Athlon 64

[LayZeh]

As pay day approaches i'm seriously considering upgrading my machine to an Athlon 64 / X800 combo, i am an experienced overclocker and just wondered what board and chip are yielding the best results?

[0iD]

Teh best boards are the ones wth the VIA K8T800 Pro chipsets. I've tried Asus & Albaron & there's not a lot in it speedwise. The new n-force3 250 boards are still a bit thin on the ground & dont seem to be as fast as the Via's still. However, iirc the new n-force chipset has an in-built firewall. Not that it matters to a hardcore overclocker such as your good self

[oralpain]

Boards based on the VIA K8T800Pro currently do not have a functioning AGP/PCI lock, so you wont be overclocking them much.

[Mongoose420]

the k8t800pro boards are gett'n locks. abits offering rma's of there s754 board to be repaired with whatever is missing thats preventing them to lock. So recent serial numbered boards should lock. The asus a8v has working locks but there was a batch missing a couple of resistors. Need to flash to a beta bios to get locks tho. No word on the abit av8.

[nakajima]

the new abit KV8 pro seems to have a working AGP/PCI lock. been reading about it in some other forums and it seems to be a good board for o/cing for a bargain price

[BlackSheep]

I much prefer the Gigabyte NF3 250 (deluxe) over the Asus K8V SE (deluxe) for overclocking - I'm still getting weird stability problems with A64's in general with my current setup ... crashes in games intermittently - but this is not related to overclocking.

(happened on both boards)

It's not related to heat as there is plenty of cooling
It's not related to overclocking as it crashes at stock

It might be related to the PSU although unlikely (380W Antec silent)
It might be related to the memory (very unlikely as it is XMS 3500 cas2 and I've had no problems for over a year now)
It is most likely related to the stinking Audigy 2 ZS drivers :/

[LayZeh]

Thanks for the information guys, it'd probably have to be an Abit board if i make the move, because i've had such a pleasurable experience wtih my NF7-S, anyway appreciate the advice, i'll let you know what happens.

[Rabs]

I know the feeling Layzeh, paydays approaching for me too and I need some new toys, Im looking at the MSI K8N Neo Platinum, heard good results OC'ing from other forums.

[Alien8472]

I'm lookin at this as a base system

A64 3200+
MSI K8N Neo
Thermalright SLK-948U Heatsink - Vantec 92mm Stealth fan
1GB Corsair XMS XL memory
Radeon X800XT PE
Antec Sonata - 380W PSU

[nakajima]

I'd rather get the OCZ EB than the corsairs XL for o/cing

[Firelord]

Nope I agree with Alien good setup there Nearly every review I have read managed around 215-220MHz 2-5-2-2 2.8v or 248-250MHz 2.5-7-3-3 2.8v

Any of you looked at the 8KAD3+?

[bouncin]

i just cant wait for a release on the x800 xt pe my money is burnin hole in my pocket i just gotta steer clear of amd64 3800 cos if i see one cheap i might just get 1

[BlackSheep]

... if you see one cheap ---- define cheap ... I don't think you'll see one cheap for a few months yet

[nakajima]

OCZ EB can do X-2-2-X timings at high fsb but the corsair SL cant. that is why i think OCZ will be a better choice for A64 with a working AGP/PCi lock

[Alien8472]

From what i can gather bandwidth isnt as important as latency on the A64, assuming the rest of your system can can even get to a high FSB/HTT in the first place...

[BlackSheep]

grrr why didn't somebody tell me you had to press CTRL + F1 on gigabyte boards to get to the advanced BIOS settings ... system is now fully stable at 2.4GHz