Conroe 1333-D667 overclocking confirmed!

[rogue1979]

These are preliminary results, will post more later.

Conroe 1333-D667 $46 - Mwave.

Corsair DDR675 matched pair 2 x 1GB $44.50 Mwave

C2D E2140 $68 Mwave

Tagan 380-watt power supply $17.25 Mwave

Masscool 90mm aluminum heatsink $9.41 Mwave

It doesn't get any cheaper then that.

At first I couldn't get it to overclock more then 25Mhz on the fsb!!!!
After about an hour of being frustrated and trying every imaginable setting, went to plan B.

Rear window defogger kit for $12 at Autozone. FSB mod to 1066MHz, and core voltage mod at 1.4v.
Used a toothpick, perfect size, took about 5 minutes, reinstalled heatsink.

Idles at 35C, booted up at 266MHz and 1.39v no problem. Took it all the way to 410Mhz and still booted to memtest stable, haven't loaded OS yet, didn't try higher. Unfortunately, just like the review, my SATA drive disappeared at 352Mhz.

So settled in at 352Mhz (plenty for a 7900GT) and set the memory divider up to 667MHz.
Couple that with the now default 266Mhz fsb @ 352MHz and the memory is running north of 800Mhz at 4-4-4-12 (rated timings for 675Mhz). I will try tightening up the timings later, just made two successful passes of memtest and will proceed to load WinXP.

I just upgraded 3 other computers to a $99 combo, Biostar Geforce 6100 M-9 and 3600+ cpu's. They all hit 2.6Ghz at 1.45 volts, used my existing DDR1 so they all run dual channel 2GB's no problem. 7900GT benches close to 11,000 in 3DMark 05 on the AMD's, don't expect much of a gain with the 1MB L2 cache Allendale.

Wondering if I should get a IDE drive and go for broke? Hate to lose the speed of the 16MB cache SATAII, they seem to make a big difference in overall snappiness.
I would probably need to find a 1333Mhz fsb mod if there is one, cuz at 352Mhz the PCI-e bus is 120Mhz.

Notes: Motherboard uses a 20-pin connector, not 24-pin.
PCI-e has to be run synched with the cpu speed or overclocking is a no go.

Have a whole day off tomorrow to play with it. Eat and overclock, looking forward to it!

 

[DrMrLordX]

Not bad, not bad at all. Pity you had to go to the volt/FSB mod but hey, if you know what you're doing then all is well. All updates are welcome.

edit: Is this the board you got here?

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overv...ConRoe1333-D667%20R1.0

They brag about fixed PCI/PCIe buses in the spec sheet which seems odd considering how your board is behaving.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX

edit: Is this the board you got here?

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overv...ConRoe1333-D667%20R1.0

They brag about fixed PCI/PCIe buses in the spec sheet which seems odd considering how your board is behaving.

Yeah, that's the one. I noticed in one of the reviews they mentioned the same thing about trying to overclock the fsb with the PCI-e/CPU asynched and it wasn't working either.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Sad. Bus locks are nothing new . . . but hey if it's cheap and it works then good on ya.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Sad. Bus locks are nothing new . . .

Via either has never figured out bus locks, or it would cost them "too much" money to implement them. The latter is my guess. Instead they use dividers, which means that the PCI/AGP/PCI-E bus are exactly the right frequencies, at certain FSB frequencies. For instance, on that board, they would be correct at 200 Mhz, 266, & 333 FSB's.

To the OP, your PCI bus is out of spec, also, so using an IDE hard drive will gain you nothing, and will most likely be worse, since most IDE HD's like bus frequency variations even less than SATA drives.

 

[rogue1979]

The Conroe-D667 is an Intel 945 A2 chipset, no via.

It has a seperate lock for the pci bus to keep it at 33MHz and I believe it is indeed working.

I think there is a 1333 BSEL mod, but I don't think that will help the SATA limitation.

WinXP has been loaded and the machine is Orthos stable for about 2 hours so far.

Besides, if I default it to 1333 that would mean my memory speed would drop from 800+ to 667+. Since it passed 3Dmark with flying colors, apparently the PCI-e bus is stable.

At 2.8Ghz, 3Dmark 05 only improved 400 pts. above a 3600+ @ 2.6GHz. But that is probably gpu limited by the 7900GT, maybe an 8800 series would show more improvement?

 

[rogue1979]

Took the volt mod off, running stable at 2.8Ghz stock volts.

Shows about 1.30 in the bios, 52C under full load (Orthos) with the Masscool 90mm.

After installing the backplate, the cooler can be taken on and off easily with just a phillips screwdriver, motherboard left intact.

The stock cooler looked pretty weak, but it would have done the job. The only problem I could see was the design for attaching it to the motherboard. I have seen it on other socket 775 setups and it doesn't seem to fasten down snugly, and after several installations it just gets worse.

EDIT: System is Orthos stable overnight, rock solid at 350 x 8 for 2800MHz at default voltage.

Nice and cheap, good bang for the buck, but honestly these 1MB cache C2D's don't seem to have much if any advantage over Athlon X2. But when a 4MB variant finally drops to a low price it will make a decent upgrade over the current setup.

 

[rogue1979]

Found a program called PC Wizard 2008, it's really nice.

Temps for everything, including hard drive and power supply. All voltages, memory timings,
speeds, dividers, many benchmarking tools.

Found my memory was running a 3/4 divider. Searched the bios and and turned off
memory compatibility and bingo, memory divider went to 1/1.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Hmm neat. How many platforms/board chipsets/etc support PC Wizard 2008?

 

[Lozzo]

Another heads up for this board, combined with an E2160 L2 stepping.

I used to have a VIA chipset Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA. With the VSTA, I was able to get up to 290FSB from BIOS, although things did go a little shaky now and again. This, combined with an AGP 7600GS. I ended up settling on 280FSB for stability.

Anyway, the rear USB ports died a death on that board(no voltage upon them) and I also had 2D performance issues with the AGP 7600. (32-bit 2D performance in XP sucked donkeyballs, and 2D corruption in Vista). So, what can I replace it with on a "I've got 2 kids and Xmas is approaching" type budget.

I spotted one of my friends (runs a small computer shop near me) suppliers having one of these ConRoe 1333-D667 boards for 25 quid so, combined with a cheap *highly clockable* (currently 700/900, up from standard 540/700 and still no artifacting as yet. It *will* go further methinks..) 8600GT for 45 quid, I thought I'd give it a go. After all, nice and cheap and I'll probably get most of my money back from my old bits.

Anyway, at first (BIOS 1.20) I could only get up to around 240FSB with my 2160, so I got out some glue, a single strand of wire (cheaper than the £10 or so that Motor World wanted for some conductive paint) and after some meddling around, managed to glue and fiddle myself a BSEL mod.

Great, fired up straight away at 2.4Ghz (266FSB) and I was away. Handily enough, it booted straight into XP without any of the BSODs you sometimes get when changing mainboards with a drastically different chipset. Now, I knew from my old VSTA board that the chip would do 280 stable at least (had more out of it using SetFSB, stableish, but never Orthos stable), so I went fiddling.

So far, 333FSB, seems stable alongside my overclocked 8600. I was going to twiddle further, but got sidetracked into playing Bioshock and CoD4 for a couple of hours, all of which ran loads better than my old 7600GS and no signs of instability as yet. I've got Speedstep/EIST (or whatever its called) enabled in BIOS along with power-saving enabled in XP, so running at a mere 2Ghz and 1.185 volts when idle. 1.3 volts under load, according to CPU-Z. Temps seem a bit high (60C under load after 10 mins of TAT in mega-stress mode) but they were the same on my VSTA board. I am using the stock cooler, with just a slight application of AS5, so a better cooler will help there methinks.

Memory is 2 sticks of cheapy A-Data 512Mb/667Mhz, currently set as 533Mhz in BIOS, with 4-4-4-12 timings.

All my drives are on IDE at the moment, both HDDs off the mainboard, my optical drives off a PCI IDE controller card, well at least until I drag myself into the 21st Century with some SATA equipment....

So far, so good. Overclocking on an expensive board/CPU/GFX combo takes all the fun out of it for me. The results are too predictable.. I get more of a kick pushing cheapy stuff, makes it even more of a bargain.

Think I'll stick with what I've got for now until a better cooler comes my way (I'm sure my friend has a spare E6600 copper-bottomed stock cooler that has to be better than this all aluminium one), and then I'll see if I can get north of 350FSB on standard core voltage. All good fun. E2160+Asrock board=Plenty bargain, mucho cheapness, mucho happy.

Groovy!

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Lozzo
Overclocking on an expensive board/CPU/GFX combo takes all the fun out of it for me. The results are too predictable.. I get more of a kick pushing cheapy stuff, makes it even more of a bargain.

Haha, I like a good budget overclock also.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: Lozzo
Overclocking on an expensive board/CPU/GFX combo takes all the fun out of it for me. The results are too predictable.. I get more of a kick pushing cheapy stuff, makes it even more of a bargain.

Haha, I like a good budget overclock also.

Ditto!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Denithor]

I have that same board, sitting in the closet collecting dust because it wouldn't OC even 10MHz for me with e6400 (that will run 2.8 with no +voltage on other boards).

Can you point me to instructions you used for the fsb mod and what particular defogger kit did you use (are they all the same)? I have been thinking about getting an e8200 in January for my main rig (paired with IP35-E that OC perfectly) and that would free up the e6400 for use in an HTPC build or something.

 

[Zap]

The FSB BSEL mod works mostly for CPUs with 800MHz FSB.

Have you tried raising voltages (FCCM/VDDQ)? Have you tried raising PCI-E speed? It is pseudo-locked, so you can't just leave it set at 100MHz.

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: Zap
The FSB BSEL mod works mostly for CPUs with 800MHz FSB.

Have you tried raising voltages (FCCM/VDDQ)? Have you tried raising PCI-E speed? It is pseudo-locked, so you can't just leave it set at 100MHz.

The 1333 BSEL mod works fine for 1066 chips as seen here (photos included).

My real question is, what kind of pen/rear fogger kit/etc is best to use to do the pin mod?

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Denithor
The 1333 BSEL mod works fine for 1066 chips

Correct. You can also mod 800MHz FSB chips to 1333MHz FSB. What I really meant to say was that I don't think these 945XX chipset boards will autodetect the 133MHz FSB. These ASRock boards that support 1333MHz FSB are in "overclocked" mode. Indeed the chipset of the ConRoe1333-D667 doesn't even "officially" support 1066MHz FSB according to Intel.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: Denithor
The 1333 BSEL mod works fine for 1066 chips

Correct. You can also mod 800MHz FSB chips to 1333MHz FSB. What I really meant to say was that I don't think these 945XX chipset boards will autodetect the 133MHz FSB. These ASRock boards that support 1333MHz FSB are in "overclocked" mode. Indeed the chipset of the ConRoe1333-D667 doesn't even "officially" support 1066MHz FSB according to Intel.

Correct. I tried the 1333 fsb mod and it was still detected as a 1066.

So, get that motherboard out of the closet.

1) there are only two voltage controls in the bios, put them both on high.

2) make sure you have the appropriate memory divider set. (turn off memory compatibility)

3) synchronize the fsb/pci-e, it won't overclock in asynch.

4) forget about the 1333 mod, the motherboard won't detect it, just put the fsb on 350 and you have your 2.8Ghz.

If you set the memory to 667DDR that will put it at a 1/1 ratio for 700MHz. You could use the DDR533 to slow it down if needed, check your memory timings. I was limited to 350Mhz because the sata controllers disappear higher then that, but the cpu and motherboard booted at 400MHz+.

 

[Javver]

Hello ...I bought this board based on the info provided here/elsewhere & have a couple of questions:

1.) As you mentioned ...running this Board at 333mhz FSB & above will overclock the
PCI-e Bus (even though Asrock states it is locked) ...won't this screw-up/fry the Video Card ?

2.) I know the main objective was "Cheap as Possible" ...but, wouldn't it be easier to use the E2180 (Cost's more/10x multi though) & set the FSB @ 300 = 3ghz to prevent possible PCI-e Bus overclock problems ?

I was thinking of using one of the new ATI 3850/3870 Cards ...what do you think ?

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: rogue1979
3) synchronize the fsb/pci-e, it won't overclock in asynch.

So I have to OC with the PCI-E in synchronized mode, not asynch? That seems counter-intuitive to me, I thought the whole point of that setting was to allow the FSB to go up without increasing the PCI-E speed above spec. I never tried it with that mode enabled, when in asynch mode I would put the fsb to 333 and save/restart and just be welcomed with a blank screen (had to manually reset CMOS to get it booting properly).

Might have to dig that board back out, haven't reused it for anything else yet.

 

[rogue1979]

I have been running with the PCI-e bus overclocked at 120Mhz. With a 7900 video card it doesn't seem to have any stability problems, nor does the sata hard drive.

I could have used a 2180 for a higher multiplier and gotten a higher overclock. But if I was gonna do that, I would have just spent the extra $30 on a better motherboard and still reached the magical 3.2Ghz or so with a 2140.

2.8Ghz is plenty fast for me, I just wanted to go for the dual core thing. My next upgrade will be an ATI HD 3850 when they get cheaper, my processor will be plenty fast enough for that.

Later down the line I might go for a 2 or 4MB cache chip if the prices finally go down.

 

[Javver]

My next upgrade will be an ATI HD 3850 when they get cheaper, my processor will be plenty fast enough for that.

Yeah ...the ATI HD 3850/3870 was listed at MSR at Newegg for about a day ...then they jacked up the prices $20-$70 depending on the version/manufacturer.

 

[dowhopdedodo]

Originally posted by: Denithor

Originally posted by: rogue1979
3) synchronize the fsb/pci-e, it won't overclock in asynch.

So I have to OC with the PCI-E in synchronized mode, not asynch? That seems counter-intuitive to me, I thought the whole point of that setting was to allow the FSB to go up without increasing the PCI-E speed above spec. I never tried it with that mode enabled, when in asynch mode I would put the fsb to 333 and save/restart and just be welcomed with a blank screen (had to manually reset CMOS to get it booting properly).

I bought this combo, with the E2180 for a interim office machine and later a file server sans video card. I put the Intel factory heatsink/fan from my Q6600 in hopes of overclocking some (2.5-3GHz depending on the efficiency of the cooling). The problem I'm having is overclocking using the Asrock Bios controls.

I'm a novice Still, overclocking my quad machine using an Abit IP35 Pro Bios was quite easy following this board's overclocking tutorial sticky. But, the Asrock Bios seems to use different controls/terminology. I've tried several settings from the above, including the synched setting, but I still the black screen too.

Can someone please post simple list of suggested (working) bio settings using this board's nomenclature? Or am I correct in deducing that this board really won't overclock absent a modification (which means I should has purchase the Abit IP35E)?

Thanks in advance.

ASRock ConRoe1333-D667 R1.0 LGA 775 Intel 945GC A2 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
E2180 BX80557E2180 SLA8Y
E6600 quad Intel heatsink/fan with Artic Silver
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
EVGA 7600 PCI-E video card
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S203B - OEM
CoolerMaster Centurion 534 case
SeaSonic SS-500ES ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 500W Power Supply - OEM

 

[dowhopdedodo]

Anyone? A little help, please.

 

[rogue1979]

There are only two voltage settings in the bios. Not on that computer now, can't remember exactly where they are, but set them both to high. You will have to do the BSEL mod and set the cpu to a 1066MHz fsb.

Make sure you set the PCI-e to synchronized.

You should be able to boot up to 2.66Ghz easily.

You will have to check the memory timings/dividers to make sure they are compatible with your specific memory. You should be able to set it to DDR667 right off the bat.

If you want to go higher, you may or may not need the 1.4v mod, it's even easier than the BSEL mod. Your board should be able to reach 350Mhz fsb no problem, but with a 10x multiplier I doubt if the 2180 is gonna run 3.5Ghz. However, I would suspect you have a fair shot at 3.2Ghz and should be able to hit 3.0Ghz at least.