3000+ winchester stable @ 2520 but question..

[mindgam3]

I decided to play around with my new 3000+ 939 chip on my asus A8V de motherboard and ran prime95 all night with no errors. Im new to overclocking i read how to do it on the forums here last night (very helpfull forums) .. My one question is because i am doing 280fsb x 9x multi i had to choose the limit on ram and chose the 3/2 limiter on my motherboard. Does this mean im running 280 * 0.66 = 184 ?? How much will that hurt my performance? , and is that what the 3/2 limiter is doing? i have 1:1 , 5:3 , 3:2, 2:5 .
Any help or opinions would be appreciated thanks!

 

[Vette73]

Don;t worry abotu ram speed as much as the CPU's Mhz. AMD chips don;t need all the ram speed like the P4's do. So I doubt you are REALLY losing much. I am sure there are some Syn. benchmarks that may say other wise. But real world not much if any diff.

 

[Appledrop]

use CPUZ to check what speed your ram running at. FWIW, im running my ram at 180mhz with dual channel and performance is very good although in highly bandwidth loveing synthetic apps such as super pi and sandra, performance will be slighly less. You may be able to drop down to cas 1.5 like me, if you are running your ram about 15-20mhz less than 200, download http://home.exetel.com.au/codered/A64Tweaker/A64Tweaker_V0.6beta.zip << a64 tweaker, and apply 1.5 cas, do some stress testing, and also disable 2T timing if enabled, and that should eliminate and in some cases surpass the performance difference caused by lower ram speeds.

 

[mindgam3]

Ok cool , am i correct in thinking i am getting 184 with the 3/2 ram limiter? The bios is weird it shows 1:1 as 200ddr and 2:1 as 400ddr so it has kinda confused me i would think its the opposite.. Its a asus bios btw , i was able to boot into windows @ 190 x9 = 2610 and it seemed stable but i get errors on the prime95 stress test after a few minutes. Thanks for the info!

 

[mindgam3]

Im running cheap kingston pc3200 valueram , I dont even know if its dual channel ?? (Im still learning)

 

[JBDan]

It is dual channel and yes the A8V bios ram dividers are very confusing to most. 1:1 aka ddr 200 is really like ddr 100 on most other boards. 2:1 aka ddr400 with pc3200 ram is like 1:1 on most other boards. 2:1 is stock pc3200 aka ddr400. I have this mobo so try 3:2 divider...boot and run cpu-z and see what your ram speed is. 5:3 will be too high with your 280 fsb speed and 2:1 is definitely a no-go. If 3:2 wont boot or is unstable use the 4:3.

 

[mindgam3]

Yup i used the 3:2 and she is rock solid with 280fsb I tried with 4:3 and it wouldnt boot into windows. I even tried 270 @ the 4:3 settings and it wouldnt boot either.. That would be 0.75 * 270 = 202 right? Or am i mistaking those memlock settings? Ideally i would like to run 280 * 0.75 = 210 but im not sure if kingston valueram can do that yet..
I havent tweeked the memory timings or anything like that yet but it looks like i should get into that soon . What kind of performance does a 3000 chip @ 2.5ghz give you ?

 

[JBDan]

IMO very good performance. Run memtest 86 and tweak your RAM timings. Let it pass around 6-8 times or so then lower timings. Let it pass 6-8 times again till you start getting errors. gluck Do you have cpu-z? It will tell you your RAM speed and your current timings.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Originally posted by: mindgam3
Yup i used the 3:2 and she is rock solid with 280fsb I tried with 4:3 and it wouldnt boot into windows. I even tried 270 @ the 4:3 settings and it wouldnt boot either.. That would be 0.75 * 270 = 202 right? Or am i mistaking those memlock settings? Ideally i would like to run 280 * 0.75 = 210 but im not sure if kingston valueram can do that yet..
I havent tweeked the memory timings or anything like that yet but it looks like i should get into that soon . What kind of performance does a 3000 chip @ 2.5ghz give you ?

At 2.5ghz it will give you slightly better performance than a 4000+ at stock speeds
Nice O/C, 700mhz of free performance:thumbsup: really hard to beat the value of a 3000+

 

[mindgam3]

Ya foresure i was not expecting these results at all!! Although i did stay up all night doing it so im tired as heck at work (tech support ;/) . I have alot to learn about the memory settings and timings , Has anyone been able to get kingston value ram @ 210 ? I think 289 at the 4:3 setting making my ram 210 would give me the best results .

 

[mindgam3]

I found this from another thread
"The system would actually POST with HTT all the way up to 300MHz, the limit of the BIOS config menu. But the hard drive wouldn't boot until I dropped it below 290MHz, and Windows wouldn't load until I dropped it to 280. Prime95 and SuperPi got errors until I dropped it to 270, and I was running the memory divider at 3:2 then, but that put my memory speed around 196MHz or something, so I settled on 260 and 5:3 to get a bit more bandwidth.

Im confused with the asus memory divider , Shouldnt 3:2 @ 270fsb give you 270 * 0.66 = 178.2 ? In this post he states that puts him around 196MHz .. What am i doing wrong with my calculations?

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Your correct, his numbers don't make sense

 

[Appledrop]

mindgam3, the a64 memory dividers are not as simple as 3:2 = 0.66. The frequency divider varies with cpu HTT, meh hard to explain, basically, as stated numerous times in this thread, download CPUZ (use http://www.google.com :Q) and on the Memory tab, it will tell you your memory speed.

 

[mindgam3]

Ok i understand now lol , thanks guys this forum is very helpfull.

 

[richardrds]

Look at the attached Thumbnail at the bottom of the first post on this thread to see how to calculate A64 Mem Dividers, It has a good chart that explains how the A64 does it!!!

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=151373


Look at the attached file at the end of the first post on the following thread, it has a A64 mem divider calculator that does the math for you!!!!

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=149717


P.S. - I verified the numbers from the above chart and calculator with the value that CPU-Z tells me my ram is running at and the numbers are write on!!!!

 

[mindgam3]

Cool nice tool , i calculated my DRAM frequency to be 1620.000000 MHz what does that equate to ?

 

[mindgam3]

Ahh 180
/me thinks he needs to find a way to get it up closer to 200 , i think i might be able to go higher on the fsb if i lower my HTT speed it is currently at the 1000 setting which is set at 4x i think? I was able to boot up at 190 but i got errors in prime95 perhaps at 190 having 4x on my HTT will cause it to give errors? Am i going in the right direction with this?

Thanks

 

[GuitarDaddy]

1000 = 5x
800 = 4x
600 =3x

Use the 800 setting for HTT from 215-255, use the 600 setting over 255

Using the 1000 setting will severely limit HTT


What type of Ram do you have, and what are your ram settings in bios.

 

[mindgam3]

Ok i will use the 3x setting right now its set at 5x , i have kingston valueram @ stock timing settings and 2.8v which isnt even needed since im not even close to maxing my ram since im at 180 ;/

 

[CCityInstaller]

I really doubt that dropping the HTT setting will make a difference on real world performance. I am running an Abit AV8 which is a very picky MB to say the least. My current cpu is a +3200 running @ 2.5ghz (250 x 10) and my HTT is set @ 2X, since 3X doesnt work well with this motherboard. I orginally tried keeping it @ 4X and ran every benchmark (3dmark, Sandra, Super PI, CS:S Stress test), and the results were the exact same as using the 2X setting. 4X wouldnt pass Prime 95 after 7 hrs, yet 2X passed for over 24 hrs when I stopped the test.

 

[mindgam3]

Im not dropping it to gain any kind of performance im dropping it so i can attempt to overclock my cpu more

 

[JBDan]

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=332591
Good amount of info on your board here.

 

[CCityInstaller]

Originally posted by: mindgam3
Im not dropping it to gain any kind of performance im dropping it so i can attempt to overclock my cpu more

Mindgam3, My post wasn't meant to imply that it would help you gain performance. I was saying that dropping it will not not hurt your performance, and that it should enable you to get a higher stable o/c, like it did for me. Goodluck, and keep us informed if it helps.

-Josh

 

[mindgam3]

So i was playing with my system last night for a good few hours , it turns out i have a venice chip and i didnt even know it ,

The more and more i learn about this the more disapointed i am in my motherboard selection.. here are the main problems i have found with my asus deluxe kt800pro ,
1) The fsb speed only goes to 300 .. since my chip is locked at 9x multi i can get a max cpu speed of 2700 ( I have booted into windows at that speed with the lowest memory divider )
2) The memory divider selection and the way it is layed out.. its given in a 1:1 (ddr200) ,4:3 (ddr233), 3:2 , 3:5 (ddr 333) , 1:2 (ddr 400) layout in the memory settings. It confuses the heck otu of me because if i boot into windows with HHT speed of 280 with the 3:2 setting my memory speed using cpu-z is around 213mhz which causes stability problems with my valueram so 3:2 ends up giving me a .75 ratio ... One would think that since i can boot windows at 3:2 i should be able to boot into windows @ 4:3 since that is closer to the 1:1 ratio that the motherboard shows for ddr200 but it wont even post at that setting.
3)With a high HTT speed the performance of the sata raid0 decreases , its not huge but noticable when extracting a 5gig file using winrar it takes 3mins instead of 2.5 .

Thanks for all the help guys overall i am happy with the chip and motherboard as i was not expecting these kind of results at all i was hoping for a 200mhz overclock and im around 700 not bad for a cheap motherboard

Later

 

[Appledrop]

yeah im afraid the via k8t800 chip is not the best ocing platform for a 3000+, i am surprised you managed to get your HTT that high even, mine is very unstable at 270 i think (with cpu, LDT, and memory out of the equation.) Not to worry though you have a great sys