A good overclocking CPU and mobo?

[MegaWorks]

Ok I need to upgrade my CPU and motherboard, but I?m planning on overclocking this sucker. Need a good price range for a CPU and motherborad.

I want to keep my X800 Pro AGP video card, so I would like a motherboard with an agp slot.

I have Corsair TwinX XMS 3200LL @ 2-3-2-6 (2.6v) (2x256) 512 MB.
I have fairly good PSU, Antec TrueBlue 480W.
I need a powerful heatsink, I?ll have to look into one of those thermalright or thermaltake sinks.

Edit: I would like to add that I get ~4800 in 3Dmark 05 with the system in my sig!

 

[TraumaRN]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
Ok I need to upgrade my CPU and motherboard, but I?m planning on overclocking this sucker. Need a good price range for a CPU and motherborad.

I want to keep my X800 Pro AGP video card, so I would like a motherboard with an agp slot.

I have Corsair TwinX XMS 3200LL @ 2-3-2-6 (2.6v) (2x256) 512 MB.
I have fairly good PSU, Antec TrueBlue 480W.
I need a powerful heatsink, I?ll have to look into one of those thermalright or thermaltake sinks.

Ack I wish you didnt have an AGP card or else I'd recommend the mobo and processor in my profile....or if you want to be really saavy get a 3800+X2....but for me I didnt have the money and i dont multitask.....and actually if you get a 3000+ or 3200+ venice try and find an E3 venice instead of the E6....supposively E3 overclocks better...Mine maxes out at 305x9=2745Mhz w/ a stock cooler

 

[MegaWorks]

Originally posted by: DeathBUA

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
Ok I need to upgrade my CPU and motherboard, but I?m planning on overclocking this sucker. Need a good price range for a CPU and motherborad.

I want to keep my X800 Pro AGP video card, so I would like a motherboard with an agp slot.

I have Corsair TwinX XMS 3200LL @ 2-3-2-6 (2.6v) (2x256) 512 MB.
I have fairly good PSU, Antec TrueBlue 480W.
I need a powerful heatsink, I?ll have to look into one of those thermalright or thermaltake sinks.

Ack I wish you didnt have an AGP card or else I'd recommend the mobo and processor in my profile....or if you want to be really saavy get a 3800+X2....but for me I didnt have the money and i dont multitask.....and actually if you get a 3000+ or 3200+ venice try and find an E3 venice instead of the E6....supposively E3 overclocks better...Mine maxes out at 305x9=2745Mhz w/ a stock cooler

Wow! This Venice core sounds very interesting. Man I missed all of that, when did this? Venice? core came out?

 

[richardrds]

Best bank for the buck/performance is A64 3000+ Venice Core. These are stock 1.8Ghz but easily Overclock to 2.5-2.7Ghz range on air cooling. The retail version comes with a decent HSF for around $146, the retail HSF will allow you to hit the above OC range.

A good bang for the buck mobo that supports AGP GPU is the MSI NEO NF3, but i will let others chime in here because i have a Abit AV8 which is based on Via chipset (which i would have got a NF3 board, the Via chipset is limiting my HTT bus speed for Higher OC).

 

[MegaWorks]

Originally posted by: richardrds
Best bank for the buck/performance is A64 Venice Core. These are stock 1.8Ghz but easily Overclock to 2.5-2.7Ghz range on air cooling. The retail version comes with a decent HSF for around $146, the retail HSF will allow you to hit the above OC range.

A good bang for the buck mobo is the MSI NEO NF3, but i will let others chime in here because i have a Abit AV8 which is based on Via chipset (which i would have got a NF3 board, the Via chipset is limiting my HTT bus speed for Higher OC).

Mumm.. MSI! I would like to have an ABIT motherboard, man I had lots of fun with my ABIT NF7-S v.2. You say VIA has limited HTT bus!

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks

Originally posted by: DeathBUA

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
Ok I need to upgrade my CPU and motherboard, but I?m planning on overclocking this sucker. Need a good price range for a CPU and motherborad.

I want to keep my X800 Pro AGP video card, so I would like a motherboard with an agp slot.

I have Corsair TwinX XMS 3200LL @ 2-3-2-6 (2.6v) (2x256) 512 MB.
I have fairly good PSU, Antec TrueBlue 480W.
I need a powerful heatsink, I?ll have to look into one of those thermalright or thermaltake sinks.

Ack I wish you didnt have an AGP card or else I'd recommend the mobo and processor in my profile....or if you want to be really saavy get a 3800+X2....but for me I didnt have the money and i dont multitask.....and actually if you get a 3000+ or 3200+ venice try and find an E3 venice instead of the E6....supposively E3 overclocks better...Mine maxes out at 305x9=2745Mhz w/ a stock cooler

Wow! This Venice core sounds very interesting. Man I missed all of that, when did this? Venice? core came out?

Was that sarcasm or how long has it been since you logged in? :shocked:

 

[MegaWorks]

Originally posted by: thecoolnessrune

Wow! This Venice core sounds very interesting. Man I missed all of that, when did this? Venice? core came out?

Was that sarcasm or how long has it been since you logged in? :shocked:[/quote]

Well I stop to care about the CPU/Overclocking thing 2 yrs ago when I upgraded my system with the AMD Athlon XP T-Bred B DLT3C 1700+ @ 2300MHz.

So I'm old school!!!

 

[n7]

I'd recommend the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 (has both PCI-e & AGP), but it has somewhat limited vcore settings.

Really though, for air cooling, the 1.55V it provides is adequate for moderate OCing.

The other choice would be the MSI Neo2 Platinum.
It is pretty much universally regarded as the best s939 AGP mobo for OCing.

Unfortunately though, it doesn't really have an upgrade path for video, since AGP is being phased out.

I'd suggest the Thermaltake Big Typhoon for the heatsink.
If you want something almost as good & smaller, the Thermalright XP-90C would be alright.

For CPU, you may want to consider the s939 Opteron 144/146.
Yes, they do make Opterons for s939, & they don't require anything extra fancy like ECC RAM or whatever.
The Opterons seem to be OCing better than the Venices or anything else lately.

 

[GML3G0]

You can get a Venice 3500+ for $209 from ZipZoomFly.com and you can find an Abit AV8 for less than $100. I've tested the Abit board up to 267 HTT, but haven't tried any further. You shouldn't need more HTT headroom than that, though, seeing as how the 3500+ has an 11x multiplier.

 

[MegaWorks]

Ok I found these two borads which look very intersting:

ASRock 939Dual-SATA2

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum

Which one can produce a highter HTT bus speed, and is it true that the ASRock is limited with vcore voltage?

 

[GML3G0]

The ASRock doesn't offer as much control. I think I read on the AnandTech review that the only DDR voltage controls were "low" and "high." It won't overclock well, but it's good because it has both an AGP and PCIe slot. The MSI will clock MUCH higher.

 

[MegaWorks]

Originally posted by: n7
I'd recommend the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 (has both PCI-e & AGP), but it has somewhat limited vcore settings.

Really though, for air cooling, the 1.55V it provides is adequate for moderate OCing.

The other choice would be the MSI Neo2 Platinum.
It is pretty much universally regarded as the best s939 AGP mobo for OCing.

Unfortunately though, it doesn't really have an upgrade path for video, since AGP is being phased out.

I'd suggest the Thermaltake Big Typhoon for the heatsink.
If you want something almost as good & smaller, the Thermalright XP-90C would be alright.

For CPU, you may want to consider the s939 Opteron 144/146.
Yes, they do make Opterons for s939, & they don't require anything extra fancy like ECC RAM or whatever.
The Opterons seem to be OCing better than the Venices or anything else lately.

Interesting info n7! But I don't think that the Opteron and the Venice are equal in price range! If I remember the Opteron is a server CPU, which is more expensive than a desktop processor.

 

[MegaWorks]

Originally posted by: GML3G0
You can get a Venice 3500+ for $209 from ZipZoomFly.com and you can find an Abit AV8 for less than $100. I've tested the Abit board up to 267 HTT, but haven't tried any further. You shouldn't need more HTT headroom than that, though, seeing as how the 3500+ has an 11x multiplier.

Yeah this bored is now my third choice after ASRock and the MSI. I love Abit they have amazing overclocking bios settings.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
Interesting info n7! But I don't think that the Opteron and the Venice are equal in price range! If I remember the Opteron is a server CPU, which is more expensive than a desktop processor.

Not really, & they all have 1 MB of L2 cache.
Opteron 144 1.8 Ghz 1Mb Cache Socket 939 - $152.29

Check out this thread on OCing teh new Opterons @ XS.org

Don't get me wrong either, i think the Venice is a great value, but personally, based on the results people are getting with the 144 & 146, i'd get one of those myself (if i didn't already have an X2)...

 

[richardrds]

If you do decide to go with the ABIT AV8 i would spen a little extra on the cpu and get a 3200+ instead of a 3000+. The reason for this is the 3000+ has a 9x multi and the 3200 is 10x. The AV8 has a wierd problem with its AGP lock that once you get much above a HTT of 265Mhz the AGP lock breaks down and you will BSOD while running 3D games.


Trust me I know first hand as i own an AV8 and have been involved in many threads on Abits official forum site about this subject!! I spend alot of wasted hours trying to max my OC with myA64 3000+ Winnie core, having it pass Prime95 at 2.7Ghz for 24 hours only to BSOD in 1 minute while running 3dMark05. My max stable OC that would also run 3D games was 2.5Ghz with a 278HTT sspeed. MAny other people could not get past 265HTT speeds and keep the AGP lock stable.

You should also check out the new S939 Opteron's like NT suggested. They are new and hard to find, but they are for S939 desktop's and are reported to be getting crazy OC's on air ( i.e. - Opteron 144 1.8Ghz OCing to 3.0Ghz on air cooling) and the price is close to the Venice core CPU's. They also will run with PC3200 Value RAM just like the A64's.

 

[MegaWorks]

What's the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum memory ratio?