2.2 -> 2.65 GHZ on a £40 board

[Aranthos]

Hey guys, first post (WOO!), and I thought this would be a good way to start in Hexus.

Just wondering, is 2.2 GHz to 2.65 GHz on an Athlon 4200+ and £40 AsRock motherboard any good? I know a few people in the 'real world' who say it's pretty good. This was managed with an external clock of 240MHz and a multiplier of 11, running at 1.4 volts.

Also, how does 650/951 on a 320MB GF8800GTS sound? I'm quite proud of that one to be honest...

In case I'm about to get mobbed for making poor choices, I built this rig back in February when I knew little about PCs ^,^ I didn't know that Core2's were so much better, and I didn't know that the motherboard was important.

One other thing I'm chuffed with: 667MHz Corsair TwinX sticks running at 800-ish stable =]

[MadduckUK]

iv got my 4200+ up to just under 3Ghz on a M2A-VM (ATI chipset). which motherboard is it specifically and what cooler do you have?

edit: screw that its a 4400+ :s duh

[Aranthos]

It's running on an AsRock ALive SATA2 GLAN (sorry for no link, 5 posts rule =P)

Sorry for not having a link to it at Scan or some such, but I couldn't find it listed there. Someone tells me that Asrock boards are made by Asus, which is why it is overclocking as well as it is, but still... On a board that cost £40 in February?

[EDIT] Forgot to say it's cooled by an Artic Cooling Freezer 64

[weegie.geek]

Yeah, the Asrock boards are nice and cheap but overclock pretty well.

I'm using the Core4Dual-VSTA, since I didn't have the cash to jump straight from SKTA to SKT775, so wanted to reuse my DDR ram and my AGP card.

Can't remember how much the card cost, but it was around the £40 mark, and it's running a 1.8GHZ e2160 quite happily at 2.6GHZ. The system's rock (if you'll excuse the pun) solid too.

The chip would happily do more, but the boards all seem to hit a ceiling at 290fsb, which is a pain but for the money I can't moan.

£100 for the chip and the board is better than new chip/new board/new ram/new vga card.

[NightshadowUK]

Hey guys, first post (WOO!), and I thought this would be a good way to start in Hexus.

Just wondering, is 2.2 GHz to 2.65 GHz on an Athlon 4200+ and £40 AsRock motherboard any good? I know a few people in the 'real world' who say it's pretty good. This was managed with an external clock of 240MHz and a multiplier of 11, running at 1.4 volts.

Also, how does 650/951 on a 320MB GF8800GTS sound? I'm quite proud of that one to be honest...

In case I'm about to get mobbed for making poor choices, I built this rig back in February when I knew little about PCs ^,^ I didn't know that Core2's were so much better, and I didn't know that the motherboard was important.

One other thing I'm chuffed with: 667MHz Corsair TwinX sticks running at 800-ish stable =]

Welcome to Hexus mate. What are you classing as stable though?

Have you tested using ORTHOS (CPU), Memtest (RAM) and 3DMark (GFX)?

[Aranthos]

Well done on that mate =]

However, I read CustomPC last month and they had a motherboard group test. The AsROck board they tested wouldn't even overclock by a single MHz. Perhaps they got a really bad 'board, but whatever the case, I seem to have gotten at least a little bit lucky.

[Aranthos]

Nightshadow, when I say stable I mean I've been running it for a month playing games, 3dmark, fractal rendering and Supreme Commander (perhaps the utimate CPU test ever made).

[Hunain]

I dont know about AMD cpuz, but isnt 1.4v high for running it on 2.65Ghz? My C2D can go to 3.35Ghz with 1.4V..

[kalniel]

Really depends on the chip. ASRock boards are usually good, but offer no help to getting around a stubborn CPU (eg, extra voltage). If you've got an easily clockable chip then ASRock are fine.

[NightshadowUK]

I dont know about AMD cpuz, but isnt 1.4v high for running it on 2.65Ghz? My C2D can go to 3.35Ghz with 1.4V..

Nope it's fine, you can go up to around 1.525v.

[Aranthos]

Well it's nice to know the chip isn't going to go fritz any time soon, though it'd give me an excuse to get a new one =] While I know Intels are far superior, I have an AM2 motherboard now, and supposedly Phenoms will drop straight into it and all I'll lose is Overdrive. Which isn't much bother as I'm capable of BIOS overclocking.

As regards Asrock not offering many options, I'm able to lock (or manually adjust) the frequencies of my PCI, PCI-E and SATA buses, I can adjust the memory divider and the CPU multiplier and voltage are both adjustable. RAM voltage is adjustable (though only to Very low, Low, Medium, Very high and ultra or some such) and I'm able to disable spread spectrum (which CustomPC says is bad.) As far as I can work out, this is a fairly good variety of switches and buttons for me to press

Also, sorry for not posting for a bit, had to go to work

[Hunain]

I prefer numerical values rather than low, medium, high pattern, but still its a good set of features on your board