help oc'ing ABIT KN8 ? tia

On 10/16/2006 5:43:09 AM, Wes Newell wrote:
On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:41:01 -0400, Kristi wrote:

Okay, this was pretty painless.
Lowered HT to x4
Freq to 240 instant lock.
Freq to 230 lock after a bit.
Freq to 225 works fine
Left freq at 220

10% speed increase and a 2% increase in 3DMARK03, the latter is to be
expected as it depends almost totally on the vid card.

Why? Well, I'd had it for 3 months and boredom/toy value set in. The only
game I play is NeverWinterNights and the 6600GT handles that nicely.

The remaining question would be whether I am
better off at 220, x4 yielding 880/1760,
or at the original 200, x5 yielding 1000/2000

Any thoughts on that?

HT speed is almost meaningless in terms of performance since the memory
has it's own bus. Could be the reason it's locking at higher speeds is
because you are overclocking the ram too much. Lower the base speed of the
ram 33MHz for every 50 you intend to overclock the system clock. You may
also need more cpu voltage. I had to take my old hammer 3000+ to 1.675v
get it stable at 2330MHz up from default of 2000MHz.


I wonder if there's any point (throughput) to runing the cpu and memory out
of sync - ie at different freqs. I know you can, but that always struck me as
odd. Yes it probably IS the memory as this Geil, though good, is probably
"select" and can't be oc'ed much. It was about $100 for 1gb. The good
(overclockable) sticks run twice that.

I also wonder what happens, internally, if you run the HT at 2200... ? Though
as Paul pointed out, I hardly need the throughput there with the single vid
card.

My next upgrade will be a SATA drive - they seem to be out and about for $50
these days - about time I jumped. (running 2 IDE drives now)

--
Kristi
-----
ABIT KN8 Ultra(NForce4Ultra), Ath64 3500+, 2x512MB Geil, Leadtek PX6600GT TDH 128mb, Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP Expert TV card.
Raxco PerfectDisk8
XP Pro SP 2++++

On 10/16/2006 6:58:27 PM, "Kristi" wrote:
On 10/16/2006 5:43:09 AM, Wes Newell wrote:
On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:41:01 -0400, Kristi wrote:

Okay, this was pretty painless.
Lowered HT to x4
Freq to 240 instant lock.
Freq to 230 lock after a bit.
Freq to 225 works fine
Left freq at 220

10% speed increase and a 2% increase in 3DMARK03, the latter is to be
expected as it depends almost totally on the vid card.

Why? Well, I'd had it for 3 months and boredom/toy value set in. The only
game I play is NeverWinterNights and the 6600GT handles that nicely.

The remaining question would be whether I am
better off at 220, x4 yielding 880/1760,
or at the original 200, x5 yielding 1000/2000

Any thoughts on that?

HT speed is almost meaningless in terms of performance since the memory
has it's own bus. Could be the reason it's locking at higher speeds is
because you are overclocking the ram too much. Lower the base speed of the
ram 33MHz for every 50 you intend to overclock the system clock. You may
also need more cpu voltage. I had to take my old hammer 3000+ to 1.675v
get it stable at 2330MHz up from default of 2000MHz.


I wonder if there's any point (throughput) to runing the cpu and memory out
of sync - ie at different freqs. I know you can, but that always struck me as
odd. Yes it probably IS the memory as this Geil, though good, is probably
"select" and can't be oc'ed much. It was about $100 for 1gb. The good
(overclockable) sticks run twice that.

I also wonder what happens, internally, if you run the HT at 2200... ? Though
as Paul pointed out, I hardly need the throughput there with the single vid
card.

My next upgrade will be a SATA drive - they seem to be out and about for $50
these days - about time I jumped. (running 2 IDE drives now)


Followup to this one -
Setting DRAM to SPD (ie ddr400)
freq = 450 clear cmos
440 lock
435 later lock
430 a bit later lock

At this point I concluded that the CPU was the limiting factor, or at least
as much, or more, than the memory.

Set freq and memory back to 220.


This does not really surprise me as AMD had pretty much determined to stop
giving folks chips that could be significantly overclocked, as they used to,
on the cheap. (the modifieable cores)(btdt).

I do not consider the 10% that I am getting to be "significant", but simply
"nice".

I continue to consider AMD to be a much better value for me, and will buy
them in the future. As I recall, this mobo and retail cpu with cooler,
shipped, cost me about $185 (this set happened to be from Mwave).

I bought the memory expecting it to do the 400 it is rated for - I'm actually
very surprised it runs without problem at 220/440! Yay Geil!

--
Kristi
-----
ABIT KN8 Ultra(NForce4Ultra), Ath64 3500+, 2x512MB Geil, Leadtek PX6600GT TDH 128mb, Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP Expert TV card.
Raxco PerfectDisk8
XP Pro SP 2++++

On 10/15/2006 11:59:25 PM, Paul wrote:


Kristi wrote:

On 10/15/2006 5:15:04 PM, "Kristi" wrote:
On 10/15/2006 2:38:15 PM, Paul wrote:


Kristi wrote:

On 10/14/2006 2:06:51 PM, "Kristi" wrote:
Had it for a few months. Very stable. I run XP and Linux on it. Temp runs at
35C. Specs in sig. Looking for ideas for basic simple OC'ing. Like what to do
with HT, etc. (~8300 on 3DMARK03)(vid card currently not oc'ed and won't
tollerate much, but it runs at 500/1000, as I recall)(curently 91.47 but may
shift back to 91.31 as "new" settings display doesn't work)(minor)

tia!


Oh, common - I'm far from an oc'ing newbie, but someone must have some
thoughts!!! )

--
Kristi
-----
ABIT KN8 Ultra(NForce4Ultra), Ath64 3500+, 2x512MB Geil, Leadtek PX6600GT TDH 128mb, Leadtek
WinFast
TV2000 XP Expert TV card.
Raxco PerfectDisk8
XP Pro SP 2++++

Um, let's see. Drop the memory clock divider, so the memory is not a limit.
Raise the FSB (CPU clock). Salt to taste. And do some research first, to see
what kind of headroom is available on your 3500+. Some people bang their head
against a wall, expecting to get an overclock like some review site, when
it just isn't going to happen.

For me, my overclock removed a bit of hesitation in a game I was playing,
and there wasn't a major improvement. Since you aren't going to beat someone
on the Orb with that hardware, there has to be some performance incentive to
even bother.

Instead of cranking the CPU clock via the BIOS, you can even use Clockgen,
from cpuid.com , and do your clock changing in there. That way, you don't
have to reboot over and over again (or at least reboot less, like when you
need to change Vcore or something).

One thing I would recommend, is connect a boot disk to the computer, that
you can afford to have corrupted. Do _not_ use your regular boot disk,
with all of those files that aren't backed up anywhere. I use a Knoppix
(knopper.net) CD for overclock testing, and disconnect all the hard
drives. You cannot corrupt a read-only CD :-) While booted in Knoppix, I use
a Linux version of Prime95 from mersenne.org and run the torture test. I
load Prime95 from a floppy (it fits).

Say you overclock to 2700MHz, and Prime is stable for 4 hours, then throws
one error. I would back off a bit, like 2600MHz, and run Prime95 and see
if it can run for 12 hours. You want to leave a bit of margin and find the
"everyday overclock" frequency, not the "livin on the edge" frequency. Once
you've dialed it down, then connect the Windows boot disk back up and go to
your regular hard drive config.

Paul


Thanks for your thoughts! Much appreciated!


Okay, this was pretty painless.
Lowered HT to x4
Freq to 240 instant lock.
Freq to 230 lock after a bit.
Freq to 225 works fine
Left freq at 220

10% speed increase and a 2% increase in 3DMARK03, the latter is to be
expected as it depends almost totally on the vid card.

Why? Well, I'd had it for 3 months and boredom/toy value set in. The only
game I play is NeverWinterNights and the 6600GT handles that nicely.

The remaining question would be whether I am
better off at 220, x4 yielding 880/1760,
or at the original 200, x5 yielding 1000/2000

Any thoughts on that?

Thanks!

--
Kristi
-----
ABIT KN8 Ultra(NForce4Ultra), Ath64 3500+, 2x512MB Geil, Leadtek PX6600GT TDH 128mb, Leadtek WinFast
TV2000 XP Expert TV card.
Raxco PerfectDisk8
XP Pro SP 2++++

HT affects transfers to Northbridge (and more indirectly to the Southbridge).
HT bus is 4GB/sec up and 4GB/sec down. This matches well with PCI Express
x16, which is also 4GB/sec in each of its directions. (Note that an SLI
motherboard with two true x16 slots, does not have enough bandwidth at
the processor interface. Over the long term average, each slot only
gets a x8 share.)

When you turn down HT, you are basically reducing the max rate that
your PCI Express can run at. A PCI Express card works just fine, even
when offered half of the original x16 rate. (Tomshardware did some
benchmarks where they put cello tape on different numbers of PCI Express
lanes, so they could measure the effects.) Dropping your HT from 5x200=1000
to 4x225=900 means an inperceptible drop in 3D performance. You would
notice the difference, if HT was turned down to 1x225.

The Southbridge also shares the wealth. I don't know exactly how bandwidth
is allocated, or what method is used (round robin, isochonous slots, whatever).
Since I've never heard of anyone complaining about disk performance, while
they are gaming, I presume the slower busses get their share first
(somehow). I suppose giving the Southbridge HT priority would solve the
problem pretty well.

You can certainly run 3DMark, change the HT multiplier value (say change
it from 4 to 3) and run with the same processor core speed. That should
tell you whether there is still enough bandwidth left, between processor
and Northbridge, when you reduce the bus speed.

Paul


Well, 225 at 4x yields 8468 and 220 at 3x yields 8439. A bit of apples and
oranges, and given that there is a bit of tollerance to 3DMARK03 results, I
would say there is no difference, ie, as you were saying, lots of bandwidth.
I'll set it back to 4x and forget it.

--
Kristi
-----
ABIT KN8 Ultra(NForce4Ultra), Ath64 3500+, 2x512MB Geil, Leadtek PX6600GT TDH 128mb, Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP Expert TV card.
Raxco PerfectDisk8
XP Pro SP 2++++

This does not really surprise me as AMD had pretty much determined to stop
giving folks chips that could be significantly overclocked, as they used to,
on the cheap. (the modifieable cores)(btdt).

I do not consider the 10% that I am getting to be "significant", but simply
"nice".

I continue to consider AMD to be a much better value for me, and will buy
them in the future. As I recall, this mobo and retail cpu with cooler,
shipped, cost me about $185 (this set happened to be from Mwave).

I believe the 3500+ came in at least three flavors, the .13 micron Newcastle
core, the .09 micron Winchester core, and the .09 Venice core. Your
overclocking results may well depend upon which you have. You don't
mention having raised the Vcore, as suggested, or the Vdimm, which may
well get you a higher overclock from your memory. Running the memory
asynchronously is not the crime it once was, as newer systems are not so
bandwidth starved.

See which CPU you have exactly:
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

On 10/17/2006 9:20:26 AM, "Fishface" wrote:
This does not really surprise me as AMD had pretty much determined to stop
giving folks chips that could be significantly overclocked, as they used to,
on the cheap. (the modifieable cores)(btdt).

I do not consider the 10% that I am getting to be "significant", but simply
"nice".

I continue to consider AMD to be a much better value for me, and will buy
them in the future. As I recall, this mobo and retail cpu with cooler,
shipped, cost me about $185 (this set happened to be from Mwave).

I believe the 3500+ came in at least three flavors, the .13 micron Newcastle
core, the .09 micron Winchester core, and the .09 Venice core. Your
overclocking results may well depend upon which you have. You don't
mention having raised the Vcore, as suggested, or the Vdimm, which may
well get you a higher overclock from your memory. Running the memory
asynchronously is not the crime it once was, as newer systems are not so
bandwidth starved.

See which CPU you have exactly:
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php



Sorry I didn't state - it's a Venice.
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec....ria=MB-BA22002 with the Athlon
64 3500+ Venice add-on.

Yes, I could raise the vcore, but I choose not to - at most I would likely
get another 5%. Yes, I could raise the memory voltage.
I did all that stuff when I had an older SIS chipset mobo. This time I hoped
to not bother with all that. Thanks for the thoughts, though!

--
Kristi
-----
ABIT KN8 Ultra(NForce4Ultra), Ath64 3500+, 2x512MB Geil, Leadtek PX6600GT TDH 128mb, Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP Expert TV card.
Raxco PerfectDisk8
XP Pro SP 2++++

Kristi wrote:
On 10/16/2006 5:43:09 AM, Wes Newell wrote:

On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:41:01 -0400, Kristi wrote:


Okay, this was pretty painless.
Lowered HT to x4
Freq to 240 instant lock.
Freq to 230 lock after a bit.
Freq to 225 works fine
Left freq at 220

10% speed increase and a 2% increase in 3DMARK03, the latter is to be
expected as it depends almost totally on the vid card.

Why? Well, I'd had it for 3 months and boredom/toy value set in. The only
game I play is NeverWinterNights and the 6600GT handles that nicely.

The remaining question would be whether I am
better off at 220, x4 yielding 880/1760,
or at the original 200, x5 yielding 1000/2000

Any thoughts on that?

HT speed is almost meaningless in terms of performance since the memory
has it's own bus. Could be the reason it's locking at higher speeds is
because you are overclocking the ram too much. Lower the base speed of the
ram 33MHz for every 50 you intend to overclock the system clock. You may
also need more cpu voltage. I had to take my old hammer 3000+ to 1.675v
get it stable at 2330MHz up from default of 2000MHz.



I wonder if there's any point (throughput) to runing the cpu and memory out
of sync - ie at different freqs. I know you can, but that always struck me as
odd. Yes it probably IS the memory as this Geil, though good, is probably
"select" and can't be oc'ed much. It was about $100 for 1gb. The good
(overclockable) sticks run twice that.

I messed with memory dividers once upon a time. I had an XP-M that
would run at 12.5*200 but memory that was limited to 166MHz. There was
a decrease in performance (memory bandwidth) while running the CPU and
memory out-of-sync, so I decided to run the CPU at 15*166. That kept
the memory and CPU in sync and brought the memory bandwidth back up to
par. With newer CPUs its not possible to play around like this because
the multiplier has a fixed maximum value. That said, thorough
benchmarking (not just 3dMark) should tell you if any loss in memory
performance is outweighed by your gain in CPU clock.

-Dylan C

I also wonder what happens, internally, if you run the HT at 2200... ? Though
as Paul pointed out, I hardly need the throughput there with the single vid
card.

My next upgrade will be a SATA drive - they seem to be out and about for $50
these days - about time I jumped. (running 2 IDE drives now)

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 18:51:46 -0400, "Kristi" wrote:


I'm surprised that you didn't notice the 600mhz increase, but, yeah, 200mhz
isn't noticeable.


It has it's MOMENTS, but yeah, I was pretty surprised too. I
shouldn't have been though, I remember going through all the gotta
have it hype with the Pentium II/III line of processors. Back when
they were telling you that a 333 or 350 was to die for over a 266 or
300. I upgraded from 266 to 500 and got virtually nothing. What a
crock. The main improvements come from the big chipset/cpu changes
like P3 to athlon64.