Has anyone overclocked Fry's combo P4M800PRO and 4300?

[fleshconsumed]

I'm contemplating doing a cheap upgrade from P4 3.4GHz up to 4300/p4m800pro motherboard if I see it on sale at FRY's again. That would allow me to retain my AGP videocard and hold off until I can afford something better at the end of this year.

However, I feel that it's only worth doing if I can get CPU to work at 266MHz frequency, otherwise the hassle just isn't worth it. The problem is I hear mixed reports about being able to set FSB frequency to 266MHz without pinmod. Most of the people just do pinmod, I've read several reports of people just being able to set FSB to 266MHz but those reports aren't really conclusive.

Can anyone confirm that setting FSB to 266MHz without pinmod will work with p4m800pro motherboard?

Thanks...

 

[superHARD]

Usually a pin mod is super easy...is this not the case here?

 

[Markfw]

1890 is the best speed I could get. I got a new motherboard and memory, and am now at 3060.

 

[atlr]

I have not seen a software mod and I have been looking. The clock generator is not supported in systool, clockgen, cpusb and similar programs. The clock generator IC on the ECS P4M800Pro-M V2 motherboard is labeled RTM363-882. I cannot find its Realtek datasheet online.

Some programs that set clock generators but not the ECS one are:

http://www.cpufsb.de/
http://www.techpowerup.com/systool/
http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php

Here is a link to the hardware mod if anyone decides to go this route.
BSEL pad mod for e4300

 

[highwire]

Caution. Go to the 2nd page of that link(BSEL pad mod for E4300). The lead-off picture at the beginning of that thread shows a mod that will NOT work. "Doh0000" has nice pics on the 2nd page of the thread and refers to a thread back here at AT.

Doh's 2nd pic is the correct mod that will get you an easy OC to a E6600 speed of 2400.

Then optionally, running the bios up to 300 will get you 2700. Since the board is not pci freq locked, this last step will increase pci clocks by 12%. So far, nothing on my sys is complaining about this increased PCI clock. But if so, back it down toward 266 FSB.

This all works at stock voltage and cooling. So, for a few minutes of tedium, a 50% OC.

 

[highwire]

Originally posted by: atlr
I have not seen a software mod and I have been looking. The clock generator is not supported in systool, clockgen, cpusb and similar programs. The clock generator IC on the ECS P4M800Pro-M V2 motherboard is labeled RTM363-882. I cannot find its Realtek datasheet online.

Some programs that set clock generators but not the ECS one are:

http://www.cpufsb.de/
http://www.techpowerup.com/systool/
http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php
....

Yeh, same here. I assumed that the RTM363-882 was the clock gen, but hit the same brick wall researching it. Maybe some Asian brother can help.
Doing the OC with a clk gen utility would be easier, and was my first approach for this.

At the bios level, there is not much out there re: AMI bios mods. I have a nice tool to take this bios apart, but some of it is still encrypted or compressed. Big job, even for an old bit-banger.

 

[nomadh]

I didn't do the pin mod... yet. Check your 300 fsb setting. I find my motherboard resets the clock around 266-270 speed so a 300fsb shows an actual speed of 225 in cpu-z.
Anyone else see this happen?

 

[TRD3SGTE]

Fry's combo, the E4300, has been reported not very overclocable.
The retail CPU is great for overclocking, but not the tray CPU at Fry's.
Maybe that is why they sell them as tray CPU...

The mobo that is bundled with E4300 isn't a good mobo to OC with.
300FSB is the best you can get out of it.

E4300 retail is around $170
E4300 bundle with mobo is $159 at Fry's.
Essentially you are getting a free mobo.

If you want a Core 2 Duo, then $160 is the best bang for your buck.
If you want to OC your E4300, you better get another motherboard.

I'd recommend Gigabyte DS3 *ooohh I'm so biased *

 

[Zim]

This is a truly horrible little motherboard. With 1GB of cheap PC3200 memory in it, its memory bandwidth in 960MB/s. With 2GB of PC2-6400 running at 800MHz its memory bandwidth is... 960MB/s. That's the VIA chipset for you!

 

[fleshconsumed]

OK, got the combo. Couple of notes

O/C abilities
-This mobo does not have PCI lock so O/C abilites are very limited. There was a question whether the board will work if you manually set FSB to 265/266MHz in bios, which would correspond to 1066MHz bus, but that will not work. The board will ether revert back to 200MHz once posted, or will not post at all (you'll have to clear CMOS to get it working again). Pinmod is the only way to overclock that combo.
When doing pinmod
-The silver conductive paint I got at Fry's (here's $15 wasted) WILL NOT WORK
-Silver circuit pen from RadioShack (according to others) WILL NOT WORK
-Rear defogger repair paint/kit from Permatex is the only thing verified to be working, so use that
-At post motherboard will complain that CPU has 200MHz bus and is not fully supported, so it may run at reduced clock speed. Despite the warning message however, CPU-Z shows working frequency of 2.4GHz, and doing some archiving, the CPU is faster than 6300 at stock speed but slower than 6600 (due to less cache) which is how it's supposed to be. And it works at stock voltage and stays cool. Very nice.

 

[MattressTester]

Regarding the memory bandwidth issue on the ESC board: I also though it was horrible.

On other motherboards I set the bios to 200MHz for PC3200. On this MB you have to set it to 400MHz. I figured this out after it took me close to an hour to install Windows and got a really bad memory result from Sandra.

I did the defogger paint mod and have my E4300 running at 2.4GHz. According to Sandra, CPU math calculations are the same as a stock E6600.

For 2.4GHz leave the bios FSB at 200MHz and default core voltage. Although bios says 200MHz, you actually get 266MHz. Be careful if you raise the FSB above 200 as the result is not what you key

For the money the Fry's deal is dramatically faster than my old system: 35w XP-M2200+ @ 2.3GHz. With a good DVD-ROM and HDD I was able to install Vista in 23 minutes!

 

[fleshconsumed]

Hey MattressTester, what kind of video card do you have? I'm having problems with minimum fps drops in games. Can you take a look at my other thread?

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=31&threadid=2015966&enterthread=y

Thanks

 

[aigomorla]

the board honestly sucks.

Actualyl saying it sucks would be a understatement. Its horrible.

I for one will never again buy a ECS board. There just utter crap.


As someone stated above, your essentially getting the CPU for free. Fleebay the Board, or use it for an emergency and get a DS3 if SLI isnt important to you.

 

[fleshconsumed]

OK found solution. The problem was in ****** hardware implementation on via part. Disabled fastwrites and forced AGP 4x mode in riva tuner and it's much better now. I still get momentary fps drops, but the system recovers almost instantaneously now and minimum fps have definitely gone up.

 

[VeauX]

I managed to overclock it to 240 FSB that is a 20% overclocking, this is the max stable. PCI freq is high but my Audigy doesn't seems to complain so...

 

[AkumaX]

Originally posted by: VeauX
I managed to overclock it to 240 FSB that is a 20% overclocking, this is the max stable. PCI freq is high but my Audigy doesn't seems to complain so...

you're running your hdd @ 40mhz. yikes! you'd better back up any sensitive data...