Question about Asus A8N32 BIOS options.

[Pez D Spencer]

I have an Opteron 170 and will be getting my replacement A8N32-SLI board next week (the CPU fan header was DOA on the first one). My question is about some of the overclocking options in the BIOS.

I'm still pretty new to overclocking and haven't really overclocked anything in the past except my video cards. I've been reading a ton about overclocking but none of the tutorials/FAQ's/articles I have read mention anything about some of these options. I was hoping someone on here could help shed a little light on this for me. I've read the manual but it doesn't actually say what these options are for or when you would use them, they just say what they do.

Here are the options I'm confused about:

SB To NB Overclock - Available options are Auto and Manual. I assume this enables the SB To NB Frequency option below but I'm not sure.

SB To NB Frequency - Can be set up to 300MHz. I'm not sure what the default is because the manual doesn't say and I didn't have a chance to poke around myself. When and why would you change this?

Adjust PCI-E Frequency - Default is 100MHz. Why would you change the PCI-E frequency? Everything I have read says that you want to keep the AGP/PCI busses locked. Does this not apply to the PCI-E bus? Furthermore, how do you lock the PCI bus? Is the PCI bus automatically locked by default? Nothing I have seen in the BIOS allows you to do this. Is it common practice to raise the PCI-E bus speed when overclocking or should you still leave it at its 100MHz default?

Overvoltage NB VCore - Options are Enabled or Disabled. When enabled it raises the NB VCore from 1.2 to 1.3. When and why would you want to turn this on?

Overvoltage SB VCore - Options are Enabled or Disabled. When enabled it raises the NB VCore from 1.5 to 1.6. Like the NB VCore, when and why would you want to turn this on?

Overvoltage Hypertransport - Options are enabled or disabled. When enabled it raises the Hypertransport VCore from 1.2 to 1.3. Like SB VCore and NB VCore, I have no idea when and why you would want to use this.

Finally, one more thing I'm kind of confused about is SATA. I read something about SATA 1 and 2 being locked on some boards but not 3 and 4. Does overclocking raise the SATA speed too? If so, how do I know which SATA ports are locked or how do I prevent raising their speeds? Until reading this I didn't think overclocking raised the SATA speed. Maybe they were wrong but I could have sworn I read that in a tutorial somewhere.

I know this is a pile of questions and I'm sure you expereinced overclockers get tired of noob questions but if anyone can take a little time and help explain this to me I would be forever grateful and it would really mean a lot to me. I just want to learn as much as I can about all this so I can get the most out of this new system.

BTW, I will be running Corsair XMS PC3500LL RAM if that makes any difference about how any of the options above apply to me.


Thanks in advance.

 

[Pez D Spencer]

Anyone? Ive looked on Google and came up with pretty much zip on all of this. If anyone has any info to share whatsoever I'd love to hear it.

 

[Pez D Spencer]

I guess its a mystery............

 

[keldog7]

Hmm... I'll take a stab:

"Adjust PCI-E Frequency - Default is 100MHz. Why would you change the PCI-E frequency?"....EXACTLY. Cards tend to get a bit flaky when you overclock their bus. The bus should lock automatically.

The overvolting options might be useful for overclocking with Cool and Quiet enabled. They each basically just add a fixed voltage increase to the [variable] voltage supplied to the CPU [if CnQ enabled]. Generally, CnQ is a bad idea when overclocking, because the chip voltage might be lowered during "light" operations, leading to instability at higher frequencies. Small overclocks, requiring a bit more voltage might be possible by leaving vCore at its default, then enabling the overvoltage, and leaving CnQ enabled. I haven't tried this on the A8N32SLI, but one of the DFI boards uses a similar technique.

I've read the same thing about the SATA locks...but I though it was 1 and 2 which were unlocked (!?), while 3 and 4 locked properly. Google it a bit more if you like. I have one older rig (using A8NSLI-Deluxe) with a RAID 1 array, booting Windows 2000 SP4 (with nvraid.sys slipstream) off of nVidia SATA ports 3 and 4 - so far without difficulty. It was a royal PITA to setup though...
-A

 

[Pez D Spencer]

Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.

 

[Scargo]

I have similar questions... With the A8N32-SLI Deluxe board, 1009 BIOS and a 4400 X2 CPU I am at 2,730Mhz with a 10.5 multiplier, RAM is at 227.5Mhz using the 183 divider, and the HT is at 1040Mhz. I'm not unhappy with my results, it's a 24% overclock on air (!) BUT, I am an "optimizer".

I am using the program "A64Info" to look at what I have and using its calculator, where you can enter different scenarios. I also use Gogar's Optimizer, where it presents different solutions to choose from, depending on how you "weight" the importance of each component or process. I look at both, before making a change in my BIOS, since Gogar's doesn't have some of the multipliers my A8N32-SLI Deluxe board's BIOS has, like "10.5".
I have seen overclocking guides suggesting the importance of maximizing the HT speed, maximizing RAM, etc., but Gogar's Optimizer has defaults weighted almost totally to the (importance of) CPU speed.
For overall performance, is it related to where the bottleneck is (or weak spot), and how do you evaluate this (?) or is it something else? I do not have hours on hours to do benchmarks.....
If I am a Photoshop freak, rather than a gamer, would I weight it any differently when I OC?
NOW, are there some of these settings (some previously mentioned in this thread) where I can adjust so I can hit these in-between spots and have less of a compromize? This BIOS (1009) and motherboard combo are complex and ASUS is not any real help with explaining what you are supposed to do with all of it....! Of curiosity to me, in particular, is SB To NB Frequency.

About PCI-E frequency: I have run 101 without an issue and have read that 101 to 103 can boost performance.