Good, inexpensive 939 overclocker

[beatle]

I bought one of the 3800+ combos with a Biostar board for my HTPC. I never got it to boot or even beep, so I had newegg replace the motherboard. I just got the motherboard back and it still refuses to boot, so I'm chalking it up to a dead cpu. It has passed the 14 day period to return it, so I'm out a CPU as well, and now I've paid $120 for a lousy motherboard. I need to get this back up and running.

I'm planning to move my 3200+ in my desktop to the Biostar board and get it up and running. I'd then need a new chip for my desktop. I have an Asus A8V and some lousy TwinMos BH5 PC3200 that doesn't overclock at all. What do you recommend? I'd like to keep this relatively inexpensive as I've already dumped more money into this upgrade than I wanted to. Is the 3800 x2 the ticket, or is there something else I can push relatively high? I'd likely be using a CNPS-7000 to cool it.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Are you looking for dual-core only?

You could probably pick up a prime 3200+ Venice off the FS/FT forum for about $70 that would overclock nicely.

The E6 Semprons are generally great overclockers (my s754 3100+ hit 2.6Ghz) and the s939 Semprons, while hard to find, would probably provide similar OC performance. Granted, it's a Sempron, but for a HTPC, it might be sufficient.

 

[myocardia]

Send the cpu back to AMD, before they run out of them.

edit: And TwinMOS BH-5 is as good as everyone else's BH-5. Your problems must be your motherboard, or not giving it enough voltage.

 

[brikis98]

if you want single core, pick up a 3000+ with a venice core from newegg for $64. they can typically reach 2.6-2.7ghz on air. if you want dual core, go with a 3800+ for $152 from newegg, they usually don't OC quite as high (2.4ghz) but rock for multitasking...

 

[beatle]

If I upgrade my desktop, I'd like it to be dual core.

This is an OEM chip. Is sending it back to AMD still an option? If I put a new chip in my HTPC, I want it to be able to play WMVHD, which takes a relatively beefy CPU.

You can't feed the chips on my BH5 the voltage that they want. I can only give them 2.8v. Timings are very low, but bandwidth has always been limited with these sticks no matter how much I open up the timings. I had the same issue on my NF7-S v2.0 when overclocking my tbred and barton chips. These sticks have just never been good to me.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

The A8V is a notoriously bad overclocker, depending on which rev it probably doesn't have a PCI lock and the overclocking options in bios are terrible. I would keep the 3200+ on that board and RMA the 3800+ with AMD

 

[beatle]

Well, I'm getting a stable 2.4GHz out of my 3200+ so that's good enough for me.

 

[zephyrprime]

Send the chip back to AMD. It should still be under warranty.

 

[beatle]

Ok, here's the scoop on what happened. I finally got around to ordering a new CPU - a Sempron 2800+ as this is really a 754 board and not 939. Despite the fact I read about the 754 and 939 stock heatsinks being compatible, they apparently are not. I was using a stock 939 heatsink that was apparently not seating properly on the chip and the computer was refusing to boot. When I got the Sempron in, it came with its own boxed heatsink so I decided to use that. I also noticed just how easily it went onto the socket. I tried it with the old "dead" CPU and lo and behold it came up without a problem.

 

[Minot]

Interesting. Where did you get your information on the socket 754 and 939 retail heatsink/fans not fitting identically? I've switched back and forth using retail S754 and S939 fans without ever noticing a difference in performance. AMD occasionally uses fans by different manufactuerers, but they've all fit the same.

-MINOT-

 

[beatle]

Well I won't rule out user error. I searched for compatibility and found that they were compatible, but I had no luck getting them to work... They both look very similar, but the levered side of the clip was extremely difficult to install and remove on the 939 HSF. With the 754 HSF it seemed to be a piece of cake.

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
The A8V is a notoriously bad overclocker, depending on which rev it probably doesn't have a PCI lock and the overclocking options in bios are terrible. I would keep the 3200+ on that board and RMA the 3800+ with AMD

Newer revisions are not too bad, i have ran a 3200+ at 2.5ghz on an a8v deluxe, and a 3800+ x2 at 2.5ghz on a standard a8v.
These boards are not too bad but the sure arn't close to my ultra d.