Help me tweak my XP333-R

[rbV5]

Been playing with my rig a little bit lately, picked up a XP1600+ from Newegg to replace my T-Bird, decided to leave it locked due to its low multiplier and see what I could come up with. No problem with the CPU, been running it at 172 * 10.5 1804MHz stable last couple weeks.

Benched everything out and everything looks great except my memory scores are a bit low comparatively speaking. Sandra shows 1731 MB/s Int 1639 MB/s Float. I'm running at 180 * 10.5 1886.77 MHz currently, Ram settings are cas2 Normal timing in the Bios.

Seems like this board has fallen ot of favor a bit? but its been a rock for me for months now, and I'd like to tweak it up a bit if I could. Any thoughts or help welcome

Thanks!

 

[IRJack]

XP1600+ Stepping and voltage???

 

[Insane3D]

What you describe is normal with the Iwill. The board was designed for high FSB overclocking, and it was one of the first ones with the correct divisors to keep the PCI and AGP bus speeds in spec at high FSB's. However, since it uses the ALI chipset, the memory performance has never been that good. The ALI chipset is still a decent chipset as far as being stable, and the IDE performance is usually very good. It's one weak point is in memory performance. The newer KT333 boards will kill it in memory performance even with the Iwill having a much higher FSB. Personally, I wouldn't get too hung up on the memory benchmarks and just enjoy your system.

If you upgraded to a newer KT333 board, you would have better memory performance, but the affect on this in "real world" use probably would not be noticeable.

Edit:

Another thing the ALI chipset lacks, IIRC, is a dedicated high speed conection between the Northbridge and the Southbridge like the recent Via and Intel boards use. The southbridge just rides on the PCI bus like most older chipsets do, and it can take away some of the bandwith of your PCI devices.

 

[rbV5]

XP1600+ Stepping and voltage???

AROIA 1.98 vcore 51 C looping Sandra

I wouldn't get too hung up on the memory benchmarks and just enjoy your system.

No, usually this time of year I don't try and tweak too much anyway with the heat, but I'm just playing with the new CPU and thought I'd try to see what the rig could do. It runs cooler than my T-bird even at the higher vcore.I t will run 1804MHz stable 24/7 at 1.78vcore and its not like the memory marks are poor, but its kind of cool to see all the bars maxed out in all the Sandra Benchmarks with this $56 CPU and "slow" ALI board LOL. Seems I remember Furor had this board last early Spring when I got mine and had some memory tweaks that made a significant difference, I just couldn't find the posts.

 

[Insane3D]

Seems I remember Furor had this board last early Spring when I got mine and had some memory tweaks that made a significant difference, I just couldn't find the posts.

I just PM'ed him with a link to this thread...

 

[Furor]

Here is a long thread with several helpful tweaks and stuff..the XP333 isn't my primary board anymore, but there are a few things in the bios that will confuse you when trying to set the board for either stability or performance, i'll boot up the xp333 computer in a sec and tell you what they are. You don't say what kind of memory you have, how many sticks, etc..the XP333 is a little picky with memory, especially two sticks..You should definitely be seeing 2300-2600 mb/s in sandra, and maybe more with the wpcredit settings at 1900mhz.


These should be the best bios settings

DRAM Read Enhance : Enable
DRAM WBUF Flush : Enable
RAM BIU Output Bypass Mode : Enable
RAM BIU Input Bypass MODE : CAS = 2.5
AT BUS CLOCK : 7.16mhz
System Bios Cacheable: Disable
Memory Hole AT 15-16M : Disable
I/O Recovery Period : 1
Passive Release : Disable

And, of course..set Dram performance to fast/ultra when possible, and CAS to 2.
If you can change CAS Select to 3, and use Fast setting instead of Normal..it will give you better performance

 

[rbV5]

I just PM'ed him with a link to this thread...

Doh....<slaps forhead>.....In my defense, I've been up all night finishing off my 80 hour week Graveyard shifts(maybe I shouldn't be screwing with my rig LOL) Thanks, you're awesome

Furor

Thats exactly what I was looking for! I've got 2 sticks of Kingmax 2700 256MB, I know about the memory, and the slots are so stinking tight that I almost RMA'd my ram, but finally flexed the crap out of the PCB and "SNAP" into place. It'll run cas 2.5 at 204 MHz FSB using the 1/6 divider and my unlocked Tbird...I left my XP1600 locked because I'm lazy, so its just FSB this time, and its going to come up just a whisper shy of 1900MHz! not too shabby methinks.....

Anyway thanks you guys for the help!

 

[Insane3D]

Doh....<slaps forhead>.....In my defense, I've been up all night finishing off my 80 hour week Graveyard shifts(maybe I shouldn't be screwing with my rig LOL) Thanks, you're awesome

Ahhhh....my preferred shift. 5 days/week 11pm to 7am...I love it!

 

[rbV5]

Ahhhh....my preferred shift. 5 days/week 11pm to 7am...I love it!

I do the 7:30 PM to 7:30AM shift X 6days then the last day is 8 hours 11:30 PM to 7:30 AM.....Then I get a week-off<----love it.....now if I could just figure out how to get the other week off also....

No luck running fast timings at cas 2.5 Can't set to cas 3 in the bios, Bios settings were slightly different, but no improvement over what I had. I've hit a wall with the bios.....now on to that thread, looks like a good read.

Update: Lowered the FB to 166, set ram to cas 2.5 normal, used WPCREDIT per that thread
Result 166 * 10.5 1736 MHz 2127/2008 MB/s Int/Float..nice...time to up the FSB
2270/2122 at cas 2 @ 166