nutnut^

Hi all,

its me again.

I've finally got a heatsink + blower on my cpu. (its some coolermaster jobby)

it runs idle 39 load 42 c.

Motherboard = Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe

CPU = recent athlon xp 2800+

it came in the retail package. fairly new, so I imagine it will be locked ?

its the green box that says amd athlon xp processor with quantispeed architecture 2800+ with 333 mhz front side bus.

I dont really want to take it out and have to read whats on it :P

I do also have another cpu laying around. I'll read off what it says on the black sticker with white writing.

AMD Athlon tm

AXDA2400DKV3C 9797203950499 JIUHB 0344MPM (c) 1999 AMD.


My questions(s) are:

1: my motherboard, is it any good for overclocking? I've seen custom bios' out there which may suggest I have to flash it with one first. Attempts at this failed. Is there a jumper I have to remove to allow myself to write to the bios. I know this is dangerous. I couldn't even upgrade the bios using an offical newer bios from asus's website.

2: my 2800+ cpu. Is it locked? How do I tell? How do I unlock it?

3: my 2400+ cpu. Is it locked? details listed above.


Many thanks,

nutnut^.

Geminiwave

I dont think there are custom bios's for the Asus boards. those are mostly for A-bit boards.

besides your board will overclock well. concern yourself first with your CPU and RAM overclockability before you screw with the bios.

I think your 2400+ is semi-locked, meaning that you can lower your multiplier from default values but not raise it. try changing the multiplier and find out. its the fastest and best way to know.

now as far as the FSB, make sure you have your AGP bus locked, as well as PCI.

my 2800 goes to 210fsb before it starts getting nasty. thats at 1.8v. I think the RAM might be holding me back, but i'm not sure.

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davidnsibs

no, there are 'uber' bioses for the a7n8x, I tried the 1004 version which is supposed to be great for overclocking, but tbh i couldnt tell much difference, so unless youre really hardcore then i wouldnt bother. now, its a good idea to be running a recent bios version on your motherboard unless everything works fine (if it aint broke, dont fix it), but with asus boards its really easy. go onto asus website and download asusupdate (in the tools or utilities section or something like that), then download the latest bios for your board. run asusupdate and choose 'update bios from a file' and keep clicking next checking what the program is telling you. should work fine. some people will tell you you should put the bios file onto a floppy, boot into dos and flash from there but I've never had any problems in windows and its an official asus program so whats the worry?!? is the latest bios version much newer than yours by the way, becuase if its not then there may not be much point in doing it

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Goodbye 9500pro, you've been a faithful servant through Half life, Deus Ex, Unreal 2, Max Payne 1+2, Nolf 1+2, CoD, Far Cry, Civ IV, F.E.A.R and many more

davidnsibs

for a really good forum site about nforce boards look at the forums on www.nforcershq.com theres an asus tab and itll have loads of info and goodies to look at

edit: sorry for double posting, your cpu's are locked if when you change the multiplier in the bios and reboot then the frequency on the cpu stays the same. your 2800 should at stock be 166*12.5 = 2075mhz change the multiplier to 13 and see if when your pc boots it still says 2075 or whether it has 2185mhz. chances are itll be locked now, only the very early ones a year or two ago where unlocked

edit #2: you dont need to unlock the processor to overclock it, you can raise the fsb (front side bus) to be higher than 166 (default) eg 175*12.5=2187mhz so you can have your cpu at nearly xp 3200 speed by doing this. however, fsb changes also increases your RAM speed so you'll get a speed boost from this too

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Goodbye 9500pro, you've been a faithful servant through Half life, Deus Ex, Unreal 2, Max Payne 1+2, Nolf 1+2, CoD, Far Cry, Civ IV, F.E.A.R and many more

Lowfat

I use a modded bios for my A7N8X-E DELUXE.
Do a google search for 1012 emod, and you'll find it pretty quick.

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nutnut^

Hi, I flashed and installed the 1012-Emod bios. Gonna try a few things I hope I dont blow it up

I dont really wanna change my FSB cos that will heat up my ram and I have crap memory in my system.

Gonna read that other site too and see what other people have done.

Thanks guys,

nutnut^

Geminiwave

you NEVER have to worry about ram overheating. Those ramsinks do nothing...even on high end ram. OCZ even says that their highest end ram only has the heat spreader thingy because its their trademark now. and it looks hellah pretty.

anyway dont worry about heat.

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nutnut^

Hi all,

Kinda stuck again.

I can only change my fsb from 166 to 200. Then my motherboard wont boot, if I have the audio diagonstic thing on it says "system failed due to cpu overclocking"

If I try putting the multiplyer up .5% from 12 or 12.5 to 13 (I cant remmeber default) it does the same.

It seems no matter what I change I cant boot my system up!

nutnut^

CDsDontBurn

in your BIOS there should be a setting for manual setting of the FSB. One that is enabled, it will allow you to change the FSB of your system 1Mhz at a time instead of going from 166 to 200.

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Geminiwave

what he said.

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nutnut^

cool, I must have missed the part about system performance being set to user defined. It mentioned the word experts only in the bios so I skipped it

I got my system overclocking now.

Finding it hard to get my CPU Diode temp though. I wanna get it before I continue clocking.

Asus 3 sensor in motherboard monitor 5 shows 125c, it must be lying.

Asus 4 sensor shows 25c, which is lying too:P

My cpu temp is 41 now idle. I'd guess the diode is about 10-15 degrees hotter?


nutnut^

Lowfat

the only temp i'd worry about is cpu socket temp and motherboard temp, the others are usually out. Personally i think you should disable the posting voice thing. It is sorta buggy. Sometimes it wont let you post even though you should.

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nutnut^

Yeah, voice post thing is disabled now since I flashed my mobo. I dont think my mobo has the CPU Diode part. I've been told to avoid > 55c under load. I'm currently clocking to 2.25ghz. Running prime 95 (have been for about 1hr and a bit) seems good so far. 47c under full load.
I'm using pc2700 memory though as far as I remember. I have a stick of 512pc3200 at work which I'll try tomorrow.

nutnut^

CDsDontBurn

how much ram do you have in your system now? if it's 1Gb, i'd keep the DDR333 instead of getting the one 512 DDR 400 stick. you'll lose performance on that nForce 2 chipset board.

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nutnut^

Hi,

Ive only got 512meg of 333 in there. I've found a pair of 400 512 sticks today.


Funnily enough I managed to blow up my psu last night (not suprising, it was 8amp on the 12 rail) Ive got a 350w hiper here which gives 16 amp on the 12 v rail)

I guess with dual channel mode ddr 400 I will get a nice performance boost?
nutnut^

CDsDontBurn

the more amps on the 12v rail, the better. you'd really want to get something with at least like 20amps to ensure a good quality PSU. Also, having a better powersupply will also increase stability at lower voltages in your system. like instead of running your CPU at 1.85v @ 2Ghz for example, with a better quality PSU, you can run your system at 1.775v @ 2Ghz. On top of that, having a better quality PSU will allow you to have more devices like hard drives, optical drives, and video cards in your system.

well, anyways, the extra ram and it being ddr 400 will be a pretty good performance gain in your overclocking adventures .

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nutnut^

Hi,

Yeah I'll look into getting a better psu. Currently I'm running my cpu at 185fsb x 12.5 giving me 2.3gig roughly. I want to get to 200fsb do you think this is possible? my voltages are only slightly tweaked by .50 I think and my temps after playing half life 2 need for speed underground 2 and doing some prime 95 with the heating on in the house reach about 47.

nutnut^

Geminiwave

well...more volts means better overclock.

Personally I can get 185 out of a .10 raise on the voltage. I need to have 1.75 to be able to do 195fsb and the full 1.85 to do 200fsb and beyond(i get a bit more headroom there)

so basically I doubt your PSU is having a huge impact on your OCing.

Btw what proc do you have? is it a 2800+?

edit: nvm i read your first post. yes it is.

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nutnut^

Hey Thanks for the reply.

I'm yet to whack it up any further yet, got to write some documents and maybe I'll give it a go before bed.

My voltage raises .25v at a time. I havent tried lowering it since I got my this other psu. I'll report back with results.

Thanks for all the help so far guys, my next task is to ubercool and clock my 9800 pro.

It can be flashed to an XT

nutnut^