O/C ing on S754--mobo recommendation

[LiamC]

I am thinking of grabbing a S754 mobo and want one that is overclocking friendly--but on a budget. I have always tended to use EPoX or Abit, but their boards tend to be at the high end.

What I would prefer
VIA K8T800/Pro chipset or NVIDIA nForce3 250.
BIOS adjustable bus speeds in 1 MHz increments
CPU/Mem/Chipset/AGP voltage adjust (as wide a range as possible)
PCI/AGP lock (working)

What I _don't_ need--but if it comes without a price premium...
Gig-E
RAID
FireWire

Does anybody have a recommendation or review link?

 

[time]

If anyone can point me towards a diagnostic that can confirm AGP/PCI clocks, I will test the GA-K8NS Pro (nForce3 250) I've been playing with. Pretty sure the AGP lock wasn't working in the F1 BIOS, but this one is running F5.

 

[Mercutio]

My Albatron boards are generally not capable of overclocking, nor the Gigabyte Via models I'm fond of. I haven't done anything more than cursory tests but either current Via chipsets or the Athlon64 in general (probably the former) don't seem OC-friendly.

Anyway, everything I've read lately says P4s are a better choice for OCing right now.

 

[Gilbo]

The new DFI board has been causing quite a stir in the overclocking community. I think systems using it currently hold just about every record overclockers compete in, and by a significant margin (don't ask me what exactly they're competing in though).

Anandtech's got a review. They took it to over DDR600 apparently, which is a little shocking.

I don't know if it's in your price range, as I haven't looked at prices, but DFI boards are typically solid deals. For overclocking I think there's little contest that this guy is your best bet on S754.

 

[Gilbo]

Oh, I almost forgot, it does offer all the features you're looking for, even the firewire.

 

[time]

That DFI looks good, Gilbo. www.mittoni.com.au offers it for AU$250 (inc tax), although you have to wait for importation.

By way of comparison, the GA-K8NS Pro has the same features for about AU$200, as does an equivalent Via K8T800 for AU$180. I doubt that the former could scale the overclocking heights of the DFI, while the Via solutions just aren't in the race (AFAIK).

LiamC, I experimented with the Gigabyte board and found that it does lock the AGP and PCI buses. Just like the MSI K8N Neo, any FSB speed other than the default enagages the locks (eg 200->201MHz). I was able to set both the multiplier and FSB from within Windows with ClockGen, which worked rather better than the bundled EasyTune utility.

RAM clocking was harder to manage. The BIOS sets the memory timings, so cranking the FSB from within Windows fails to adjust them to suit. To make things harder, I used basic RAM that didn't like anything over 210MHz, and relaxing the timings didn't seem to help. I ended up setting the base frequency in the BIOS so it never topped 200MHz.

The system seemed okay with the FSB at 270MHz but crashed when I tried to hit 300MHz. The CPU itself managed 2350MHz but splattered at 2400MHz. From what I've read, these are average results.

Like others, I found that 1.6V was enough to push the CPU to its limit, with 1.7V making no difference. I'd therefore question the need for anything higher.

BTW, I doubt there's an appreciable performance benefit from huge RAM overclocks - the Athlon 64 3000 has a multiplier of 10 and is hardly starved for bandwidth.

 

[LiamC]

Time, thanks for the info. I will probably try to pick up the Gigabyte board this weekend. I've seen the K8NS for AU$170. The Pro only adds RAID and Gig-E LAN doesn't it? Both of which I don't need.

I don't suppose you know whether the board supports Cool 'N' Quiet do you?

According to this:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article172-page1.html

very few do if you use more than 1 DIMM--the list of readily available in Aus (i.e. I can find the board listed at Razorprices) being

• Abit KV8 Pro
  Albatron K8X800 Pro II
  EPoX EP-8HDA3+
  EPoX EP-8HDA5+/J
  Gigabyte GA-K8S760M
  Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M
  Gigabyte K8VNXP
  MSI K8N Neo Platinum
  MSI K8T Neo
  Soltek SL-K8AV2-RL

Anyone have any comments on any of these?

This post relating to MSI doesn't endear me to MSI--I've emailed the author quite regularly for a couple of years so I think his complaint is genuine and valid, i.e. no axe to grind:

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=115103111

I am going to try to track down a 3200+ (2GHz, 1MB). If I get 2300 out of it I'll smile. If I make 2400, I'll be ecstatic. Not really interested in huge RAM overclocks.

Try to find a Socket 754 board that is genuinely overclocking friendly (rather than marketing check box compliant) has been much more difficult than I imagined at the start.

 

[LiamC]

Another question, do any of you resellers know if AMD are making s754 2.0GHz 1MB cache Athlon 64's anymore? Are they readily available or rare?

I can find lots of 2.2GHz/512KB versions--but I don't want one.

 

[Mercutio]

Oddly enough I was just tooling around on AMD.com yesterday looking at that stuff (more accurately, looking for a table comparing AMD's PR speeds to actual frequency... funny how they don't have that laying around anywhere).

The 1MB 3200 is still listed on their site as available, as are other chips from the 3000 to the 3800. I also note that the Socket 754 version of the 3700 also has 1MB cache, while the socket 939 3800 chip runs at the same frequency (2.4GHz) but has only 512k of cache.

Which is a little weird if you ask me.

AMD's site appears to be up to date. If you look in the Athlon XP area, they only list the three XPs still in production, the 2800, 3000 and 3200. The others are now labelled legacy products

 

[Mercutio]

To answer your other question, one of my distributors has OEM 1MB 3200s listed for $220USD and the plain old OEM 3200s for $190. I see it on newegg.com (which isn't exactly a help to you Aussies) and several listings for them on pricewatch. Prices are all over the map for the 1MB chip, some being well north of $250USD.

I'm guessing AMD isn't shipping very many of them.

If they're absolutely impossible to find in Oz I'd be happy to buy you one and ship it over there.

 

[Buck]

Sorry, the only 1MB L2 cache 2.0GHz AMD chip my disti has right now is the Opteron 246. Other than that, it is the Athlon 64 3000+ or the Sempron 2800+. Oh, and the pre-castrated Sempron XP2800+ Barton is still available too.

 

[time]

The Pro only adds RAID and Gig-E LAN doesn't it?

Yes, I forgot about the cheaper K8NS Pro.

I don't suppose you know whether the board supports Cool 'N' Quiet do you?

Definitely.

very few do if you use more than 1 DIMM

No problems with Cool 'n' Quiet and 2 DIMMs at stock speed on the K8NS Pro I've been testing.

However, you should be aware that the Cool 'n' Quiet driver overrides the multiplier and voltage. So your overclocking will be limited to what you can achieve at stock voltage. For example, although my sample A64 3000 can reach 2350MHz at 1.6V, at 1.5V it's only good for 2200MHz - so this is its limit with Cool 'n' Quiet enabled.

I am going to try to track down a 3200+ (2GHz, 1MB). If I get 2300 out of it I'll smile. If I make 2400, I'll be ecstatic.

Be careful. The 1MB chips are the older ones, and I would presume, less overclockable?

 

[time]

I was going to post a screenshot of my overclocking results, but I can't access that computer right now.

Anyway, changing the RAM helped enormously. So much, in fact, that I wouldn't recommend attempting an overclock without suitable RAM. This may be a weakness of the Gigabyte implementation or the AMD/nVidia design.

The replacement RAM was known to be good for nearly 250MHz (PC4000), but on this board I managed to complete 3DMark at 266Mhz (DDR533). However, adding a second module (for Bill's benefit ) reduced this to about 245MHz. I mostly used manual timings past 200MHz.

With reduced RAM frequency, the highest usable FSB I could manage was 333MHz. This appeared to be limited by the HTT multiplier - the BIOS would not let me boot with a value less than 3 (necessary to keep HyperTransport below 1GHz). Memory clock was 250MHz.

You're allowed to be impressed ... 8)

It would be interesting to try some Geil RAM like Anandtech used with the DFI. And we should acknowledge Tannin's wisdom in insisting on it.

On the downside, I had to rely on ClockGen to hit those extremes (the BIOS resets everything if it thinks you've gone too far), and it was sometimes finicky. I sometimes had to stagger the clock increase in a couple of steps - lord knows why. Definitely not as straightforward as a Celeron 300A. :-?

 

[Mercutio]

Speaking of:

Has anyone else here run into Althon 64s autodetecting PC3200 RAM - regardless of brand - as PC2700?

All my Athlon64s do that. With Crucial, Mushkin or Corsair DIMMs. Regardless of who made the board. Of course I can go into the BIOS and manually set them to work at full speed, but it kind of bothers me that it's happening in the first place.

 

[Jan Kivar]

Speaking of:

Has anyone else here run into Althon 64s autodetecting PC3200 RAM - regardless of brand - as PC2700?

All my Athlon64s do that. With Crucial, Mushkin or Corsair DIMMs. Regardless of who made the board. Of course I can go into the BIOS and manually set them to work at full speed, but it kind of bothers me that it's happening in the first place.

I think this is a feature of the CO core: when using two sticks of RAM, the memory controller automatically drops to 166 MHz to maintain 1T command rate. Manually setting the speed to 200 MHz forces 2T command rate.

Cheers,

Jan

 

[Jan Kivar]

Damn, it's C0, not CO.

Jan

 

[LiamC]

Hey thanks guys--really useful stuff.

Time

You're allowed to be impressed ...

I am

No problems with Cool 'n' Quiet and 2 DIMMs at stock speed on the K8NS Pro I've been testing.

However, you should be aware that the Cool 'n' Quiet driver overrides the multiplier and voltage. So your overclocking will be limited to what you can achieve at stock voltage. For example, although my sample A64 3000 can reach 2350MHz at 1.6V, at 1.5V it's only good for 2200MHz - so this is its limit with Cool 'n' Quiet enabled.

I did not know this about C 'N' Q. Thanks.

Be careful. The 1MB chips are the older ones, and I would presume, less overclockable?

All the old 1MB parts were C0. All the 512KB models are CG. But AMD does list a 1MB CG part in their OPN guide.

Mercutio wrote:

If they're absolutely impossible to find in Oz I'd be happy to buy you one and ship it over there.

Thank you. Very much appreciated.

 

[time]

Has anyone else here run into Althon 64s autodetecting PC3200 RAM - regardless of brand - as PC2700?

I think this is a feature of the CO core: when using two sticks of RAM, the memory controller automatically drops to 166 MHz to maintain 1T command rate. Manually setting the speed to 200 MHz forces 2T command rate.

I explicitly checked for this, and it did not happen with my CG (either that, or the BIOS has been changed). Neither did it engage 2T (you can tell easily by comparing memory throughput after toggling the setting). I'd hazard a guess that DDR333 or T2 now kicks in with 3 modules.

 

[LiamC]

Picked up a Abit KV8Pro. Had some issues with o/cing initially as this is my first foray into Athlon 64 land. Picked up a 2800+ as a stop gap--but the merchant pulled a swifty and I ended up with a C0 stepping.

Currently it is running @ 2430 Mhz on a 270MHz bus, stock cooler and stock voltage (1.5V) ~ 35% overclock. Not too shabby I would have thought

Memory is some Corsair TwinX PC3200-LL. The memory is set to DDR333 in the BIOS (to get a /12 divider), so it is running at about 202MHz (just over PC3200 speeds).

Anybody know of a decent cooler? I am so out of the loop with the 64's

 

[Jan Kivar]

Zalman CNPS-7000AlCu.

Cheers,

Jan

 

[The JoJo]

Zalman CNPS-7000AlCu.

Cheers,

Jan

Just put the same on a P4, recommended. Very silent. No wonder it's top 2 on the recommended list at silentpc.

 

[ddrueding]

Zalman CNPS-7000AlCu.

Cheers,

Jan

Thirded. Just put one on my new home server. It's not quiet enough to have in the same room, but it keeps the CPU darn cool (7C over ambient).

 

[LiamC]

I just checked out a vendor here in Aus, and they list a

7000 AlCu,
7000A AlCu, &
7000B AlCu.

What are the differences? Is one better than the other?

 

[Jan Kivar]

I just checked out a vendor here in Aus, and they list a

7000 AlCu,
7000A AlCu, &
7000B AlCu.

What are the differences? Is one better than the other?

7000A is identical to 7000, it just comes with the mounting gear for Socket 462 (which makes it a bit more expensive). 7000B is slightly revised version; I can't tell much about the improvements, all I know is that it's slightly lighter than 7000/7000A.

What is more interesting is the difference between the mounting gear between 7000/7000A. The 7000A comes with a backplate (the metal plate under the socket where the HSF is attached with the two bolts). I've heard that the nipples (Zalman marketing term) are of different height between the 7000/7000A.

I bought the 7000. I could mount it directly on the stock backplate that came with my MSI K8N Neo (which had the backplate already installed). Basically one just removes the plastic frame, and fastens the nipples in place. Then thermal paste is applied and finally the HSF is just screwed on.

If I had bought 7000A I would have been forced to remove the stock backplate (which is glued in apparently) and use the Zalman backplate, as the nipples are different. Otherwise the HSF doesn't make proper contact (or contact at all!). I've read that one could order the correct nipples (ones that come with 7000) from Zalman, so that 7000A could be mounted on the stock backplate. I'm thinking this is US only offer.

Hopefully this helps. I'd check some ABit forums to see if there are problems similar to my MSI K8N board.

Cheers,

Jan

 

[ddrueding]

Just for the record, the backplate on the MSI K8N boards isn't glued on. It does, however have a layer of very "spongy" non-conductive pad that tends to vacum-seal to the board. All you have to do is start pushing one of the mount points through the board and be patient. There is no residue and no stickyness involved.

 

[Jan Kivar]

Just for the record, the backplate on the MSI K8N boards isn't glued on. It does, however have a layer of very "spongy" non-conductive pad that tends to vacum-seal to the board. All you have to do is start pushing one of the mount points through the board and be patient. There is no residue and no stickyness involved.

Well it's still easier to buy the non-A version with this board...

Cheers,

Jan

 

[CougTek]

I thought about this thread when I crossed that page.