A8N-SLI Deluxe & Winchester 3500+. Help with OC for new user

[wpilgri]

I have read all the posts here and I can't help but ask a lowly, simple question. Is there an overclocking for dummies for this board/cpu combination? I would like to overclock my machine, but don't play a lot of games. I am looking to shave time of engineering FEA calculations that can run for hours at max cpu utilization.

I have BIOS 1002 and a pair of Kingston KVR400X64SC3A/512 RAM. It is CL3 which based on what I read is slow, but it is the only memory on the Asus mobo approved list that I could get at my local computer shop. I have tried nTune and it warns of the PCI locked to HT frequency..... I have looked through BIOS and must be an idiot because nowhere can I see how to turn this off. I have tried using the AI NOS or the AI fixed % overclock but I certainly don't notice any difference on superpi or any other calculation benchmark I try. I have tried downloading clockgen but as soon as I hit set values for adjust FSB from 200 to 210 it locks up my machine.

Can someone tell me where to start? I see Asus has a 1004.001 beta BIOS. Is it worth starting there?

Thanks!

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Yeah either the 1003 release or the 1004.001 beta are better, both of these have a PCI clock setting in bios set at 33.34 to lock. Using the 1002 bios you have to increase the HTT to 201 or higher in bios to lock the PCI bus.

IMHO nTune, AI booster, and clockgen all pretty much suck and sometimes cause your system to crash. I've had much better luck overclocking using the bios. With the ram you have its not going to overclock very well, so use a memory divider or the AUTO ramclock setting (automatic dividers keep ram at less than 200mhz once you hit 217mhz)

Memory settings

AUTO = auto dividers
DDR400 = 1:1 htt=200 ram=200
DDR333 = 6:5 divider htt=300 ram=250
DDR266 = 3:2 divider htt=300 ram=200
DDR200 = 2:1 divider

 

[imported_Fumunda]

I actually have almost the exact same setup.

Im currently running 1004.1

HT 3x
Mem 333
FSB 230

And am 100% stable. Im going to try 240 sometime after the weekend.

 

[wpilgri]

Thanks for the quick tips. I'm not quite sure I have all the memory settings straight in my head, but I will give them a try tonight after a BIOS update.

For example, Fumunda lists setting as HT 3x, Mem 333, FSB 230. Doesn't that work out to a 3x230=690 HTT speed versus the default of 1000? Is that actually faster? I guess processor speed will be higher at 11x230=2530 vs 2200 default. If memory is set as 333, using GuitarDaddy's divider numbers doesn't that work out to a memory speed of 5/6*230=192, again slower than the default of 200. I'm certainly not knocking what other people are trying, I'm just trying to understand the methods people use to overclock and what is the most important: HTT freq, RAM freq, FSB?

Thanks Again

 

[GuitarDaddy]

You are correct on your observations. Unless HTT is over 260mhz you don't need to drop the HTT multi to 3x, 4x would be more appropriate. Although FSB(HTTxmulti) seems to affect performance very little

You are correct on the memory settings also. However CPU speed is much more important to performance than DDR speed. So if using a memory divider allows you to Overclock the CPU farther its well worth running ram at less than 200mhz.

The best way to approch finding your max overclock is to isolate and test your CPU and Ram seperately to find out what the top limit is for both. Then use your max CPU setting and use mem dividers to get ram as close as possible to your max ram limit.

1. To isolate your CPU overclock use a low divider like DDR200 to take ram out of the picture as you increase HTT to find you max CPU. Also try different CPU multi's. I have the 3200+ w/max 10x divider, but I get my best overclock using the 9x or 8x. My max with the 10x is 242x10=2420mhz but I can get 289x9=2601mhz or 325x8=2600mhz

2. Isolate ram by using a low CPU multi and the DDR400 memory setting, this way as you increase HTT the ramspeed increase, but the CPU will remain underclocked.

Once you find your CPU and Memory maximum limits. Use a combination of CPU multi and Ramclock settings to maximize both the best you can. In my case I can run the 10x multi and DDR400 to get 242x10=2420mhz w/ram=242mhz, but I get better benchmarks and performance using DDR333 289x9=2601mhz w/ram=236mhz. I can run the same CPU overclock @ 325x8=2600mhz, but my memory options aren't as good.
If I use DDR333 this gives me ramspeed of around 270mhz(my board won't run with ram over 250 1T so this isn't an option), or if I use DDR266 it only gives me around 215mhz.

And one final note. The A64 memory dividers always give slightly less ramspeed than what a pure caluclation gives you. For example I'm running 289x9 using DDR333. Doing the math 289/6*5=240.8 but what I actually get is 236?

 

[lotus503]

I have very close to the same setup.

My my CPU will run stable is 2640 which is exactly a %20 OC

I get there two ways

240HTTx11
vcore = 1.465
4XLTP
mem 1:1(400) 3-4-4-8 2T, Runs very stable and fairly cool. I got a bit upset that I could get 1T out of RAM at 240 so I played with it some more and got the following Stable

264HTTx10
vcore = 1.465
3XLTP
mem (333) 3-4-4-8 1T, Ram actually tops at about 225 1T on this board

With the first OC I got really stable with low temps
The second one gave me a boost im Mem performance but I barely noticed it on the benches. It was however just as stable, bit higher temps.

Havent made the choice of which one to run yet, anyone have opinions?

 

[Thorsson]

Clearly the CPU doesn't need extra juice, but what about the RAM - how much are you giving that?

Also have you left the other RAM settings on AUTO (presuming you have 1004.001)?

 

[Yonner]

Hi lads been reading Through here. What Bios are you on. i have not done no Bios update. And mY system does not like me tweakin in the bios. Locks up and stuff. I want to do some overclocking. What is best bios to use.

Cheers Yonz^

 

[wpilgri]

Lots of good information! I tried overclocking last night. Seems like I can't get over 220 FSB, multiplier=11, Vcore=1.525, Vdimm=2.700, HTT multiplier=5x, Memory set as DDR400. I'm not sure what SOLstice is referring to above with 4XLTP, but it looks like what I've listed as HTT multiplier. It will boot fine with my settings above as soon as I run superpi or the prime95 torture test I get an error in less than one minute. I've also noticed a few things: 1. AIBooster reports voltages that are different than what I've actually set. eg: Vcore set at 1.525 yet AIBooster reads 1.49. 2. In BIOS under one of the tabs it reports the voltage it is reading on the 5V and 12V rail. Mine report 4.79V for the 5V and 11.8V for the 12V rail. Does that seem typical? I have the Antec Sonata case with a truepower 380W power supply. I know people talk of huge power supplies but my setup is pretty lightly loaded: one graphics card, one HDD, on DVD.

Anyway, if you have any other tips I would appreciate it. I'd love to go tinker some more tonight but would like some direction on which way to go. Finally, is prime95 the best way to test stability or should I be using memtest86 or something different again?

Thank You

 

[Thorsson]

Your HTT is too high. Also most memory wants more than 2.7v - try 2.8 or 2.9. You will also need to change your memory to DDR333 if you want to get much higher.

VCore is weird.

 

[wpilgri]

Thanks for the quick reply. I will give it a try. I was just going off the Kingston sheet that listed the voltage as 2.6+/-.1. I assume they are conservative for obvious reasons.....I will crank it up and see if I get any further. Should I always make sure HTT is less than 1000? I thought a 10% OC wouldn't matter but I guess it does.

 

[lotus503]

Originally posted by: wpilgri
Thanks for the quick reply. I will give it a try. I was just going off the Kingston sheet that listed the voltage as 2.6+/-.1. I assume they are conservative for obvious reasons.....I will crank it up and see if I get any further. Should I always make sure HTT is less than 1000? I thought a 10% OC wouldn't matter but I guess it does.

Yeah change that Multiplier to 4x.

Keep in mind its 220 x 5 thats too high always keep it under 1000 total

 

[imported_Fumunda]

Originally posted by: wpilgri
Thanks for the quick tips. I'm not quite sure I have all the memory settings straight in my head, but I will give them a try tonight after a BIOS update.

For example, Fumunda lists setting as HT 3x, Mem 333, FSB 230. Doesn't that work out to a 3x230=690 HTT speed versus the default of 1000? Is that actually faster? I guess processor speed will be higher at 11x230=2530 vs 2200 default. If memory is set as 333, using GuitarDaddy's divider numbers doesn't that work out to a memory speed of 5/6*230=192, again slower than the default of 200. I'm certainly not knocking what other people are trying, I'm just trying to understand the methods people use to overclock and what is the most important: HTT freq, RAM freq, FSB?

Thanks Again

I was getting random crashes when running at 4x FSB so just just rolled everything back a bit.

Which do you think would be the better set up? 4x FSB230 or 3x FSB240.
Memory wise I have hard coded the t1 setitng and left everthing else at auto.

-fu

 

[wpilgri]

Okay, after a long day and night of trying different overclocking options I need your help because what I thought made sense doesn't work. I took the advice from the forums and isolated the CPU, mobo, and RAM max speeds and found the following: 260 Mhz max for mobo, 240Mhzx11=2640 Mhz max for CPU, and my ram will not overclock even slightly over 200 Mhz so let's call it 200.

After all that screwing around I thought I could setup my system as follows: 240 Mhz FSB, 11 CPU multiplier, 4 HTT multiplier, and run my DDR400 as DDR333 to get the 5/6 ram divider. That should work out to 2640Mhz for CPU (tested ok), 960 Mhz for HTT (less than 1000 so ok), and RAM of 240x5/6=200Mhz which should be okay. Problem is, when I specify those parameters my system hangs on "Press DEL to enter setup" I cannot go any further. I tried adjusting the CPU and RAM voltages but no luck. I am using BIOS 1003

Can any of you experts explain to my why my overclocking testing does not appear to be panning out? Frustrating right now to say the least !!!!

Thank You

 

[Whitewolf]

In A64 the real memory frequency is always a little lower than what you get by "Mem Freq = Divider * HTT" because the cpu does some roundings in the numbers.
It is acutally:
CPU Clock / [CPU Multi * Inversed Mem Dividier]
The result of the number in the brackets must be upped to the next integer if it has decimals.
E.g in your case we have :
2640 / [ 11 * 6/5] = 2640 / [13.2] = 2640 / 14 = 188.57

The only thing I can suggest is that maybe your cpu can't handle this speed at the given voltage. When I set mine too high I get the same symptoms. Try setting DDR200 in the memory and relaxed timings, put the vcore as high as the bios allows and then boot it. If it still doesn't past the "Press DEL" stage then it's definately the cpu being clocked to high.

Oh and make sure your HT multiplier is actually what you have set it. I found the hard way that with 1004 bios sometimes even if you set it to 3x or 4x it keeps it at 5x. Maybe this also happens with 1003 bios. To test this, lower your HTT (FSB) to stock (200), boot into windows and see in nTune (not Ai Booster!) what it says. If it's 800 to 804 then you are ok and your HTT multi works ok. If it's any higher (e.g 1000) then your HTT multi is actually 5x even though you have set it in the bios to 4x. If that's the case I will tell you how to overcome this.

That's all I can think now!

 

[wpilgri]

Well, I tried what you said and lowered the memory speed to DDR200 seems to have fixed the problem. It boots, but of course performs poorly. Cheap F$%*& Kingston RAM! I should have known when I set it to 2-2-2-6 and I had to jumper the mobo to reset bios settings in order to get it to boot at all. Too bad. I guess I am out of luck until I buy better ram.

 

[wpilgri]

Okay, I'm stubborn and don't want to give up just yet. What I still don't understand is why my RAM won't operate with the CPU at 240 Mhz and a RAM divider of 5/6. As Whitewolf pointed out earlier, it works out to 188 Mhz which is still below the 200Mhz it works at "out of the box". The RAM dividers seem to be working when I check memory speed with Clockgen (must be stupid and can't find these values in nTune). Can anyone explain to me why at 188 Mhz I may be having problems? I guess the one thing I haven't tried recently is adjusting the RAM voltage. It has been set to default recently. The RAM spec from Kingston says 2.6V +/- .1V. I wonder if getting crazy and giving it 2.8V would change anything. 2.9v?

Dejected.... but thanks for you help!

 

[finbarqs]

Hrm I just got my system setup today... Right now, i'm at 240x11 (2640 MHz), Memory at 2-3-3-5 1T @ 2.9V HTT=4x. It boots into my system just fine (of course everyone can boot into windows) But my system fails 2 instances of Prime 95 (CPU 100%) after like 3 minutes. Maybe less than that.. My CPU temp under load i suppose is 51C and idle is 44C. My GPU on idle is around 60C and underload is 70C, everything STOCK. (proves how crappy the NV5 is) anyways, the chipset fan is annoying the hell out of me, as it runs at 8000+ RPM and makes a LOUD buzzing noise. Gonna try more combos.

 

[wpilgri]

Well, I did some upgrading today. I returned my memory (Thank you to Memory Express my local shop for the excellent service!) and replaced it with Kingston HyperX KHX3200AK2/1G kit. It is a CL2 memory that is obviously much better than what I had. The Kingston literature rated it at 2-3-2-6 yet CPU-Z reads it rating stored in the ram as: 200 Mhz:2.5-3-3-8 & 166 Mhz: 2-3-3-7. Anyway, I manually set it to 2-3-2-6 based on the literature and set it to 2.8V and ran Memtest at a 200 and 210 Mhz successfully. So, I thought I'd get brave and try the configuration I listed back on Feb 15th in this thread. 240Mhz with a 11X multiplier, set memory to DDR333 for the 5/6 divider and away I go. Memory still at 2.8V and CPU maxed out at 1.55V. Unfortunately it STILL WILL NOT BOOT! All I get is a blank screen at startup. I really thought spending the $$$ and getting this better ram would solve my problem but I am wrong once again. Please, someone tell me what I'm missing. I really don't get why this will not boot at all.

Once again, greatly appreciated!!

 

[finbarqs]

well, 240 will just not work at 3-4-4-10 2T, 400MHz Mem, 4x HTT... Prime 95 fails in 5 minutes (both of them) memory voltage at 2.9v. Trying other combo's

 

[finbarqs]

okay this is working 100% for me, i'm going 240 by 10.5 multiplier, 4x HTT 2-3-3-7. passed 2 instances of prime95... the final output is 2.52GHz gonna try more...