Overclocking Opty 144 on Asus A8V Deluxe

[GingerNinja.net]

You'd be better off switching to a 146, as the 10x multiplier would help you out alot..

I've had 144's reaching 2.9ghz (CABNE's), but have yet to encounter a 146 that fails to do 2.8ghz (even the CACJE do that easily).

One of the main factors is the boards ability to handle a high FSB, and IMHO, unless your using a DFI, it's not worth using a 144 as your boards more likely to reach it's limit way before the cpu does.

That is exactly what I am wondering about. The 146 would give me a higher multiplier to play with. I am still testing the CPU and will move onto the memory shortly, but my board testing seems to only be happy with an HTT of 251Mhz and with my 9x multiplier max on the 144, this will only take me to 2259Mhz. This is obviously less than I enjoyed with my 3800+ at stock. YES, I am getting more back for buck, but not as much as I should be getting (I should be hitting 2.6Ghz with a 144 minimum). Plus I reckon I will only get £150 or so for my 3800+ on eBay which is a pain when you consider that they are

[GingerNinja.net]

~260HTT is probably realistic with a K8T800 Pro (although I'm not familiar with the ASUS A8V typical results & some Abit users have done quite a bit better) which with your 9x multi gives 2.34GHz.
Asrock 939 Dual SATA will only go to 274 with the stock BIOS (there are modded BIOS that will go past that).
The other AGP option would be an nF3 mobo like MSI or EPoX which should do 300HTT - someone had an EPoX in for sale section for~£30 iirc

Noticed that the Asrock 939 Dual is on Scan's Today Only for £41. Looking back at the Custom PC review on the board though, the FSB(HTT) does go up to 400Mhz, but the maximum CPU voltage is only 1.35v and there is no FireWire, which I actually do use.

What annoyed me as well, going through my Custom PC back-catalogue was that my board was listed as having an FSB(HTT) between 200-400Mhz, but the BIOS only gives me a maximum of 300Mhz. When I had a play with ClockGen, it was able to push the FSB upto 400Mhz - although this obviously set everything crazy within a second and resulted in a hasty powerdown. What I cannot work out is why the BIOS doesn't give that as an option.....

Guess what it comes down to is needing:
- a board that can handle a high FSB(HTT) and has AGP rather than PCI-E.
- a Opty with a multiplier that works in conjunction with this to provide a OC just under 3Ghz. (hey - I'm not too greedy!)

[Max Tractor]

That is exactly what I am wondering about. The 146 would give me a higher multiplier to play with. I am still testing the CPU and will move onto the memory shortly, but my board testing seems to only be happy with an HTT of 251Mhz and with my 9x multiplier max on the 144, this will only take me to 2259Mhz. This is obviously less than I enjoyed with my 3800+ at stock. YES, I am getting more back for buck, but not as much as I should be getting (I should be hitting 2.6Ghz with a 144 minimum). Plus I reckon I will only get £150 or so for my 3800+ on eBay which is a pain when you consider that they are

Sure the 10x multi would help, but what do you do, ditch 144 for a 146, they are now getting expensive again, I picked mine up about 3 months ago for £125, and no idea how this new batch are clocking. Your board is obviously the limit here, and you cant move over to pci-express as your gt is still more than capable, so you would either have to go for a 146, or the asrock, or sell the 144 and stick the 3800 back in

[Max Tractor]

Guess what it comes down to is needing:
- a board that can handle a high FSB(HTT) and has AGP rather than PCI-E.
- a Opty with a multiplier that works in conjunction with this to provide a OC just under 3Ghz. (hey - I'm not too greedy!)

Have a look for MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum.

[iranu]

I'd put the 3800 back in and oc that. Sell the 144 - if it's a good stepping the likelyhood is someone will pay ££ for it.

[GingerNinja.net]

Sure the 10x multi would help, but what do you do, ditch 144 for a 146, they are now getting expensive again, I picked mine up about 3 months ago for £125, and no idea how this new batch are clocking. Your board is obviously the limit here, and you cant move over to pci-express as your gt is still more than capable, so you would either have to go for a 146, or the asrock, or sell the 144 and stick the 3800 back in

Exactly my thoughts. Did some more tweaking today with varying voltages and memory dividers (bearing in mind that I haven't gotten as far as seeing how high my memory can go - that is next) and I can get my board PRIME95 stable at 251Mhz on a 600Mhz HT Frequency on 1.55v and at mid-40's temp or 251Mhz on a 800Mhz HT Frequency on 1.7v and at around 50 degrees, which is not good. Either way, that is still only 2259Mhz which is worse than my 3800 at stock.
At some point over the weekend I will complete my memory testing and see what happens as it may be worth trying to OC the 3800+ instead which I admittedly have never tried to do.

Have a look for MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum.

I did. £75 new from Scan or £25 on eBay at present, however, I still have qualms about whether this board will be a good overclocker or not despite reading several articles stating that it should be stable upto 265 or so. On top of that, I have concerns that the 90 degree rotated CPU socket will now mean that my Thermalright XP-90 will be touching my graphics card as it is slightly longer at one end to provide cooling to the caps next to the CPU socket.

Having said that, I read a review of my board - the Asus A8V Deluxe Rev 2.0 - which stated that the stable HTT on their review board was 280Mhz running the memory divider at 1:1. I don't how I managed it, but on one of the first tests that I did when I figured I should start at the top "just in case", I managed to get the board up to 300Mhz with a 1:1 divider and actually POST. Problem is I couldn't repeat it and now I cannot get it past 251Mhz. Even if I could get it running at 300Mhz with a 9x multiplier, giving me a 2.7Ghz clock, I doubt my RAM will sustain it (being 3200XLPRO).

I'd put the 3800 back in and oc that. Sell the 144 - if it's a good stepping the likelyhood is someone will pay ££ for it.

This will be my last resort course of action as it will be the least financial outlay. It's a OEM 144 CABNE 0545BPMW, so should be hard to sell.

[BUFF]

I managed to get the board up to 300Mhz with a 1:1 divider and actually POST. Problem is I couldn't repeat it and now I cannot get it past 251Mhz. Even if I could get it running at 300Mhz with a 9x multiplier, giving me a 2.7Ghz clock, I doubt my RAM will sustain it (being 3200XLPRO).

Big difference in POSTing & running Windows stably.
Just run the RAM on a divider - it won't penalise you.

[Dark Horse]

Big difference in POSTing & running Windows stably.
Just run the RAM on a divider - it won't penalise you.

I'll second that. Ignore getting the ram running 1:1, just concentrate on keeping the cpu frequency as high as possible and use dividers to keep the ram as close as you can to 200mhz.

The ram is still running at its rated speed so you're not loosing any performance there while the cpu is running at a nice 7-8-900mhz overclock. Its much less hassle than trying to get it 1:1 which at the end of the day you will never notice any performance difference unless you do endless benchmarks for fun...

[GingerNinja.net]

Well, no idea what I did to my kit last night, but things are NOT good in the GN household today.
Restarted my PC.
Changed a BIOS setting (cannot remember what - think I DOWNED the voltage on the CPU).
Saved changes.
PC froze.
Hit "restart".
Didn't restart.
Powered off at PSU.
Powered on.
Now all the fans start but PC will not reboot and holding down switch does nothing.

This morning I cleared the CMOS as well just to ensure that it wasn't that (my board has that "CPR" function which does work) but still nothing.

GULP.

(This has been typed on my wife's laptop whilst she is out....)

[Max Tractor]

Did you take out the battery as well? Unplug the kettle lead as well.


==edit==

give it a few mins, had an asus a8n7x that needed about 10mins before clearing

[Jonny]

Unplug at the mains, remove battery, and short the battery pins for at least a minute, just so you are sure. (Do this rather than the jumper).

[GingerNinja.net]

The CMOS cleared OK. I managed to get it to reboot my holding down the reset button when I turned it back on at the PSU and this spoofed it to reboot.

Unfortunately, when I cleared my CMOS it seems to have forgotten all about my RAID card and now will not boot into Windows.

Think part of the issue is the new BIOS so I am going to flash back a version and see if this helps - provided I can get it to go again as it doesn't like powering off anymore AGAIN.

[Max Tractor]

Just go into bios and re-set

[GingerNinja.net]

Nope - didn't work. Had to flash the 1018 BETA with 1017 release and now working fine.

Only problem I have now is that the XFX Revo RAID3 card is no longer being detected by the BIOS. Hope and pray that it isn't dead or else I am screwed.

[GingerNinja.net]

Only problem I have now is that the XFX Revo RAID3 card is no longer being detected by the BIOS. Hope and pray that it isn't dead or else I am screwed.

OK - panic over (on my part). Turns out the RAID card is fine, but the motherboard most certainly is not. My little Asus no longer recognises my SynchRaid controller card within the BIOS, yet when I plugged it into my old Athlon XP machine that I keep in the loft for emergencies, it worked fine.

I can only deduce that as it isn't detecting the PCI card and the PC still refuses to power down properly, that the board itself must be shagged.

Any thoughts anyone?

[jimborae]

Sounds like it's still remembering previous bios settings from that beta one you flashed it to.

Trying loading bios defaults > save & exit > then look for your raid card again in bios after reboot. I had a Asus K8v deluxe that did this exact same thing & funnily enough newer bioses wouldn't detect the raid card either.

I doubt very much that you have knackered your board.