>>> AGP/PCI Overclocking <<<

[THUGSROOK]

TEST SYSTEM
P4 2.26b @ 2.84g 167fsb
Asus P4B533 i845e (bios v1011)
Corsair XMS3000 256mb @ 334ddr cas2226 2.6v
SB Live 5.1 | Asante NIC | WD800JB 80gb
GF4600 @ 320x714 | 30.82 drivers | Win98SE


all tests were run @ 167fsb, only the agp/pci lock was changed

X-Isle Demo 1024x768x32

AGP/PCI
66/33 = 130.8
68/34 = 131.2
70/35 = 131.9
72/36 = 132.9
74/37 = 133.2
76/38 = 134.3
78/39 = 134.5
80/40 = 135.1
82/41 = 135.1
84/42 = 135.5
86/43 = 136.0
88/44 = 136.5
90/45 = 137.1
92/46 = 137.5
94/47 = 137.8
96/48 = failed

 

[Mikki]

Wow...that's a heck of a performance increase....did you notice any problems at those high speeds?

...nice test...

 

[rommelrommel]

Ya know, I was just gonna ask a question about how much performance could be gained by overclocking the AGP bus, adn I guess now I know

 

[THUGSROOK]

Originally posted by: Mikki
Wow...that's a heck of a performance increase....did you notice any problems at those high speeds?

the HD gets flakey above 42mhz
no other problems what so ever.

 

[THUGSROOK]

the X-Isle Demo and its patch are linked in SCK's sticky thread at the top of this forum.

i dont know if it will run on ATI cards since it was made for nVidia .....over 3 years ago!
its very system intensive and wants a lot of agp and memory bandwidth.

 

[Toymaker]

Interesting info!

 

[Mikki]

no whining here...let the mobo blaming commense!!! hehe Nice work Thugsrook!!

 

[mroptimistic]

is agp/pci overclocking safe?? Can it harm your pci devices and agp card?

 

[First]

Originally posted by: mroptimistic
is agp/pci overclocking safe?? Can it harm your pci devices and agp card?

Yes, don't do it for too long. Running your AGP/PCI buses at 94/47 is not good. Don't be fooled by THUGSROOK!

 

[THUGSROOK]

oh im sure it can, doesnt really mean it will tho
you shouldnt go past 80/40.

<EDIT> lol Evan

 

[Noid]

... I wonder how long my 9700 will last at 94Mhz ...

... dont care about my other components ...

 

[mrman3k]

You are one brave guy Thugs

 

[THUGSROOK]

actually "back in the day" of p2 and p3 overclocking, many of us ran in the 90-100 mhz agp range mostly cause we didnt have a choice.

its the pci mhz that can get you in trouble.
some harddrives will be very unhappy, etc.
40 mhz pci should be concidered the absolute max to run at full time and even there can be dangerous.

what i wanted to prove here is that 66mhz AGP is a bottleneck and that systems can run this high so stop blaming SBLive sound cards and gf4 vid cards!

 

[SickBeast]

LOL it was nice of the motherboard editor to set the record straight on this.

it's interesting to see that much of a speed boost. i always value stability over performance tho.

i would like to see a performance chart for 3dmark2001...it seems very fsb dependant. speaking of which i'm currently struggling to unlock my athlon xp 1900+. i'll post my results once i succeed.

 

[Duvie]

I concur with Thugs....I ran for 8 weeks a pci of 40/80 and I had no issues and HDD is still around...Once I took it up to 44/88 I started getting some corrupted file errors in winxp and that is usually associated with HDDs...

 

[AkumaX]

Originally posted by: THUGSROOK
actually "back in the day" of p2 and p3 overclocking, many of us ran in the 90-100 mhz agp range mostly cause we didnt have a choice.

its the pci mhz that can get you in trouble.
some harddrives will be very unhappy, etc.
40 mhz pci should be concidered the absolute max to run at full time and even there can be dangerous.

what i wanted to prove here is that 66mhz AGP is a bottleneck and that systems can run this high so stop blaming SBLive sound cards and gf4 vid cards!

yea man, back in the dayz of like the bh6/be6, you only had 2/3 or 1/1 agp choices... if you went to
133 on your p3, you were running at 89mhz!! kinda was the bottleneck of why i could only go 143mhz on my p3 700

 

[ErikaeanLogic]

Great work, THUGS! Did you run any other graphics benches (3DMark2001, Q3, UT2003) to see if they benefit from the AGP bandwidth increase the way that X-Isle does?

 

[THUGSROOK]

i didnt bother to run any other tests ~ only x-isle.

Mikki is in the middle of running tests on the agp/pci lock to make sure its running as it is supposed to. it is possible that the pci is stopping @ 36mhz while the agp keeps going higher.

 

[mrzed]

I might get lynched by the benchmark crowd for this, but a total of just over 5% increase doesn't seem like a big deal, or worth the risk to me.

I have been overclocking my own systems for years now, so it's not like I'm chicken little. But when I boost a CPU by 50%, that's noticeable. Who's going to miss those 7 fps?

If you can't avoid it, that's one thing, but with PCI/AGP locks becoming more common, I can't see the sense in not usng them.

 

[BD231]

Games do benefit for sure ErikaeanLogic, and it's visually noticeable! I've been overclocking for some time now and with my N-Force 2 board playing with the agp speeds has been quite easy. For me it's noticeable at about 70mhz and up, it's like turning on AGP fast writes or going to a lower cas latency. If you can raise your AGP clcok while keeping your system stable it's well worth it IMO.

 

[adeno]

I've been wondering about AGP overclocking..

Currently I have my 8500LE with the AGP bus running 100 MHz.. Is there anything in particular I should be concerned about? All games, benchmarks, etc have not had any problems whatsoever.

FYI: this is running on an EPoX 8RDA+, which has the PCI lock and the ability to lock the AGP bus speed from 50 - 100 MHz.

 

[rommelrommel]

My concern would be that the PCI bus is running at 50mHz!

 

[adeno]

Well, with the 8RDA+, the PCI bus remains the same regardless of the speed of the AGP bus. All due to the nice PCI Lock implemented on the motherboard

 

[Mikki]

The PCI freq setting on the P4B533-E (and most likely the P4B533) works at all ranges from 33.3mhz to 40.2mhz (I didn't test any higher). The freqs started to flux a bit above 38.7mhz.

 

[THUGSROOK]

thx for the quick tests for me Mikki

so i was running 94agp / 47pci after all? :Q
...incredible

heyMik ~ maybe if i burn it in it will go higher!