is it worth the effort?

[0JK0]

Hi guys,

I have a opportunity to change my cpu to a Athlon 64 3000+, socket 939. My current cpu, which is Athlon Xp-M 2600 runs great at 194*12,5. Assuming that I have a ZALMAN CNPS7000A-Cu, which I can use on my new athlon 64, how much performance would I gain, how much can I overclock it? Is it worth the time?
If so, what mobo should I get? I am being offered MSI K8N Neo2 Platinium, is there anything out there better than this mobo? I am looking for a mobo with AGP8X, btw.

Any help appreciated!!!

 

[classy]

How much money is involved? I would get a better MB for my XP-M first. I don't think you'll see much difference unless your going to be doing some encoding.

 

[0JK0]

There is no money limit cause i can get this porcessor and mobo for free. I just want the best AGP8X socket 939 mobo out there...{and btw what is the best PCI-Express socket 939 mobo, i might switch to X800XL :] }

Originally posted by: classy
I don't think you'll see much difference unless your going to be doing some encoding.

Really? And what if I oc the Athlon 64 3000+ to about 2.4Ghz??

 

[Elfear]

If the cash outlay is small I'd say go for it. Find out what week it is and if the guy selling it has had any success ocing it.

If you look at the poll of max stable ocs on air, most of them are hitting the 2.6GHz range. From the looks of this Anandtech article the Athlon XP chip gets spanked. Given it's only running at 2.2GHz and yours is running at 2.425GHz but I still think it would get pummeled by the stock 3000+ even if it were running at the same speed as yours. 3500+ levels are easy as you can see from this poll. I think you'd notice a big difference.

The Neo2 is an awesome mobo. Argueably the best AGP 939 board out there.

The best PCI-E board out right now is the DFI Ultra-D in my opinion. Ocers heaven.

 

[Quentin]

A64 is a great way to go so it depends on what you want to spend now.

Just curious - do you have a version 2.0 deluxe? If so and you want to tinker for free with what you've already got - you can push that board a lot. The Trats BIOSes, tweaked memory timings and lower multiplier/higher FSB will give you a nice free boost.

If interested, check the ASUS forum sticky for the BIOS.

 

[Quentin]

Well, "A64 for free" changes things, doesn't it!

 

[0JK0]

Originally posted by: Elfear
If the cash outlay is small I'd say go for it. Find out what week it is and if the guy selling it has had any success ocing it.

The processor and the mobo will be new, bought form the shop.

Originally posted by: Elfear
If you look at the poll of max stable ocs on air, most of them are hitting the 2.6GHz range.

are athlons 64 3000+ that overclockabe? 2.6 is like having 4000+ for 150$. What are my chances of hitting that if I used the ZALMAN CNPS7000A-Cu??
Does ZALMAN CNPS7000A-Cu even fit on the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, cause i have seen that this board has a very strange lay out...

 

[0JK0]

Originally posted by: Quentin


Just curious - do you have a version 2.0 deluxe? If so and you want to tinker for free with what you've already got - you can push that board a lot. The Trats BIOSes, tweaked memory timings and lower multiplier/higher FSB will give you a nice free boost.

Unfortunately I have 1.03 version. and yes A64 for free does change things

 

[Elfear]

I think the Zalman cooler is actually pretty good. My XP-120 only dropped temps 3-4C over my 7000ALCU.

 

[sodcha0s]

If you're getting that chip and mobo for free, why are you even asking? It's a no brainer.

 

[0JK0]

Originally posted by: sodcha0s
If you're getting that chip and mobo for free, why are you even asking? It's a no brainer.

Firstly, because my mom is paying for it and I don't want her to spend unnecessarily extra money over 2~5 % improvment. Secondly it still takes time to swith motherboards between computers, and I don't have much time since I am at home only at weekends.
Thanks for all hepl!!

Sory , it's kind of off topic but it wasn't me who started it...

 

[Visual]

There should be quite an improvement in games if you upgrade to A64, no doubt. Another question is if you really need it. Are the games you play running too slow at the resolution/details that you want? I'd guess the gain will be at least 10% in alot of cases.... but on the other hand for a major gaming improvement like higher resolution or AA you're better off upgrading the GPU.... but on the other hand it's better to get a PCIexpress system when upgrading the GPU.... but on the other hand upgrading the CPU, mobo and GPU (and you'd probably want new 2x512MB ram too) at once isn't easy on one's budget... but on the other hand... but on the other hand...

And yes, a lot of 3000+ chips do reach frequencies in the 2.4-2.6 range, some even more. Then there are some "crappy" ones which will only do 2.2, not that a 400MHz OC is bad. You could pay extra for a 3200+ and be more or less "guaranteed" (well, there's always a risk of bad luck, but I think its quite less likely) to get above 2.4, plus its 10x multiplier gives you more flexibility in OCing, but it's up to you to decide if it is worth it.

The Neo2 Platinum is the best nf3 mobo according reviews i've seen. If you decide to upgrade to nf4 for PCIexpress you better get a SLI mobo, the DFI and the MSI nf4 boards are the best, though I'm quite happy with my asus too But if you're planing on an ATI pci-express card, you'd be better off holding out until ATI's own s939 chipset - it'll support gual-gpus and might even perform and/or OC better than the nf4

 

[0JK0]

thanks alot Visual....i think i will stick with nf3 mobo I am playing less and less as the time passes...

 

[0JK0]

ok so my brother yesterday did receive this new computer with A643000+ and MSI K8N Neo2 Platinium in it. I wanted to what is a differance between his setup and mine so i installed my ram and graphic card in his computer. Before I ran the 3dMark 03 i oc his cpu a bit to 1872MHz (208x9, for some reason that was the max stable confiuration on stock cooling that i could squeeze out of it which seems to be very low!!! why??)

Results are folowing

My pc:________________ My brother's pc
192x 12,5=2400 Mhz____ 208x9=1872Mhz
7192 NVidia drivers_____ 7192 NVidia drivers
Geforce 6800@ stock____ Geforce 6800@ stock
Score: 8729___________ Score: 8776


192x 12,5=2400 Mhz______ 208x9=1872Mhz
7192 NVidia drivers_______ 7192 NVidia drivers
Geforce 6800@ (16p6v)____ GeForce 6800@ (16p6v)
Score: 9559 ____________ Score: 9745


Is it worth for me to switch the board and cpu with him. That would cost me like 2 h of work and, in case I want to overclock this A64 more,30$ because on stock cooling it can only do 1872 mhz... So what would you guys do?

And btw probably i will have to drop down my card back to (12p6v) cause I can see some slight artifacts in a white background when playing Solider of Fortune 2 or Driv3r. Take it in consideration , because the more my graphid card is twicked the better off I am with A 64 (9559 3dmark points vs. 97453dmark points) and it goes the other way- the less my card is twicked the smaller differance I see between the cpus (8729 3d mark points vs. 8776 3dmark points). I am not planing any serious gpu oc maybe only a core up to 350Mhz.

any comments appreciated!!!

 

[kmmatney]

Wow, that's an amazingly bad overclock! Somethings not quite right... It would only be worth the effort of swapping out if you were assured that teh chip would overclock higher. I've heard of "dead" spots - fsb values where the things don't overclock well, but 208 MHz seems low.

 

[SNM]

I'm guessing his brother's got some cheap ram. Did you use a divider?
Secondly, are the buses locked?

 

[0JK0]

First of all I used my ram when oc ( you can see it in my sig). Secondly i didi it very quickly using Core Cell, not in bios. However it doesn't change the fact that computer restatred evertime is set the FSB to 209. Should I try doing some serous job in Bios along with divider? It shouldn't be ram, but who knows. My ram's letancy is 2-3-2-5 is it possible that if I increased the FSB in a windows environment the latency stayed the same? That's would make sense cause i don't think this ram could handle 209Mhz at 2-3-2-5......Btw at 1872 the temp is about 40C at load and about 45 at load? Is it ok , do I have some headroom for oc??

 

[Lonyo]

You have a small headroom for OC< but you don't want the temps to get too high.
The reason the 3D Mark scores are so close is because 3D Mark sucks (well, anything but 01) because 03 and 05 basically test the graphics card ONLY and the influence of the CPU/RAM etc is almost nothing.
Better off looking at the 3D Mark CPU scores, or using 3D Mark 01.

In terms of overclocking, set the biggest divider you can, set HTT to the lowest you can (maybe 3x or so), set the multiplier to the highest, loosest RAM timings, and then increase the frequency of the CPU, possibly skipping 209MHz if the PC doesn't boot with it.
I had some VERY odd issues with my XP and NF7 where I had a period of being unable to boot with ~190~200MHz FSB, but I could go higher or lower than that, and then reandomly one day 200MHz worked too.
Just try other frequencies around those, and make sure nothing else (like RAM) is going to be limiting you.


EDIT: What CPU core do you have?
The other limit might be the CPU core voltage, so obviously increase that before doing any overclocking to check that's not the issue (but don't take it too high, maybe 1.6v max) if you are worried about the MHz limit of the chip.

 

[Dkcode]

Check this thread out:

http://xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=46730

The neo 2 from what i read is a bit of a pain to get right when oc'ing. You need to make every BIOS option is set properly before the board starts to shine. Once its set its supposed to be the best overclockable 939 agp board available.

 

[0JK0]

thanks fpr the link Dkcode. Lanyo, it's not that th esystem won't boot when set beyond 209Mhz, after is set it in CoreCell in Windows it just restarts and then it is set back to 200Mhz....

I will try using all yours tips next week, cause i won't be home for the whole week. I 'll keep yopu updated then. Thx!

 

[chinkgai]

0jk0, off topic but...your xpm is 2400mhz at 1.45v??? is that prime stable???

 

[0JK0]

yep

 

[0JK0]

Originally posted by: Lonyo

In terms of overclocking, set the biggest divider you can, set HTT to the lowest you can (maybe 3x or so), set the multiplier to the highest, loosest RAM timings, and then increase the frequency of the CPU, possibly skipping 209MHz if the PC doesn't boot with it.
I had some VERY odd issues with my XP and NF7 where I had a period of being unable to boot with ~190~200MHz FSB, but I could go higher or lower than that, and then reandomly one day 200MHz worked too.
Just try other frequencies around those, and make sure nothing else (like RAM) is going to be limiting you.

Ok, so I did went to Bios.. I couldn't find anything like HTT all I found is HT Frequency (is it the same??) and it droped it from 5x to 4x. Then I increased the FSB up to 215. I also couldn't find the Ram dividers so instead I set the max RAM speed to 200Mhz (However after restart I noticed that RAm speed is 215Mhz, not 200). I also changed the Letancy from 2.0 to 2.5, just in case.. I restarted the system, it boot fine at idle it was 39 C after I ran the 3dMark (9845points) it was 46C.
My qs are:
How much oc headroom do I actually have?
Where the hell can I find the Ram divider and this HTT in bios(I can't see it anywhere)?
If I want to make some more serious oc what cooler should I buy (I guess the stock cooling is not sufficient enough). ZALMAN CNPS7000A-Cu? Anything else?

Any input appreciated!!

 

[0JK0]

Anyone, please!!

I know these are kind of trivial questions but I want to make sure that what I do is correct...

 

[0JK0]

Does ZALMAN CNPS7700A-Cu fit on the MSI Neo2 Platinum??