a bit more, if you had some decent (Mushkin, Corsair XMS, Kingston HyperX) ram. But I wouldn't expect more than a few more mhz of fsb with "el-cheapo" PC3200 ram. If I were you, I wouldn't change anything more in the bios, except for upping your vcore (processor voltage) to 1.75v. Then, you can use this Windows overclocking utility to raise the fsb. If you go too high, it will just lock up Windows, and all you have to do is hit the reset button, wait for scandisk to run, and when Windows boots again, you will be right back to where you started from: 11x200, which you said is stable. Oh, the link to the ClockGen download page. You will want to download the file named CG-NVNF2, which is for all nForce2 boards. I use that same file, and I couldn't be happier with it.

 

[Rick26]

Odd thing about the voltage. The bios says it is set to 1.65 but all the tests that I ran report 1.72.

I guess that's not too bad? The mobo temp is around 23-24 c, and the cpu runs around 42-45c under load.

Is there any memory timings I could play with?

Rick26

 

[Fern]

Hi Rick, I don't have the same mobo as you. But can suggest you visit nForcersHQ and look under the Asus board section to see how high some have been able to OC. Also should have something on ram timings for you.
nForcersHQ Asusu Forum

 

[Wigwam]

if you're playing, then fine. otherwise you have stumbled on a fine overclock with little hassle. with "el-cheapo" ram i doubt you would be able to tighten the timings too much [6-3-2-2.5 would be a bonus] and i doubt it would make much noticable difference to performance yet risk some instability.
why not leave the ram timings relaxed as they are and squeeze up the fsb by say 5Mhz or so and see if your ram takes it?

BTW you certainly dont sound like you "havent a clue"

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Wigwam
BTW you certainly dont sound like you "havent a clue"

My thoughts exactly! When was the last time you remember someone who called themselves a newbie give us all of the relevant info in their first post? Yeah, I don't remember that ever happening either.

 

[Wigwam]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Wigwam
BTW you certainly dont sound like you "havent a clue"

My thoughts exactly! When was the last time you remember someone who called themselves a newbie give us all of the relevant info in their first post? Yeah, I don't remember that ever happening either.

not only that but he knew to have CPU-Z and test with Prime95...

 

[Rick26]

OOPS. Sorry bout that.
(my newbie is showing)

 

[Rick26]

I guess some people really do read.

This is my first OC . Thanks a lot guys for the comments. Most times I just sit back and read all the articles and forums. There is always something new to learn. This is a pretty good place to learn and the search functions work well. I can?t see coming here or anywhere else for that matter and saying gimmie, gimmie , I want, I want. I like to learn all I can by myself.

I?d like to thank you all again for the time you took to respond to my posts. Maybe someday I?ll know enough to be able to answer someone else?s questions.

Rick26