"Thomas" wrote in message
news:xwXJb.25374$_x2.135528@zonnet-reader-1...
Ken Fox wrote:
I've tried a few other things per some online reviews of my board,
including setting the bios for "Performance Mode=Turbo." Everything
I've done extra degrades performance because it results in a lousy
CPU:RAM FSB ratio (including the "Turbo" mode). Benchmarking shows
the degredation clearly.

My best results appear to be with FSB=220 for both CPU and RAM, with
which the board, CPU, and RAM appear stable. I got 7 error free
passes with Memtest86 yesterday at this setting, but I'm going to run
it a few more hours now to confirm error free performance.

Hi Ken,

Can't you use manual settings? With my PC3000 mem, and P4C 2.6, my 'sweet
spot' has turned out to be a FSB of 250, and a 5:4 mem divider, giving me
400 MHz on the old PC3000 mem, very stable too :-)

Thomas.



Hi Thomas,

With the manual settings the one thing I can't change (at least from what I
have seen with this bios) is the CPU:RAM ratio. If you can tell me where
that is in this bios, as a changeable option, please do. I can't find it.
I have not tried to push the FSB up beyond 240; up to that point the CPU:RAM
ratio still showed 3:2, which gave pretty lousy benchmarks.

Right now, I've got a P4 2.6 running at 2.86 (not as good as I expected)
however the RAM, which is rated only at DDR400/PC3200, is running 1:1 with
the CPU at a FSB of 440 (220). In essence, the memory is running as if it
were PC3500 at rated speed.

If somehow I was able to get the FSB up to 450, that would give me a CPU
running at 3.25GHz. Even if I got the RAM to run at 5:4 at 450, that is an
effective memory speed of 360, minus whatever performance hit occurs from
having to arbitrate this 5:4 ratio. Right now, my RAM is running at 440,
22% (at least) faster than I'd get with the 5:4 CPU to RAM ratio. So,
assuming I could accomplish what you propose, my CPU would be running 13%
faster and my RAM 22% (or more) slower.

My best guess, not having gotten that setup (450FSB) to work nor having
benchmarked it, is that what I have now is at least as fast. FWIW, Sandra
shows a Maximum Bus Bandwidth of 7040MB/s, combined index of 10911, and a
Memory Bandwidth Benchmark Combined Index of 8067. I don't know how useful
these numbers are in comparing one system to another, but having run the
same board with an overclocked P4 2.2 plus PC2100 RAM, my current results,
as far as the memory bandwidth are concerned, are more than 50% improved.

I've now done 23 more passes of Memtest86 with zero errors, and board+cpu
temps are very very low. The system appears to be rock hard stable. Most
probably the better part of valour would be to leave well enough alone!

Best,

ken