Is the Nforce FSB overclockable?

[puffpio]

I was thinking of buying it if it can run 166 mhz ddr fsb reliably. That way I could buy some 166mhz ddr ram, which would increase the memory throughput a lot since it's dual channel

 

[Gstanfor]

Yes, the nforce can have its FSB overclocked. The nice part about it is that the PCI clock will stay locked at 33mhz no matter what FSB setting you adopt. Most BIOS'es have the option to FSB overclock built in.

Having said that I'm not an overclocker so I don't know what sort of results you are likely to acheive. I would point out however, that it probably won't be the chipset or your memory that ends up limiting you, but rather the cpu. The EV6 architecture can't easily/reliably go above 133mhz DDR without revision (one of the reasons why AMD has not yet introduced an Athlon with a 166 mhz DDR FSB) so your results will vary from chip to chip.

Greg

 

[Nemesis77]

Of course you can overclock the FSB, but to my knowledge, nForce's FSB doesn't overclock very well. Usually people seem to reach something like 145-150MHz, whereas on other platforms they can reach 166MHz and even more.

 

[Athlon4all]

<< Of course you can overclock the FSB, but to my knowledge, nForce's FSB doesn't overclock very well. Usually people seem to reach something like 145-150MHz, whereas on other platforms they can reach 166MHz and even more. >>

Yes and no. The truth is it depends on the board. Asus A7N266-E and A7N266-C both are great fsb overclockers (see Ace's Hardwares' Socket a shootout), and can with good emmory hit 166 fsb/mem clock (a very nice way to give the integrated video on A7N266-E a speed boost), while MSi K7N420 Pro and K7N415 Pro are the ones that can barely hit 145-150fsb. Although the ocing does come at a slight price for those seeking integrated video, A7N266-E is $20 more than K7N420 Pro (that's a lot better than what it was, it was $40+ more), but though, for the majority of people, that won't matter cause the 415-D versions of these boards are both $100