Help with A64 3000+ & Gigabyte K8N Pro

[irenealan]

Hi I finally purchased a A64 3000+ and Gigabyte K8N Pro and booted up WinXP fine with my 1gb of Cosair ValueSelect PC3200 ram. Just wonder if someone can give me suggestions on what to do next if I would like to test how much the system can overclock.

I found that the K8N only allows you to change the FSB but not the multiplier... I can't even find where I can set the divider... Based on my ram, should I try OCing the system to 220 FSB and leave the divider as 1:1 or find out how I can change it to 5:4? Won't it slower the system if I change it to 5:4 instead?

Other than rasing the FSB is there anything else I can do to OC this baby? I check Sandra and it said the chip can hit 3.2ghz maximum. Though that may not be realistic but does it mean that I can raise the FSB all the way up to 2.5 or even higher? I am thinking that if I can raise the FSB up to 262.5 and set the divider at 5:4 so that my memory will run at 210. What do you guys think? Do people usually OC that much on a A64 3000+?

In addition, I wonder if I should change the memory stepping since I ready quite some posts in this forum mentioned that the memory stepping would be an aspect that affects a successful OC? Currently I think it's running at 2.5,3,3,8 and I wonder if I should change it. If so, does anyone knows how to do it in a Gigabyte K8N Pro board?

Thanks for any help!

 

[irenealan]

someone please help! Thanks a million!!!

 

[Shimmishim]

1. i highly doubt that your chip can hit 3.2 ghz w/o phase change cooling or better...

2. you can change the mults down from what you have....

so since you have a 3000+ the mult is top locked at 10x but you have access to any mults lower than that... you can use a program called clockgen to change the multiplier...

3. i dunno how high you'lll be able to get on that board... does it have an agp lock? i know it doesn't have a pci lock.

i think realistically speaking, you should hit around 2.3 to 2.4 on air cooling...

 

[irenealan]

Thanks Shimmishim. I don't think I would like to get upto 3.2 (not I don't like to but I am not experienced enough to do so!) =P

Why should I change multiplier down, it already won't go up why should I put it down to OC it? Won't that even make the FSB higher and thus the voltage and temp?

The board will let me setup FSB higher than 250 I think and it has an AGP lock... I installed the Mobo software EasyTune which let me raise the FSB through Windows and also let me change divider for Ram. Inside the software it also shows that the AGP and PCI is locked at 66 and 33 respective no matter how I raise the FSB! Does anyone have experience with the software? Is it reliable to OC the chip through such software?

I am targetting 2.2 - 2.4 thus how would you suggest me doing so? Just raising the FSB and change the divider and see if how high my ram can do a 1:1 when I raise the FSB? Currently the chip is running at 30C idle and 35 loaded... thus I think it has a good chance of hitting 2.4ghz just that I don't know how much voltage I should increase and how I should OC the ram or change the divider at the same time...

Also I have a 330W PS, is it good enough to OC? Thanks for all the help!

Originally posted by: Shimmishim
1. i highly doubt that your chip can hit 3.2 ghz w/o phase change cooling or better...

2. you can change the mults down from what you have....

so since you have a 3000+ the mult is top locked at 10x but you have access to any mults lower than that... you can use a program called clockgen to change the multiplier...

3. i dunno how high you'lll be able to get on that board... does it have an agp lock? i know it doesn't have a pci lock.

i think realistically speaking, you should hit around 2.3 to 2.4 on air cooling...

 

[Shimmishim]

to hit 2.4, you'll need to raise the voltage that's for sure... (unless you have an awesome o/c-ing chip).

you'll have to do it by raising the fsb though....

do you know what your ram limit is?

because if you know the limit of your ram is... 240, then i'd run 1:1 and up your fsb to 240.

if your limit is less than that, then use the 5:6 divider to get you up to 240 while your ram runs at 200.

lowering the mult helps you get higher fsb's = more bandwidth...

performance increase isn't necessarily significant in a64's but there is a slight increase though...

 

[irenealan]

Shimmishim thanks for your help. I saw you have your 3200+ OC to 2.6 and I wonder how much voltage did you raise to keep yours stable? I am assuming that my chip should work the same as yours since they are only different in L2 cache...

I don't know the limit for my ram but it's a Corsair ValueSelect PC3200 512mb so I guess it won't go any higher than a 210 thus either I can set the FSB to 210, which is not much of an OC or set it to 252 with a 6:5 divider which would be a pretty good OC if my 330 PS would handle the load and temp is not too high!

So how much slower if I change the divider to 6:5 instead of 1:1?

So Shimmishim how did you OC your 3200+ since I think you are the one I saw who has the best OC on a A64 3200+! Did you lower your multiplier or straightly raising your FSB? Just wonder the reason you lower the multiplier is to try not pushing your chip too much while rasing the FSB to get the speed you like? Otherwise why not stay in the original or highest mutiplier possible for your chip?

If we tried not pushing the chip too much by lowering the mutliplier then what component are we stressing on if we raise the FSB? The Motherboard?

So were you able to reach 1600 FSB with HT and your raised FSB?

Anybody else have experience OCing with EasyTune, feel free to provide me comments on this topic. Thanks.

Originally posted by: Shimmishim
to hit 2.4, you'll need to raise the voltage that's for sure... (unless you have an awesome o/c-ing chip).

you'll have to do it by raising the fsb though....

do you know what your ram limit is?

because if you know the limit of your ram is... 240, then i'd run 1:1 and up your fsb to 240.

if your limit is less than that, then use the 5:6 divider to get you up to 240 while your ram runs at 200.

lowering the mult helps you get higher fsb's = more bandwidth...

performance increase isn't necessarily significant in a64's but there is a slight increase though...

 

[Shimmishim]

Well...

1st of all, i'm using prometeia mach 1 cooling (phase change) so my cpu runs very very low temps. I used 1.8 volts to get it stable at 2.6 ghz but I can afford the voltage due to my temps... but i wouldn't recommend using that high of a voltage with just air cooling.

I ran 10 x 260 with the 5:6 divider (ram ran at 217mhz ish)
then i tried 9 x 289 with the 5:6 divider (ram ran around 236 mhz ish)

good stuff.

but i've volt modded my board so i can run ram at 3.2+ volts...

the only issue with running such a high fsb is the issue of no pci lock... and possibly being limited in your overclock...

yes it would stress your board and any pci cards you have plugged in...

in order to run higher fsb's... you'll probably have to drop the LDT...

I had to drop it from 3x to 2.5x to run it above 225 mhz.

 

[irenealan]

I see, so if I am just using the stock fan (not even a better HS), the most I may hit is around 2.2 or 2.3? Anything higher would be overheated right?

But that's still good since I only expects it to hit the stock speed of a 3400+ or even FX51 (I am hoping to spend the money of a 3000+ to get the speed of a stock FX51). Do you think it's possible? Ideally I would like to run my ram at 200 FSB and set a 6:5 divder so the CPU would hit 2.4ghz at stock cooling! That sounds quite impossible to me!

Good thing about my system is I don't use any PCI card... I have my video on the AGP and I use the Mobo sound! I really can't think of any PCI addition? Any suggestion? Now I setup both my HDs to IDE but wonder if you guys run them in Raid or Serial? Is it much faster than IDE?

Thanks.

 

[Shimmishim]

The thing with Serial is that it'll crap ou taround 237 mhz or so... that's what people havebeen reporting...

but yeah.. with stock you should be able to hit 2.3 i would think...

 

[irenealan]

So seems like I should keep my HDs connect to the IDE and leave the PCI or serial port open? Thanks.

Is that what usually people do with the HDs? Connecting to the IDE or they do different things to speed up the access. I would like to know since I do alot of file transfer! But how would people OC if the serial top out at 237?

Originally posted by: Shimmishim
The thing with Serial is that it'll crap ou taround 237 mhz or so... that's what people havebeen reporting...

but yeah.. with stock you should be able to hit 2.3 i would think...

 

[Shimmishim]

Originally posted by: irenealan
So seems like I should keep my HDs connect to the IDE and leave the PCI or serial port open? Thanks.

Is that what usually people do with the HDs? Connecting to the IDE or they do different things to speed up the access. I would like to know since I do alot of file transfer! But how would people OC if the serial top out at 237?

Originally posted by: Shimmishim
The thing with Serial is that it'll crap ou taround 237 mhz or so... that's what people havebeen reporting...

but yeah.. with stock you should be able to hit 2.3 i would think...

they buy a SATA pci card that has a fixed frequency of 33 mhz no matter with or w/o pci lock...

 

[DreamInBlue]

I am typing on the exact same setup right now Athlon 64 3000+ and K8NPRO. I hit my max stable at 2.25GHz it will go 2.3 but not pass prime95. To reach your max overclock here are the settings i adjusted in the bios. Hit Ctrl + F1 to display Advanced chipset features. Choose Advanced chipset features and go to the LDT Speed and adjust it to 2.5 if you leave it at 3 the ht speed will go to high and BSOD your system. If you are using PC3200 memory I would change the max memclock to 166 and then after you find your cpu's limit you can change it back yo auto and see if your memory will stay stable also. Then exit out of Advanced chipset features and choose frequency and voltage. Up the CPU voltage to 1.7 change the Vddq to +.3v and change the VCC12_HT to +.3v. Then hit f10 to save the settings and boot into windows here i used a really great tool called Clockgen download here. Open clockgen and change the HTT to 225 then run a program like prime95 to see if its stable and just keep increasing the HTT untill you find your max stable. Once you find the max stable go back into bios and change the max memclock to auto and go into frequency and voltage and change the DDR Voltage to +.3v and boot into windows then check your stability if the memory holds stable you've just found your max overclock if not go back and reduce you max memclock back to 166 and that will be your highest OC.