I am an Asus lover, I am very satisfied with my A7N8X motherboard purchased from Googlegear two weeks ago. Having been fighting with Epox NForce2 owners on numerous threads, I don't want to start any more flame war here 
. I want to give all the credits to Nvidia for making such a great chipset that allow me to achieve unprecedented overclocking success.
I am in no way an expert overclocker. I have been overclocking since AMD1.2G AXIA, reached only minor success, and still air cooling until now. After won an AMD 2400+ processor from AMD events at Boston last month, I decided to upgrade my system, purchased an NForce2 motherboard A7N8X to continue supporting AMD.
I unlocked the CPU as instructed at some websites by using a thin copper wire. After installing the new system, from my old Asus P4B266-C motherboard I unpluged two sticks of Crucial PC2100 256M DIMM, and put them on the A7N8X. This pair of RAMs can only reach 144FSB on P4B266-C before. However, The first thing I noticed is the RAMs ran very smooth on this motherboard (probably just my imagination). As I increased the FSB, I am surprised to see the system reached over FSB160 stable. At FSB163, I start to raise DDR voltage to eliminate some Prime95 errors. At FSB166, I hit a wall, I adjusted CPU volts and DDR volts numerous times, still can't make it pass Prime95 5hr+ without error. Finally, I swapped RAMs from DIMM 1,3(black,blue) to 2,3(double blue) position. I found a sweet spot, CPU volt 1.8V, DDR volt 2.7v, passed Prime95 10+hrs no error.
This morning, after browsing Anandtech whole night, I begin to thinking raising the FSB again. This time, everything has been smooth, 2 Mhz each time step by step, I can't barely hold my breath when I see the system still stable passing 181FSB. This is XP2400+@2260Mhz !! My God, I can't believe it, my poor little Crucial PC2100 DIMM is doing 181FSB !!
I remembered I tested this pair of RAMs on my third motherboard Abit IT7 before, it can only reach 150FSB stable by raising voltage to 2.7V. And now, 180FSB, Wow!
I guess there must be something mysterious and successful with the NForce2 "Sync" mode, which can unlock the potential of the Crucial PC2100 RAMs. Also, I remember some Anandtech member said Asus recommend to use the two blue DIMM socket over other combinations, which is exactly what I did to pass 166FSB. The Athlon XP2400+ too, has been a wonder reaching 2260Mhz with just air cooling. Currently, my CPU idle 40C, load 45C, motherboard 34C.
Here are the Benchmarks I just gathered:
Sandra CPU Arithmetic..................: ALU 8506 FPU 3407
Sandra CPU Multimedia.................: Integer 12578 Float 13354
Sandra Memory Bandwidth...........: Integer 2722 Float 2613
CPUID ..........................................: 2264.75Mhz 12.5 X 181.18Mhz
My current Rig & BIOS Setting:
CPU:
Athlon XP 2400+ Throughbred B (Unlocked)
AIUGB 0244WPFW AXDA2400DKV3C
Motherboard:
Asus A7N8X Deluxe NForce2 Double DDR
Memory:
Crucial PC2100 256MB X 2 in 2nd,3rd DIMM socket
Overclocking BIOS setup:
1.FSB/AGP/PCI...............: 181/66/33
2.CPU Multiplier.............: 12.5X
3.CPU Vcore Voltage......: 1.8V
4.DRAM Voltage.............: 2.7V
5 DRAM Timing...............: 2.5-6-3-3
6.AGP.............................: 66Mhz
7.AGP Aperture Size.......: 64MB
8.Primary Video Card......: AGP
Bad news is my system will crash out of Windows XP at FSB185,
I am still investigating the reason......
UPDATE: After maxed out CPU, DDR Vcore, and up DDR timings, I reached 200Mhz FSB Sync Mode. Here is the updated benchmarks and configurations.
Temperature:
CPU idle 42C, load 47C, Motherboard 35C.
Benchmarks:
Sandra CPU Arithmetic..................: ALU 8663 FPU 3446
Sandra CPU Multimedia.................: Integer 12802 Float 13604
Sandra Memory Bandwidth...........: Integer 3119 Float 2946
CPUID ..........................................: 2305.22Mhz 11.5 X 200.45Mhz
Overclocking BIOS setup:
1.FSB/AGP/PCI...............: 200/66/33
2.CPU Multiplier.............: 11.5X
3.CPU Vcore Voltage......: 1.85V
4.DRAM Voltage.............: 2.8V
5 DRAM Timing...............: 2.5-7-3-3
6.AGP.............................: 66Mhz
7.AGP Aperture Size.......: 64MB
8.Primary Video Card......: AGP
Update: I end up reinstalling WindowsXP after numerous crashes. I purchased three 256MB Samsung PC2100 DDRs to replaced the highly OCed Crucial 2100, currently stable @11.5x192FSB 2.5-2-2-5 at default DDR Vcore. With newly purchased Radeon 9700 Pro, 3dMarks2001se scored 15850 at stock speed.
. I want to give all the credits to Nvidia for making such a great chipset that allow me to achieve unprecedented overclocking success.I am in no way an expert overclocker. I have been overclocking since AMD1.2G AXIA, reached only minor success, and still air cooling until now. After won an AMD 2400+ processor from AMD events at Boston last month, I decided to upgrade my system, purchased an NForce2 motherboard A7N8X to continue supporting AMD.
I unlocked the CPU as instructed at some websites by using a thin copper wire. After installing the new system, from my old Asus P4B266-C motherboard I unpluged two sticks of Crucial PC2100 256M DIMM, and put them on the A7N8X. This pair of RAMs can only reach 144FSB on P4B266-C before. However, The first thing I noticed is the RAMs ran very smooth on this motherboard (probably just my imagination
). As I increased the FSB, I am surprised to see the system reached over FSB160 stable. At FSB163, I start to raise DDR voltage to eliminate some Prime95 errors. At FSB166, I hit a wall, I adjusted CPU volts and DDR volts numerous times, still can't make it pass Prime95 5hr+ without error. Finally, I swapped RAMs from DIMM 1,3(black,blue) to 2,3(double blue) position. I found a sweet spot, CPU volt 1.8V, DDR volt 2.7v, passed Prime95 10+hrs no error. This morning, after browsing Anandtech whole night, I begin to thinking raising the FSB again. This time, everything has been smooth, 2 Mhz each time step by step, I can't barely hold my breath when I see the system still stable passing 181FSB. This is XP2400+@2260Mhz !! My God, I can't believe it, my poor little Crucial PC2100 DIMM is doing 181FSB !!
I remembered I tested this pair of RAMs on my third motherboard Abit IT7 before, it can only reach 150FSB stable by raising voltage to 2.7V. And now, 180FSB, Wow!
I guess there must be something mysterious and successful with the NForce2 "Sync" mode, which can unlock the potential of the Crucial PC2100 RAMs. Also, I remember some Anandtech member said Asus recommend to use the two blue DIMM socket over other combinations, which is exactly what I did to pass 166FSB. The Athlon XP2400+ too, has been a wonder reaching 2260Mhz with just air cooling. Currently, my CPU idle 40C, load 45C, motherboard 34C.
Here are the Benchmarks I just gathered:
Sandra CPU Arithmetic..................: ALU 8506 FPU 3407
Sandra CPU Multimedia.................: Integer 12578 Float 13354
Sandra Memory Bandwidth...........: Integer 2722 Float 2613
CPUID ..........................................: 2264.75Mhz 12.5 X 181.18Mhz
My current Rig & BIOS Setting:
CPU:
Athlon XP 2400+ Throughbred B (Unlocked)
AIUGB 0244WPFW AXDA2400DKV3C
Motherboard:
Asus A7N8X Deluxe NForce2 Double DDR
Memory:
Crucial PC2100 256MB X 2 in 2nd,3rd DIMM socket
Overclocking BIOS setup:
1.FSB/AGP/PCI...............: 181/66/33
2.CPU Multiplier.............: 12.5X
3.CPU Vcore Voltage......: 1.8V
4.DRAM Voltage.............: 2.7V
5 DRAM Timing...............: 2.5-6-3-3
6.AGP.............................: 66Mhz
7.AGP Aperture Size.......: 64MB
8.Primary Video Card......: AGP
Bad news is my system will crash out of Windows XP at FSB185,
I am still investigating the reason......
UPDATE: After maxed out CPU, DDR Vcore, and up DDR timings, I reached 200Mhz FSB Sync Mode. Here is the updated benchmarks and configurations.
Temperature:
CPU idle 42C, load 47C, Motherboard 35C.
Benchmarks:
Sandra CPU Arithmetic..................: ALU 8663 FPU 3446
Sandra CPU Multimedia.................: Integer 12802 Float 13604
Sandra Memory Bandwidth...........: Integer 3119 Float 2946
CPUID ..........................................: 2305.22Mhz 11.5 X 200.45Mhz
Overclocking BIOS setup:
1.FSB/AGP/PCI...............: 200/66/33
2.CPU Multiplier.............: 11.5X
3.CPU Vcore Voltage......: 1.85V
4.DRAM Voltage.............: 2.8V
5 DRAM Timing...............: 2.5-7-3-3
6.AGP.............................: 66Mhz
7.AGP Aperture Size.......: 64MB
8.Primary Video Card......: AGP
Update: I end up reinstalling WindowsXP after numerous crashes.
I purchased three 256MB Samsung PC2100 DDRs to replaced the highly OCed Crucial 2100, currently stable @11.5x192FSB 2.5-2-2-5 at default DDR Vcore. With newly purchased Radeon 9700 Pro, 3dMarks2001se scored 15850 at stock speed. 
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