KT600 and a 2800+ OEM (Barton I believe) oc'ing help

[lMlHuxley]

Ok here is the scenario, I have a KT600+ board. This board does not allow me to modify voltage. I can adjust the FSB though. I am able to get the computer to boot just fine at 175mhz FSB but anything higher the computer will immidiately freeze or not boot at all.

Even at the 175mhz OC my system will freeze sometimes. If I leave it at 166mhz FSB everything is fine. While running 175mhz my chip barely reaches 40 degrees celcius due to my cooling.


I have 2 sticks of 333mhz pc 2700 kingston valueram and 1 stick of pc3200 400mhz ram

What am I doing wrong? I heard something along the lines of memory fsb matching the overclocking fsb? Sorry, I am very new to this. Anyway, temps are fine but things are obviously not working. I believe I have a locked chip as well.


Sorry for my ignorance but I could use any help you can give.

 

[mechBgon]

I see three issues here:

• It's KT600, which isn't known for stellar OC'ing even on motherboards that do have tweakability
• You have three memory modules, and KT600 is only rated for a maximum of two modules at DDR400 speeds
• Unless you're using the dividers in the BIOS to control your PCI and AGP bus speeds, you're taking them out-of-spec by dabbling with the CPU's bus speed, which can corrupt your hard drive

Can I suggest either 1) getting a tuneable nForce2 board and trading out your two PC2700 modules for one PC3200 module, or 2) clock it at stock speed, and enjoy using it for what you bought it for

 

[lMlHuxley]

The problem is that I did not think I was going to use it for OC'ing and simply wanted to see what was available for this soyo kt600 plus board. Why would the board have three memory modules and boot fine and state it has the proper amount of memory if it is only rated for 2 modules? Does that simply mean that the performance is actually going down or what?

 

[mechBgon]

It's a stability thing. The KT400 and 400A were worse, they went like this:

• Use one memory module and you are cleared to use it at DDR266, DDR333 or DDR400
• Add a second one and you're cleared for DDR266 or DDR333. DDR400 is not guaranteed to work.
• Add a third one and you should be running them at DDR266 or else.

I pulled up the manual for the Asus A7V600 to do a reality check on what a top-end KT600 board can do, and Asus says DDR400 with a maximum of two modules. So with three modules, it looks like DDR333 is your "official" answer, although you might wring some more out of them.

The other thing is that a 2800+ processor may not have all that much headroom regardless of what platform it's running on. People who want to overclock used to go for the 2500+, and now go for the unlocked mobile 2400+, 2500+ and 2600+ (as you can see from the many threads about them).

 

[jjyiz28]

the kt600 does NOT have pci-agp locks, like the NF2 boards. what it does have is dividers at 133/166/200 fsb. when you set ur fsb at those speeds, ur pci/agp will run 33/66.

try running at 200fsb and see if that works. does your board has multi adjustments?? can ur cpu even support multi's?? newer bartons/tbred/applebreds do not, mobiles do though, and older bartons/tbreds/applebreds do.

 

[BlvdKing]

spend $70 for a cheap NF2 Ultra 400 board. Trust me, I have a Gigabyte KT600 and it sucks for overclocking, even with voltage and FSB options. Just to give you and idea, I could run my Barton at 183*11 (no multipliers in BIOS) for 2013 MHz. However, it is not stable at 200*10 using the wire trick at any voltage or memory timings. WHY? It's the mysteries of the crappy KT600 chipset! Do yourself a favor and get the better board next time. I will not make the same mistake twice.

 

[lMlHuxley]

Alright, I may buy an nf7-s or something next time I have to build a system (I build systems for 200$ and sell them for 400$ at my friends pawn shop ). Just need to wait until I can find a good cpu+mobo combo around. No big hurry though, thanks for the advice all.

 

[lMlHuxley]

So this is what I ended up doing. I bought DFI NF2 Ultra Infinity board for 99.00 at microcenter, only a few bucks more than newegg so that wasn't bad

Then by buying the motherboard, the audigy zs 2 was 30$ off then there was 50$ mail in rebate on top of that. So I get the zs2 for 30$

I then picked up a 160gb maxtor to replace my 100gb and my 80gb drive. Just got sick of having so many drives. It ran me about 100$.

I then picked up a 64mb pci graphics card to see if it would help me when I want to watch movies and play games at the same time.

Then I picked up a soyo dragon case that came with a keyboard, speakers, and mouse for 30$ after a 20$ MIR and the case is pretty sweet I must say.

I also traded in my 2x512MB 2700/3200 valueram sticks for some crucial sticks of the same size but they were 2100. Was that a wise choice?

I also decided to use only a 20gb drive as my main drive. The speed increase I notice has been signifigant. So i have a 20gb main drive, 160gb secondary and another 120gb.

So all in all a long day of getting this stuff going. I can't believe I spent a friday night doing this stuff lol. I will try some OC'ing tomorrow afternoon.

 

[lMlHuxley]

Oh yes, and I will probably sell my kt600 on the forums or on ebay. Just as the other hard drives i had. Not to mention some guy sold me his brand new steel battalion controller, original game and expansion game for 100$ cash, wewt! Today was a good day.

 

[mechBgon]

Don't forget to get your Windows patches, your firewall and your antivirus software going pronto. It's a jungle out there

 

[Soulkeeper]

shoulda got the abit kt600 board
it looks like the best option imo if you chose that chipset/pricerange

try with only two memory sticks and the spd timings for your memory

but before you do any overclocking i recommend getting the system stable at it's default settings then updating to the latest bios just to make sure you don't have a buggy bios or miss any support for important things

the kt600 is actually a nice board imo if you have pc3200 or less memory you should be able to top it out without a hitch in 1:1 if the cpu can handle it
most of them hit 210 to 226 depending on the board/bios and if they support overclocking

the agp/pci lock is a big hit tho

good luck with this

btw i think trading for your kt600 would almost be worth it for my 1.8 P4m northwood 512kb no HT 400fsb that overclocks to 2.6ghz no problem and 2.8ghz if yur willing to hit it with voltages over 1.65-1.67v and/or have good cooling, can't guarantee it will hit 3ghz with watercooling or anything, but i might trade this for a good motherboard, 2 fast hard drives, or a good video card gf3 or above, hmm maybe i should take this to the for sale/trade forum hehe

mechBgon is right about those viruses tho
i've gotten like 12 in the past two weeks and my isp even shut me down for 4 hours because they said i had the blaster worm (which i did and 3 other viruses)
and i know all these viruses aren't coming through my e-mail
atleast half of them are scripts or exploites to the webbrowser that execute themselves without you athorizing it

Avast! has some free 60 day trial software
Trend Micro has this really cool free web based virus scanner

the Trend Micro scanner is great and i've used it a few times
works good for older computers that you don't want or can't install virus software on
but it does crash sometimes and might not like certain browsers like netscape (big compressed files seem to crash it for me)

the Avast! 60 day trial is great
i am currently using that on my 15th or so day
it seems to update definitions every day or two almost as quick as virues are discovered
if you choose to buy this it seems to be only slightly cheaper than norton antivirus or any of there other bloated software sweets. I think Avast! is like 50 or 60 bucks and you can download your purchase right off their website or have them mail it to you.
It is also fast and has a nice quarantine feature with complete info on the viruses and options on what to do with them

if you wanna get by spending 30 bucks or less look for mcaffrey or something, but watch out for some of the "no name" companies that might not have the software team to keep their definitions updated and competitive

my norton internet security just stopped working for me one day after my computer crashed, and i can't reinstall it because of some error i get during installation now, i even tryed their downloadable update with no success, i liked the norton system doctor and defragmentation and optimization software when everything used to be simple in win98 with norton 2000, but norton seems bloated and highly overpriced these days since version 2001 of systemworks.
it's amazing that they charge over 80 bucks for internet security software and offer a 20 dollar mail in rebate so they can manage to sell 20% of there inventory on "good deals" real quick and then go to work on the next product to hit yur pocket books next year. It's also funny how they can market their small collection of a few programs in so many different products, of varying prices, all seeming to want $10-$20 per individual feature.
norton is only good if you have no problem paying 300+ for winxp and 400+ for office XP
then 30-50 bucks a peice for your games and still have a few hundred to spend before stettling on yur software environment and feeling complete

if products like 3d studio mark, winxp, MS office, dream weaver, photoshop, rendering software, cad/caX software, game making software, virus/maintencane software, firewall/ftp/essential tools, and adequate access to updates to outdated or extremely exploided/aged software, etc without the hit of another 40 to 500 bucks every time you need to upgrade or build a computer whose hardware dwarfs the prices of current software on a workstation/server/(and now home systems).

i find myself hating to buy so much different software, like everyone wants a chunk of the "condition" or technological direction of the pc/internet.
we need to weed out some of these companies that don't do nothing for us, 5 to 10 companies should be plenty to supply complete software solutions covering atleast 1/4th of customers' basic operational needs/uses in one purchase without breaking 60 bucks and then when companies see that updates/fairness in pricing/etc are the catalyst for loyal longterm, and new, customers alike the computer "situation" should be more liveable for those of us that save up just enough money to buy the hardware over several months and don't have but 100 or 200 to spend on software to be able to use our new purchases of expensive but oversized night lights



free internet security and the attempt to keep even the poor and uniformed safe on the internet from viruses and attacks is the wave of the future imo.
MS just can't integrate it into windows so readily because they are after all covering like 11 market segments with one product already and might put some of these once-stronger/older/less board and/or "Pay-check-to-paycheck" virus making software companies under. MS could integrate all the software any user could ever need into their os's; sell it for under 100 bucks and still make 40% profit after R&D and opperating/upgrade expenses if they sold anywhere near the amount of windows cd's they sell now. The market is too segregated or segmented, take your pick. MS would gain many more customers and gain a better public/corporate and home/private market segment PR if they could halve their prices or better and offer all or most of these features i talked about, plus a littl elbow greese toward user productivity and ease of use without sacreficing power or lack of features for desktop graphics, .net, or media enhancements for windows media player and codec support updates, etc. that, combined, don't seem to do much but slow things down and force hardware upgrades; even if things do look "prettier", appear more professional, or more airbrushed/complex/edited/detailed/resolution/bit depth/colors etc and thus larger images for icons, menus, taskbars, and windows.
Look for longhorn to uphold this tradition as animated objects and video become part of the normal desktop use and even installation
the need for more memory bandwidth and the cpu throughput/effectiveness in processing and working with many large or continuos files/data feeds to increase by a few fold over the next 2 to 4 years.
it's all about microsoft's move toward it's visions of a rented or "leased" software environment which stands only 1 or 2 generations behind the "top-of-the-line" hardware (supports and requires new hardware after every new windows product update, not including the updates you pay regularly for) and comes with updates/support if yur willing to pay your monthly or anual "bill".
the problem with this is that hardware/software has an upkeep under this "extended-payment-idea" or software-support-combination if you will.
i havn't read anything on .net lately but the whole passport and ownership/need of a login/payed account scared many. Kinda like MS own our Public property because it creates the means by which to access/create the computer experience and wants it's people to realize that software is worth atleast 1/2 of the price on hardware. The justification for this lacks tho.
The map of computer history will continue without any or all of the high priced software, "charge like you a big shot hardware company because they buy too much stuff " , giants that roam the virus infected/crowed/and utterly dependent personal/corporate/institution/government/world of users who have no other option than to spend 500+ on software or suffer long hours of learning a new OS/apps from the likes of linux or bsd, or just using an outdated but cheaper OS (win95, ME, 98, NT, and now win2k (usually non-pro or non-server versions are substantially cheaper, but offer no more software over Linux or even the standard OS, they are based on, of the same version when compared and taking into consideration "programs with the few unique features disabled" "evaluation" "free" "trial" "freeware" "trailware" "software considered Open-to-the-public or Public domain/property" "opensource" "lgpl" "bsdlicencses" and "GPL", to cover maybe 1/3rd of the good guys out there holding the bar for the average and budget users) that might not support certain hardware or might have certain exposed vulnerabilities or downsides from the act of time and the virus/script kiddie efforts to dominate MS and all it's supporters/products or something.




I like linux for this reason, not only is all the software free, but the drivers/support for your hardware to get running costs you 0$ minus labor, which is usually not much different than any other os. Anyone ever hear of wget in linux ??
I think all installed programs (and the os) should have a wget-like optional (or access to a service perhaps) to auto/manual upgrade that doesn't require a reboot of the system. the Computer should be connected to an update server which fixes all problems or atleast the exploits/fixes that are OS or webbrowser based with an instant download of patches when problems and fixes are found.
this ondemand feature will controll the doubling and quadrupling of pc demand over the next decade and change imo

not to mention gentoo linux's web-based install and update features (kinda like the bsd os's and a few other companies' proprietary solutions).
if MS windows or any companie's OS could install from a dvd drive from a cd that contains the encrypted source code trees for the whole range of products needed by a user and offer the options like gentoo and many individual software programs have to download updates during installation to ensure a completely up to date and much more secure install, then all would be good. Can you imagine products like: "The microsoft complete computer software disk" or ""Norton complete: system maintence, security, updates for all features/components/modules of the program suite, disk management/backup-tools, and performance/registry auto/manual tuning features for complete upkeep for the life of your current operating system/hardware without the need to spend more on the software or your hardware untill you upgrade OS or get a new computer via it's autoupdatable and bug fixable, file replacement via button press or auto-update features/characteristics and the ability to not substantially increase it's resource requirements over the life of the updateable product with current mid-range or even budget hardware solutions"

 

[Soulkeeper]

I would keep the kt600 board if i was you
there are a few programs that can let you over clock from windows like clockgen which lets you change fsb, and agp buses (maybe more depending on what the newer version has and your chipset/cpu support by the program)
there should be some programs out there that let you change cas latenices, vcore, vdimm, vagp, all changeable clock values (fsb, mult, memory, pci, etc), maybe even vdd (and other chipset specific features of the kt600 family), etc. from within windows.
I think via might even have something like that on their website for developers or something
via chipsets have always had a strong and efficient low-latency memory controller with socket A, and havn't been more than a month to three behind on southbridge/northbridge/memory features/support implementation throughout the athlon/duron lifecycle, until recently as they've had to deal with nvidia, ati, sis, intel, etc and increasing demand for performance/features/R&D/the new sockets, platforms, memories, standards, and challenges of advancement and holding a voice in every market segment they've entered in the past several years, just pci/agi lock and a few "extremist/enthusiast/gamer/overclocker/Power users with a wedge on their sholder or a lead foot for the latest and greatest performacne they can get in their favorite games/apps with the demanding settings turned on and only looking at FPS or seconds to render or compile/decode/encode/compress files or applications they are running/etc" features are lacking in both chipset and apparrently in your case, and a few others, of lacking bios support for the full featureset of the chipset and it's abilities.

I also suspect that your northbridge cooling might be inadequete for overclocking more than a few mhz over 400mhz, maybe 210 if yur lucky, (the trouble is intensified by the fact that you have more than one memory module, but assuming they are all the same size/brand/latencies/model and you are not running dual-channel mode, or have your latencies to low or vdimm too low, then this should have far less affect on your memory speed/chipset, and thus cpu, limits than say the nforce2 or i875/i865 in dual channel mode with more than one slot occupied at a time and speeds above spec). The stability of any chipset based motherboard with 1, 2, 3 or even 4 memory modules is really dependent a lot on the bios/motherboard marker that you happen to buy from. Many motherboard companies cut features/support of the chipsets they use and don't take full embrasement of the entire chipset's features set in an attempt to bring cost of development/implementation/testing/additional driver and bios coding to a minimum in an attempt to solidify lower costs per chip/wafer/board/implementation/and time wastes designing/coding for bios or drivers install and apps for the software suite/ board (layers needed, electrical requirements number of required traces, solder points, board realestate, etc. to implement the single or dual chip solutions/price at market/price to computer builders and oem consumers of large quantites at a time etc. before others and at a lower cost, thus offering you with a chance to get the technology fast or cheap instead of "at it's best" or "fully optimized/engaged feature-set with a good board design/crafstmanship with an emphasize on cooling and everything good these days and most time less bugs because when the boards aren't in the budget segment it usually means they spent a few more months as an evolving prototype /a constantly updating internal engineering revision/and an updatable and testable peice of theory/practice to compete on every ground/feature/performance level required with the top-end competition before they release the board (usually never above 10% or even 4% between boards in performance with the same chipset, just differen't bios/design/power stability and component quality/position/and choice in implementation/ software packages/ last minute tweaks and partnerships with other component makers for nice features and monitoring or specific action-ability-function chips like realtek, winbond, and silicon image amoung others/usually the extremist boards are released a week to 2 months after the budget ones of the same chipset; they are also more bug-free in hardware/software/etc. and the final results in an enthusiast/highend/server/gamer/feature laden/added games, software, and cool "toys" with the product and are usually better all the way around except for price, which can be anywhere from 10% to 100%+ difference between the different segments these boards target, and time to market between the same chips of course"

your board can be made to run 220fsb I would bet a dollar on it
and 10 bucks says it can hit atleast 210 with fast timings and two sticks of memory
or 210 to 220 with all three memory modules and increased voltage and/or relaxed latencies and maybe a boost in some vdimm to 2.8 or 2.9 (depending on what "actual voltage" reads as after setting the chosen value, but try to keep the vdimm under 3v if you wanna keep your memory for a long time and be carefull of undervolting/overvolting/innacurrate settings of your bios saves and/or innaccurate reporting of the "real" values because they can be off by .6v or more in some off the wall motherboards most seem to undervolt .3 to .5v these days in an attempt to bring down system heat, prolong component life, and unfortunately drop below the intel/amd specs for default/recommended desktop situations or implementations and possibly the needed voltage to attain the default or overclocked speed yur after. This can be remedied by first setting the vcore to whatever value needed to attain an "actual voltage" read in the bios or through software (motherboard supplied, 3rd party chip software/solution, or MBM5 -amoung others- which should support most every chipset with the exception of a few that either have workarounds to read correctly or just don't work fully/at all, mostly older boards tho with improper/unstandardized/fully non-existant/maybe proprientary solutions where the temp sensors or proper i2c/lmsensors or other protocol standards weren't secured in the final product as one might expect for the particular chipset solution after reading the via/or other co's spec/feature/developer-partner-implementation sheets/standards documents and data that is default recommended or required to be approved.), once that is set then move from there with the fsb in 5 or 10mhz increments and do memory tests you might have to up the vdimm or vcore every few steps by .02v to .5v or so to get things stable, usually a bump of .02 or .05 does the trick for a few hundred mhz on the cpu and maybe a dozen or two mhz on the memory if all other settings aren't holding you back, like heat/cooling, or other bios setting put to unstable too-fast settings for the speed/voltage/temps to handle stabily without a hitch)

i recommend keeping vcore under 1.75v if possible
and vdimm under 3v (preferably 2.8 to 2.9 or so)
vagp is almost non-important unless you are having trouble getting a good video card overclock for those last few mhz on the core and/or memory or if you are suffering instability of the chipset/vid card/etc due to the increased power drawl of your overclocked video card and/or spikes/surges of voltage/amps due to an over saturated vagp due to the overclocking of the gpu, vdimm, or even the agp bus (don't net much performance in current games of maybe 5% at most, and i suspect that as textures grow in games we could see 8%-15% boosts from a nicely overclocked agp bus but this is unlikely due to the fact that the system memory and current video card throughput/processing rate/power might serve as a bottleneck even at the agp8x spec in most every game before the agp bus is fully saturated. I think agp8x is gonna be too slow for the demands soon and am glad to know that pciexpress is available when my games require 128mb or 256mb of vid mem and 512mb of system memory or something just to meet the min/recommended requirements to run the games. When textures reach 128mb, 256mb, 384mb, 768mb, and maybe even 1gb in a few years agp8x will be thought of like isa or eisa with yur old sb16 sound cards and trident video cards with 512kb or 1mb of vid mem and a lego-looking-like chip that produces about as much heat as a dime on a occupied sofa (but prob ran at 2v to 5v with a watt or 4 of heatoutput at best) and has no heatsink but the board is as big as the extra-large-bibles i see some people carrying with them using two hands on the way to their weekly church grillings/"brainwash-sermons" hehe



btw which board do you have anyways ?
and sorry for all the long typing i just got board and needed a place to vent a few words for a good cause

 

[Soulkeeper]

btw trading your pc2700 for pc2100 of the same size seems like a bad deal unless i missed the real reason behind the transaction

all faster memory ie: pc4400 pc3700 pc3500 pc3200 etc can be clocked at all lower ratings between pc1600 or less and pc3200 or more without issues because it is fully underclockable (and you can usually lower the latencies to nice fast settings when mhz is lower and trade off for a good 5 to 15% boost or so in some things from the reduced access times/latencies/finding of rows,colums, individual memory addresses and starts sending data to the cpu/vid card and rest of the system a good few ms or ns faster than memory with lower latencies but higher bandwidth should help compensate for giving up on 1:1 memory mode or higher fsb speeds this should help your memory subsystem and thus general performance and compensate for lost peak throughput in return for increase access and modification speed to the memory modules, even if the bandwidth might be 1/4th less or more and hitting you for 5-10% performance in big or demanding games/apps/media encoding/decoding/rendering etc. This can be a good thing in many cases because it allows you to increase other things like timings and special bios performance features that often make faster "default speed systems" unstable with the higher clock speeds, besides many smaller and/or older games with smaller memory footprints and/or the need to access small amounts of data and/or just change values of variables in storage often react really nice to lower latencies such as 2-2-2-6 or 2-3-2-11 when compared to 2.5-3-3-7, 3-4-4-8 or something comparable
lotsa new bigger games will almost entirely be dependent on the bandwidth as it's main beneficiary of speed from mhz increases, but this don't mean latencies don't help, especially for lotsa small and frequent or midsized accesses to memory from the rest of the system i would list the following as things that would like low latencies (seti, game AI, game physics and mathematically complex things which don't deal with game textures or graphics necessarily, programs with footprints small enought to fit in cache who rely heavily on the cpu and the time it takes to load parts of a program in and out of memory when needed but not constantly transfering new data that needs new quick calculations on a big bunch of stuff) constant reading/writing of chunks of data which match the memory buses's width or is a multple of it (other words programs that use their bandwidth efficiently or are optimized for non-sustained but frequent accesses)
lower latencies can also slightly increase the bandwidth of a memory when compared at the same clock speed too, just because for example if you have a CL of 2 it is a full third faster each and every couple million times you access it per second when compared to cl 3 thus you could theoretically start 3 transfers of data, complete them, and start a new transfer/read/write/etc in the time the memory might still be idle at cl3 waiting for the column to be refreshed or whatever or preparing, fininishing if your lucky, to access the memory on it's 2nd transfer or so
if you have your memory clocked at ddr400 or higher spedds with the cl3 and are comparing it to say cl2 with ddr333 then the benefit deminishes and you end up having the bandwidth take atleast 60% of the benchmarks you compare over the more reponsive but lower bandwidth setup
also many programs aren't optimized to deal with memory right imo and thus aren't able to take full advantage of the latencies when doing math/calculations often time like they should.



good luck

 

[lMlHuxley]

Wow, lots of typing from you guys, thanks for all the information. Luckily my work has all the antivirus software and office stuff I need for free use.

I am still copying over data and stuff. Pretty happy with the board so far, getting my better OC speeds. You guys wouldn't believe what I use for cooling. I have a 12 inch adjustable fan and the side of my case off haha. It actually works great and keeps the dust away. Cools my gfx card and everything else. Lowers my cpu temp like 8 degrees celcius.

I think the board was a good choice, why did you suggest that kt600 nforce board instead of this one? This seems to have all the options I need.

Well, I can still get the memory back but from all the bad things I have heard about Kingston valueram, I would rather have lower speeds than instability or possible broken chips. I checked the prices for 512 chips of micron and they were more than the valueram I picked up.

Anyway, still working on getting this PCI graphics card to work properly as my second display. Unfortunately somehow I lost my antec 350w power supply. I smelled a very light burning and then the power supply was shot . Luckily I had a brand new antec 330w true power power supply just sitting there (thanks again work!).

So I basically am running this

DFI NFll Ultra Infinity board
amd athlon xp 2800+ barton @ 3200+ speeds (and pushing higher)
Radeon 9800 pro sapphire running at 200mhz and 150 memory
ata133 pci card
Audigy zs 2 sound card
Soyo dragon case (love it!)
160gb maxtor 7200rpm w/ 8mb cache
120gb seagate 7200rpm
20 gig western digital 7200rpm 8mb cache
Plextor px-504a dvdrw drive
lite on 52x cd-rom
2x512mb pc2100 micron
1x256mg pc2100 crucial
antec 330w true power supply
standard floppy


I think I am finally happy w/ my system lol. Thanks for all the advice and help guys.

 

[Soulkeeper]

nice setup, the pc2100 will prob force you to use mem/fsb ratios in order to push that chip over 200mhz fsb tho if you can get 3 modules of pc2100 running at 166mhz with fairly aggressive timings and a small voltage boost then that would be impressive enough i bet

i actually think the kt600 chipset is not that bad except for the lack of pci/agp lock and the desire of motherboard makers to not put as much work into it and sell it as a cheaper alternative to NF2, because it is cheaper in cost and lacks dual channel functionality, and the other new P4 and Athlon chipsets. If you get one of the few good ones tho you should have no prob getting the thing near or over 220fsb assuming all the right settings and preparations were taken
try doing that with an sis or ali magic socket A chipset
so i guess that places via in a close-but-feature-lacking second for socket A top performance in my book. But the chipset does shine for those that wish to sacrefice maybe 2-8% performance at most in some things that like lots of mem bandwidth and/or the nf2 chipset itself for atleast a 10% lower cost for the board.

if i was building new workstations in light-to-mid stress situations for a office that mostly does spreadsheet, web development, typing, and other easy stuff then it might be nice to save 30 bucks per board or so on 20 boards and not worry about having to buy two sticks of memory.

i'm glad yur happy with your NF2 dfi lanparty
i owned that board before and thought it was pretty cool
only problem i had with it was the bios chip fryed on me once (melted a hole through the surface on the front from internal heat i suppose, and the system stopped working needless to say) and i had to take it back. the board has a nice layout and an even nicer sporty/supped-up look to it.

you got an even faster fast-system now
hehe

the only problems i see for the future and your potential upgrades are your memory and the psu (if you moved to a beafier next-gen vid card this could end up needing upgraded)

also have you tryed modding your 9800 pro to a 9800 XT ?? it's the 256mb version right ? (256mb version are the only ones i've heard work for the mod tho ). ?
that might be worth a shot in a few months when the new games drop yur fps to like under 40 later this year or next with midrange resolutions of like 1280x1024 or something and little or no AA/AF
Here is the modding guide if you havn't seen it already

 

[lMlHuxley]

I have thought of modding it to the XT but with these overclocking rates I think I will just stick with that. I get worried flashing anything, dont want to fry it

 

[Soulkeeper]

hahaha yeah good idea
probably not worth it unless you have the money to upgrade the next day if the mod goes bad and ruins the card. Basically makes your card as fast as a $100 more card with little to now work (although kinda risky. Especially if you are trying to upgrade bios's/firmware of any kind on a system that is not completely stress tested and found to be stable at it's overclocked speeds/voltages for a few days atleast, would be no good if you got a BSOD or instant reboot just after the software formats the bios data and starts to write the new bios) then you go to reboot and the vid card will be like a fast top of the line airplain without an engine or a pilot on a pitch black night, it'll go nowhere just blank black screen maybe a nice beep or two from the motherboard error/post/bios beep codes if yur lucky

i was reading some reviews of the kt600 again after getting all involved in your post and i noticed that the kt600 solutions when coupled with the same memory in single channel configuration seem to be +/- maybe 1% to 5% in difference after most benchmarks when compared to the nf2 400 and ultra 400 solutions in single channel mode

one thing i did notice was that the dual channel on the nf2 seemed to give it a good step up of maybe 5% to as much as 10%+ in some cases from the single channel solutions when running games/benchmarks that seem to saturate the agp bus, and thus put more strain on the memory's maximum available throughput as it has to share with the cpu (via it's fsb), and even all other periferals (although probably not taking even 1/4th GB/s at any one instant during a benchmark, unless maybe you got a scsi array or a few Gigabit ethernet cards hooked up with big transfers going)

so yeah you got a nice gaming machine, enjoy all those bios settings in that DFI board (the most thorough and complete options/settings, for memory especially, of any NF2 board except maybe the nf7-s v2.0 imo)
that radeon 9800 pro should have no problem getting a good unsaturated 2GB/s or so through the AGP slot (assuming mem is running at 400, but even if only at 333 you still got nearly 1.5GB/s and it'll takes up to 2.1GB/s at any given time when it can, prob hit the max agp transfer speeds even when the cpu is fully stressed) even with the fsb making full transfer speeds to the memory for a sustained period, and sound card/harddrive/lan activity taking it's small chunk through the pci bus and northbridge/southbridge proprietary links, if there are any.

many people overlook the fact that not everything that needs the memory has to access it through the fsb, and sometimes forget that if you have memory that has like 2x the bandwidth of the fsb, and simultaneousely have enough bandwidth to theoretically match the fsb/agp/pci without a hitch without having to worry about getting saturated by only one component's requests/transfers (like the cpu), then the memory excapes from the title of "bottle-neck"
this is the way things should be
atleast we aren't still running dual P3's or something with single channel pc100 to share between the two cpu's and the rest of the system anymore
guess you can't really call the fsb a bottleneck in your system either

if anyone asks then the pci bus is pretty much the slowest thing in the mix
or maybe the light that blinks on the front hehe

go play some games and shoot/race/run/fly/fight/think/tackle your way to victory at a 100+ fps for us at the forums, with those high resolutions and detail turned on too.

 

[Soulkeeper]

haha i wrote so much here i doubt that all the readers on the forum combined read even 1/3rd of what i said in this post

coulda wrote a book or something on this with catchy titles like:

"No-worky-bad-kt600-woohooo-new-nf2ultra-dfi-board-and-all-werky-well!!!" hehe

"The journey to the dual channel of the earth: after no stability or success with single channel budget stuff made for grandma, with her e-mail/aol needs, and little billy who needs to type a 100 letter paper and surf the web for school.. see what happens and hear how it unfolds as the best contender emerges for victoria in the saga of daily computing" maybe....

 

[lMlHuxley]

I read it...only because it was my posting lol. I am running at 2.89ghz right now and it seems to be stable. When I was running a 200mhz fsb it was too much. Worked for a while and my computer just froze up. So basically I am running 190mhzx12.5 since my cpu is locked at 12.5. I am pretty happy. I also set performance option in the bios to "aggressive". We will see how things go I guess...

 

[Soulkeeper]

haha cool

good luck

200fsb+ should be possible with some work and getting yur mind wrapped around the hardware limits/needs, especially if you have gotten this high already :0

what vdimm and vcore are you running now ?
what heatsink, not the retail one right ??
and what are the chipset and cpu temps under load after like 5 or 10 minutes ?
so i take it your still running your mem:fsb in 1:1 mode with good success ?
try dropping it down to like 3/5 , 4/5 , 2/3 or whatever your board offers to run the memory a step or two below the fsb's speed

maybe this will get you a good boost over 200
and you'll prob be suprised in how small of a performance hit you won't recieve from using one of these mem/fsb ratios as long as you get atleast maybe 50mhz to 90mhz more from the cpu out of the deal and got your mem latencies set fast to compensate for atleast some of the bandwidth reduction.

geez don't tell me you have a barton clocked at nearly 2.9ghz on air ??
that is insane

 

[lMlHuxley]

Whoa, sorry I made a mistake. I am nowhere near 2.9 lol.

I kicked it up to 1.85 and it seems to be most stable. Anything above seems to push it too hard and I either get a blue screen or nothing.

Anyway I am running the following

1.85 volts
AMD barton retail 2800+@2.44ghz
Volcano heat sink w/ artic silver thermal paste
The CPU seems to get to 45 degrees celcius at it's highest
I set all the memory settings to auto and in my board it has an option to set memory and other things to "regular, aggressive, turbo, and professional"
I set it to turbo and things are running good
I got my kingston memory back so I have
2x512MB 333mhz pc2700 Kingston
1x512MB 400mhz pc3200 Kingston

Sapphire Radeon 9800 professional @400 core clock/350 Memory clock

Running windows XP and things are going good. I am pleased with my board and my results. I think I could squeeze a bit more out of the OC'ing but I am happy with this for now.