Alright, can someone explain the whole RAM divider thing? And yes, professor, it is indeed a 9x CPU. Thanks for the replies!
i just noticed that a new bios has been released , with this "Add one item "AGP P2P Deep Fifo" in BIOS setting."
what excatly is this, any reason to upgrate to the 1.60 bios ?
what excatly is this, any reason to upgrate to the 1.60 bios ?
From what someone said several posts back, apparently it only applies to users of bridged AGP Nvidia cards (like the 6600GT)...it will improve performance for those (supposedly), shouldn't make a difference for everyone else. I don't think anything else has changed, so I wouldn't say it's really worth upgrading to 1.60 (I'm sure not going to bother).
I'm just kinda going by memory since I haven't set foot in the BIOS for several weeks now, but basically...what we're talking about is listed as something like "RAM speed" in the BIOS...by default it will be 200MHz (which corresponds to a 1:1 RAM/HTT setting) - setting the speed to "166MHz" isn't an absolute speed, but really means 5/6 divider (HTT*5/6=RAM speed). The other speeds work the same way, you just have to find a setting that works well for you. 166MHz should be fine unless you're going above about 270HTT, above that you'll most likely want to drop to 133MHz (2/3 RAM:HTT divider) unless you have pretty fast RAM.
Hope that makes sense (it took me a little while to get used to it too when I started out with this board), let me know if you need any more explanation.
Edit: To be more clear, the RAM speeds listed are dividers out of the default speed of 200MHz...setting it to 200MHz won't keep your RAM at 200MHz, but instead will lock it to whatever your HTT speed is...similarly, setting the RAM speed to 166MHz will lock your RAM to 5/6 (166/200) of your HTT frequency...
With a multiplier of 10, the ratio will be exactly 5/6 but if it's something like 9 or 11, it is a bit different. The CPU can only use a whole number to 'divide' by to determine RAM speed, and it will always use the number that gives it the closest speed _not greater than the selected speed_: for example, my 3700+ Sandie is 11x200 at stock, and if I set mem speed to DDR333, it will actually get set to DDR314 because the closest whole number to divide by
is 14, (ie. 2200 / 14 = 157, it won't use 13 because that will exceed the spec of 166.67)...
make sense? It puzzled me a bit at first.
??
The DFI NF4 boards are the most finicky AMD boards available. That statement makes no sense.
Have you tried running with only 2 sticks of RAM. A64's don't normally like 3 sticks, and quite often will not even boot. So just the fact that you have it running with 3 sticks is really a testament to this boards ability.
Just to explain this a bit further, the way to calculate actual RAM speed is this:
First take the CPU multiplier * the normal HTT.....9*200=1800
Then take 1800/your RAM divider.....1800/133.33=13.50
Now calculate: HTT * CPU multiplier / RAM divider multiplier.......273*9/13.5=182........
This is how AMD has coded the calculation as opposed to simply 273*133.33/200.
Now if you do this, you will only show a RAM speed of 175 (as read in CPU-z for instance) because the 13.5 RAM divider multiplier is not a whole integer, so the CPU's calculation automatcially increases to the next whole integer (14).
So the calulation the CPU does looks like:
273*9/14=175.5 which is exactly what you see listed in BIOS and CPU-z.
So in actuality CPU divider is necessary in calulating RAM speed. But the easiest way to calculate it is still taking HTT*RAM divider/200.
Oh...I guess I have it easy since I have a 10x multiplier CPU
Thanks for the clarification though...obviously I'm still not quite used to A64 platforms...thinking in Athlon XP mode, sorta
Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
About your CPU voltage issue...2.7GHz is a very nice overclock for a 3700+, and it doesn't surprise me that it's not entirely stable at 1.45V - that voltage isn't very high (and isn't the default already 1.40 for that chip?). I did the voltmod myself and it helped quite a bit - anything over about 2.4GHz was a no go on my Opty 170 at 1.4V, but now 2.6GHz is rock stable and I've seen it as high as 2.75 while playing with it (soon I'm going to go back and try to make 2.7+ a permanent overclock, just haven't had the time to mess with it lately). I do wish this board weren't quite so voltage-limited by default, but at least it is rather easily moddable (to 1.55V anyway, which is sufficient for most non-extreme overclocking) - and you can't expect to have it all in a $70 board.
(delayed response)
Yeah the default is 1.4v, and setting it to 1.45 actually gives it 1.46-1.47... I'm stable up to 2.63 Ghz which is still pretty nice for it being stock cooled (an extra 430 Mhz)...
Common sense tells me it's not worth bothering with the volt mod to get it up to the 2.7-2.8 range, yet those little voices in my head keep pestering me to do it...
Originally posted by: professor1942
Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
About your CPU voltage issue...2.7GHz is a very nice overclock for a 3700+, and it doesn't surprise me that it's not entirely stable at 1.45V - that voltage isn't very high (and isn't the default already 1.40 for that chip?). I did the voltmod myself and it helped quite a bit - anything over about 2.4GHz was a no go on my Opty 170 at 1.4V, but now 2.6GHz is rock stable and I've seen it as high as 2.75 while playing with it (soon I'm going to go back and try to make 2.7+ a permanent overclock, just haven't had the time to mess with it lately). I do wish this board weren't quite so voltage-limited by default, but at least it is rather easily moddable (to 1.55V anyway, which is sufficient for most non-extreme overclocking) - and you can't expect to have it all in a $70 board.
(delayed response)
Yeah the default is 1.4v, and setting it to 1.45 actually gives it 1.46-1.47... I'm stable up to 2.63 Ghz which is still pretty nice for it being stock cooled (an extra 430 Mhz)...
Common sense tells me it's not worth bothering with the volt mod to get it up to the 2.7-2.8 range, yet those little voices in my head keep pestering me to do it...
Listen to the voices :evil:
Though honestly, since you can get 2.6 already on near-stock volts (I couldn't), the voltmod wouldn't add much percentage-wise for you. If I could have hit 2.6 at 1.4V (max voltage the board seems to allow for dual cores), I might not have bothered with the mod either. But I couldn't, so I did.
Edit: And yeah, I noticed the slight overvolting too...like when I set it to 1.55 it's actually closer to 1.57 or 1.58, which actually works rather well when you're going for a big overclock.
ok guys, thinking of buying a asrock motherboard to run a A64 3800 single core chip on. will be using things listed in signature below. can you forsee any problems for me? with the OCZ 520 watt power supply? reason i ask is that i recently had problems setting up an X2 system with an ABIT AV8 motherboard because my power supply was causing an error during boot up. what do you think?
question, will a A64 3700+ San diego chip work on it if i buy it from newegg regardless of what bios it comes with? not sure what bios version they are shipping with from newegg
Yeah, should work fine. I believe they're shipping with 1.50 now (based on a few posts I saw while glancing at the OCW forums recently), but even if not, you'll be able to boot up with no problems. My Opty 170 was recognized just fine when I got my board (came with BIOS 1.20 back then).
Michael D these are some of the most reasonably priced boards on the market at this time considering the options available. Many dual slot (AGP and PCI-E) boards offer good performance on either one or the other but not both. Mine performs well with either type of vid card with no performance loss. Shop around but I'm betting you can pick one up for a very affordable price. Mine came in at under 100 Canadian.
trevor0323
Senior member
- Jan 4, 2006
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Seriously What Bios is best for overclocking. I had 1.5 and it has like 174 for max HTT I then put on OCW Beta 2 because I heard it can go higher then 174. Anyways its buggy all over and when I put the HTT to say 180 it still reads as at 1.8ghz so I dont know whats up. I tried like 176htt and still the same problems occur. Also This bios sometimes crashes windows before even loading into it.
What bios are you guys running, I seriously rather run 1.5 which allowed me to 2.4ghz and no booting problems the OCW 2 which I still cant figure out why it wont OC and causes my PC to crash before even loading win
What bios are you guys running, I seriously rather run 1.5 which allowed me to 2.4ghz and no booting problems the OCW 2 which I still cant figure out why it wont OC and causes my PC to crash before even loading win
OCW Beta 1 and 2 (maybe the others too, haven't tried them) have a bug where CPU speed is displayed incorrectly at bootup - it displays 200x(whatever multiplier you're using), regardless of your actual HTT speed. If your multiplier is 9x, it'll show 1.80GHz; 2.00GHz for 10x, etc. The CPU is still working at the correct speed though, you just have to get into Windows to see it (and that's one of the main things that bugs me about the OCW Beta BIOS releases).
If you need more than 274MHz HTT though, OCWB1/2 are basically your only options. In my case, with BIOS 1.50 and 1.60, I can't even seem to get over 265HTT at all - whereas on OCWB2 I was doing some testing yesterday and got all the way up to 311x9 (2.8GHz, booted into Windows for a while but was not stable).
Exactly what kind of crashes are you talking about? I experienced a LOT of cold/warm boot problems with OCWB1/2, which is another reason I didn't really like them unless I could get a noticeably higher overclock (which I'm still working on, sort of). Also, what CPU do you have? If you have an Opteron 165 or something similar with only a 9x multiplier, you basically have to use the beta BIOSes, else you'll be limited to less than 2.5GHz. I have seen posts on other forums claiming that they could get >274HTT working somewhat reliably on official BIOS 1.5 and 1.6, but at this point, without being able to duplicate those results myself, I don't really buy it.
If you are indeed limited to a 9x multiplier, I'd recommend going with OCWB1 and just living with its issues, unless you're happy with ~2.4-2.5GHz. Remember, ignore the CPU speed it displays on boot, because it's incorrect.
Edit: For clarification, I did lots of testing yesterday with 1.50, 1.60, OCWB1 and OCWB2. Based on what I saw, for all intents and purposes, 1.50 and 1.60 might as well be the same BIOS (same goes for OCWB1 and OCWB2). As I said, I could hit 311x9 in OCWB1/2 with relative ease, though it wasn't stable (not a fault of the BIOS). However, I got horrible cold/warm boot problems - specifically, resetting the computer would never work (unless I was at stock, which of course would have been pointless), I always had to power off and back on to start or re-start the computer. I was able to run 2.75GHz and it was stable for most simple tasks, even a few minutes of gaming I tested, but heavy video encoding caused a crash. I tried to do 2.70 (270x10) and 2.65GHz (265x10), but for some reason I could not get either setting working for me - I have the feeling that 300x9 might work, but I'd have to find a suitable RAM divider.
As for 1.50/1.60, the highest HTT I could reliably get was 260. 265x10 would not boot, nor would anything above it, even if I had my RAM divider ridiculously low as to remove the RAM from the equation. (I only tested in steps of about 5MHz HTT at a time)
I'm pretty sure I can get 2.70GHz (either 270x10 or 300x9) working on my CPU in the future, and I should be able to do that with the official BIOS releases in theory (supposedly they only have problems above 274), but I've not gotten there yet. I imagine I'll probably have to use OCWB1, as much as I don't like that one (mainly for the displayed CPU speed bug and the cold/warm boot bug). For now I just returned to my old stable overclock of 260x10 on BIOS 1.50 - no cold boot problems, and the speed is displayed correctly on boot-up. What lengths we'll go to for an extra 100MHz...
trevor0323
Senior member
- Jan 4, 2006
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I agree it seems like quite a lot of work to get to higher speed. Im not really to sure what you mean by cold warm boot. I had one instance when running OCW beta 2 where before loading windows it told me a system file was missing and then crashed. Other times it gave me the Windows crash blue screen where it says technical error and some other stuff. This is all kind of a pain but I still would like to get past where im at. Maybe I wont though I mean I like bios 1.5 for its stability and am at 2.48ghz right now as it is. Making it to 2.8 may be more work then I want to do anyway. I also read on OCW forums from some guys post who said he was running bios 1.5 with his HTT past 300. I think this person must be an idiot but claims to be a veteran overclocker. Anyway I contacted Asrock in the begining and a tech rep said that all of their bioses will experience problems with my CPU working at any HTT over 274. I am running an Opteron 144 and have it at 272 now I believe in 1.5. I have tried 274 but cannot boot and anything in the 300s is just lies for 1.5.
Anyways Synthdude thanks for all your help and always answering my questions quickly. I guess I am satisfied with being at 2.48 I probabaly will try to tighten up my ram settings and see if I can run with the 1to1 divider. I running 166 right now with timings set to auto giving me 2.5 3 2 5 which is not the specs for OCZ 2x1 gb but fairly close to the 2-3-2-5, when I try changing CAS to 2 it crashes and resets bios for some reason.
Anyways Synthdude thanks for all your help and always answering my questions quickly. I guess I am satisfied with being at 2.48 I probabaly will try to tighten up my ram settings and see if I can run with the 1to1 divider. I running 166 right now with timings set to auto giving me 2.5 3 2 5 which is not the specs for OCZ 2x1 gb but fairly close to the 2-3-2-5, when I try changing CAS to 2 it crashes and resets bios for some reason.
I was pretty much set in buying the Epox ultra nf4 mobo for my x2 3800 in hopes of overclocking, but this asrock has caught my attention, especially the M2 upgrade. This feature is priceless in my opinion, it would allow me to upgrade without a new mobo.
from reading the posts, to my understanding, i would be able to overclock my x2 to 2.4 rather easily? with 1.5 bios. My main goal is to get to 2.4ghz anyway so even if asrock limits me to just this i would still be happy.
now the question is, i was reading the quick and dirty a64 overclock and said some mobos doesnt come with locks. Does this mobo have locks?
EDIT:
i will also be using this ram
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231047
from reading the posts, to my understanding, i would be able to overclock my x2 to 2.4 rather easily? with 1.5 bios. My main goal is to get to 2.4ghz anyway so even if asrock limits me to just this i would still be happy.
now the question is, i was reading the quick and dirty a64 overclock and said some mobos doesnt come with locks. Does this mobo have locks?
EDIT:
i will also be using this ram
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231047
You should be able to get to 2.4 without problems, I imagine. I got my Opty 170 to 2.4GHz on 1.4V right out of the box. I needed a voltmod for more than that, but if you're not interested in more, you won't have to worry about it.
And yes, this board has AGP/PCI(/PCI-E) locks, which is basically a must for overclocking.
sweet this makes up my mind pretty much
cheap mobo
2.4ghz oc
and futre m2
and AGP
edit:should i go with 1.5 or 1.6bios?
cheap mobo
2.4ghz oc
and futre m2
and AGP
edit:should i go with 1.5 or 1.6bios?
I only did a little bit of testing with 1.6, but as far as I can tell they may as well be the same BIOS. The only difference is that AGP Deep P2P FIFO option (or whatever the hell it was called
) that only applies to bridged Nvidia AGP cards (like the 6600GT). Might as well just go with 1.6 since it's the newest, although right now I'm running 260x10 on 1.50 just because that's a stable setting that I found a while back.TRENDING THREADS
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