Overclocking 2500 on non nForce ultra 400 board.

[NeilI]

My mate and I are going to both get XP2500s and overclock as we are cheapskate students.

Thing is, my mobo supports 200MHz FSB, but his doesn't. However, his FSB does go UP TO 200MHz.
His mobo is the MSI K7N2G-ILSR.

As mentioned, it doesn't officially support 200MHZ FSB, but can be tweaked that high.


Will this result in severe instability, or excessive frying of the Northbridge or anything like that???
Should he get an Abit AN7 or something like that instead??


Cheers for any help.

[blockers]

As it is overclocking, it may well cause instability. To cure this up the voltage on the northbrigde, this could either shorten the life of the motherboard, or just kill it.

Boards to look at getting are ABIT NF7-S or ABIT AN7. The main difference the AN7 has an extra BIOS chip, and i *think* that it doesnt have SATA. Both of these boards would give you stability at 200fsb as well as good overclocking features.

However, unless you are really desperate for a new computer it is probably best to wait a month until the prices have come down some more becuase of the realease of the A64 range.

[SilentDeath]

firstly, 200fsb doesnt make that much differnce over 166fsb - if the cpu is at the same clock speed. as your bartons are probably locked, you will want to go past 200fsb to get the best from them
i think there is a way to unlock them - somehtign about turning them into MP cpus that have 18 as the multi as default, which unlocks it. i didnt read all of the thread it was posted in so i cant remember the details of how to do it...

i had a nf7-s rev1.1 (now rev2). i was able to get it to 220fsb, though i had a problem with it overheating. i recommend changing your nb heatsink (your mobo is difference so it might be fine..), and if your nb heatsink has the metal core in the middle then it will need lapping aswell, though i never bothered.
voltage on nb should be safe upto 1.85 which is slightly more than the bios will give you. i did a volt mod on mine.
my rev2 board is capable of 230fsb without volt mods, which is imo bad considering what the rev1.1 could get.

Abit AN7 from what ivee heard is not very good, nf7-s is still the nicest board for o/c with

[BUFF]

OK, problem is that is an IGP board.
If he is using the integrated gfx then his chances of running 200FSB are next to nil. If he is using a seperate gfx card then he has a better chance but it is still not good as the IGP boards don't seem to tolerate high fsb as much as the SPP boards.

[streetster]

how about one of them

tho there are only 6 left mine should be arriving (hopefully in a working condition) on thursday, think a couple of forum members should be getting theirs this week too.. its half the price of a new one, so you might want to consider it, but dont think about it for too long else they'll all be gone - seeing as there were around 100 last week

mark

[Pita^Norf]

Originally posted by |SilentDeath|
firstly, 200fsb doesnt make that much differnce over 166fsb - if the cpu is at the same clock speed. as our bartons are probably locked, you will want to go past 200fsb to get the best from them

So you don't think the extra 34Mhz in memory bandwidth will make much of a performance difference ?

[Pita^Norf]

Originally posted by BUFF
OK, problem is that is an IGP board.
If he is using the integrated gfx then his chances of running 200FSB are next to nil. If he is using a seperate gfx card then he has a better chance but it is still not good as the IGP boards don't seem to tolerate high fsb as much as the SPP boards.

Indeed and from experience the IGP does not like its shared memory running at high FSB.

[Pita^Norf]

Reading around the forums, the AN7 seems to be having a few problems (poor overclocking potential cf to the NF7, dodgy manufacturing etc), I think its a board to steer clear of until things are ironed out.

[SilentDeath]

34mhz * 16 = 544mb/s more bandwidth... no its not going to make much of a noticable difference in any games imo. maybe if it was a p4 not amd. might give you 100-200more points in 3dm2k1 but thats all...
my point was that cpu clock makes a much more noticable difference than a small inc in fsb with current amd cpus

[streetster]

Pita^Norf did you really need 3 separate posts? couldn't you have just editted one of them to include the points you made ?

and yeh, regarding the AN7, it does seem a bit sketchy - esp with people getting boards with cut tracks, might aswell go for the nf7-s if you are going to wait and save up a bit

mark

[Pita^Norf]

Originally posted by streetster
Pita^Norf did you really need 3 separate posts? couldn't you have just editted one of them to include the points you made ?

and yeh, regarding the AN7, it does seem a bit sketchy - esp with people getting boards with cut tracks, might aswell go for the nf7-s if you are going to wait and save up a bit

mark

I'm a bit of a lazy one and quote / reply to each individual post....is that not what the quote button is for ?

If you're hinting that my multiple posts is a lame attempt to rack up post counts then thats your opinion, but if you check all the posts I've made thus far on this forum I think you will arrive at a different conclusion ( also check out my post rate!)

[streetster]

ok fair point, i saw a user the other day who managed to rack up 50 posts in about 6 hours (from like 10pm-4am), and you are making a valid contribution heh so i'll retract what i was thinking

NeilI -
you say that you are going to get a 2500, and whatever motherboard, but what graphics card and memory are you going to get? it might be worth just saving up for a couple of months so that a) you'll have more money to spend and b) newer things will be released which drives down the prices of 'current' stuff, the point here, is that there is no point getting a 2500xp and anforce2 board if you can only afford to get a geforce4mx and 256mb of ram (well you get the point i hope )

Mark

[NeilI]

NeilI -
you say that you are going to get a 2500, and whatever motherboard, but what graphics card and memory are you going to get? it might be worth just saving up for a couple of months so that a) you'll have more money to spend and b) newer things will be released which drives down the prices of 'current' stuff, the point here, is that there is no point getting a 2500xp and anforce2 board if you can only afford to get a geforce4mx and 256mb of ram (well you get the point i hope )

Mark

Right, I already have an MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR. In the memory stakes, it's 512MB of Crucial DDR400 and I deciding whether to get a 9600XT or try a 9800 softmod.
My friend has the mobo mentioned above, 768MB of Crucial DDR333 and a 9700pro.

So, do you think we can save a bit of money by waiting a couple of months? It's only 2 2500's (or whatever), a mobo for him and a gfx card for me.
Should I recommend he gets an NF7 then? Does it come with a digital coax out for the soundsotmr audio??

Thanks again.

[Rave]

Well, if he's not using the integrated graphics on his board he has a shot at getting to 200FSB. FSB doesn't make a huge amount of difference with Athlons, it's more important to get a high clockspeed. The problems is that the latest Bartons are multiplier locked which makes maxing out a 2500 hard if you can't go above 200FSB. You can probably mod it to a mobile athlon and use software overclocking though .

Rich :¬)

[Lee H]

to be honest your better of with a nforce2 based motherboard such as the abit NF7-S 2.0 or the asus version. These can clock the 2500+ like hell ( some cases I've seen them running @ 2.7 Ghz but thats with INSANE FSB's and h20 cooling )

I personally run my CPU @ 3200+ ( its a 2500+ unlocked ) but if you've just recently bought the processors then there is a good chance they will be locked and thus cannot overclock as much as unlocked ones.

Hope this helps

Lee

[NeilI]

I personally run my CPU @ 3200+ ( its a 2500+ unlocked ) but if you've just recently bought the processors then there is a good chance they will be locked and thus cannot overclock as much as unlocked ones.

Hope this helps

Lee

Nice.

I believe pre week 46 are unlocked?

Also, there is more chance of getting one if it is an OEM as opposed to retail?

So I heard....