Overclockign experiances with 3800 and air cooling

[powderkid]

After a rather frustrating overclocking experiance before updating the BIOS on my A8N-SLI premium 939 board I finnaly was starting to get some admirable results.

My comp was stable up to aroud 2.7 ghz with the HTT set to 230mhz (ram also overclocked to 230mhz [they seem to go together] running at 3.3.3.8 2T vs the stock settings ove 2.3.3.6 1T)

However I cant seem to go any higher, and I know this thing can as go faster, I have seen reports or tom's guys and others getting the 3800+ up past 2.8 ( I did boot into windows and get a screen shot, but system lockups starting occuring)

So basically what I am asking is that do you think I could get more performance by say, buying some faster DDR 500 ram? . Or have I simply just reached my chipsets limit?

Also I dont think cooling is the issue ( I was contemplating getting Bigwater SE or one of those sideways zalman cpu fans that seem to be all the rage , but I really feel that I dont need them), because on the stock HSF I never rose above 50 degrees even with the vCore set up to 1.5v and the vDimm at 2.9

And to top it off my system specs

Antece Smart power 500w SLI
Asus A8N-sli premium
A64 3800+ stock 2.4ghz (venice)
Corsiar XMS Platnium DDR 400 at 2.3.3.6 1T
Dual eVGA 7600GT KO in SLI
x-fi Xtreme music
Samsung spinpoing 160gb SATA drive

 

[Markfw]

Looks good to me. I think thats it.

 

[akshayt]

1)Try using mem divider 333, and try loosening timings a bit, in the ned raise the voltage is reuqired and if it can take it, if it still doesn't go higher it then it is not the memory at fault.
BTW your PSU is not a good one, only 25A @ 12VA line @ 25C, which is a bit less for you, right? and it is not SLI AFAIK.

2)Try using multiplier 9x and 10x as well and raising voltage.

3)Read OC guide.
amd64oc.blogspot.com

 

[powderkid]

thanks for the suggestions.

Hmm i thought my psu was fairly decent, but owell haha
I beleive it said sli ready on newegg and its the v 2.0 but yea i could have spent some more dough on that.

 

[Skott]

Generally speaking the 3800 hits a wall around 2.6-2.8. Most cant get past 2.8 without watercooling. You might squeak out a little more with it but sounds like you are close to its max.

 

[saabman]

Originally posted by: akshayt

3)Read OC guide.
amd64oc.blogspot.com

Caution, Will Robinson, Caution !!!!!!!

I certainly wouldn't trust this guys rantings in his blog (notice he didn't actually specify it was his blog).

Instead, I would read Zebo's guide here on the forum
Zebos guide