Soyo KT333 Lite not clocking well =[

Hey guys, dunno who remembers me, I used to hang out here a lot 2-3 years ago but then work kicked in and had no time. Anyhow, wanted to see what people know/experience about this issue I'm having.

A while a go I purchased a Soyo Dragon KT333 Lite and used it with my tbird. Recently I got an tbred 1500+ (the best stepping one -- overclocks very well) and was able to run it at max multiplier (12.5 on my mobo) and only 150fsb. Now, that's not bad but I know with my hardware I should reach 2.0ghz+. My temps are 46c max and i know for a fact the bottleneck is not the cpu. I tried playing with both ram and core voltages, nothign made a diff.

I have 1 Kingston 512MB 2700 stick of ram that should be able to take 166fsb with ease yet. I tried setting the dram clock to that (as it's seperate from the FSB itself in the bios setup) but it kills my system and it's related to ram cos I get paging kernel crashes. (running linux so I get relatively useful kernel dumps) I don't think it's bad ram though, I just think my soyo dislikes it, they don't work well for some reason. PCI's and block devices should not have a problem at fsb 166 at all, it's the same as 100 or 133 (multiple of 33mhz) so I can't blame any secondary piece, only 2 things are mobo or ram, and I strongly feel the ram is good. Anyone heard of anything about my mobo? Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks

What bios version do you have?

I've got the lastest, 2aa7.

Also, I did some sniffing this morning. I shadowed my bios so it goes into ram and looked at the bit assignments of the different Preformance modes [Normal, Fast, Turbo] and found that Turbo which is what I had it set to wasn't the optimal settinsg so I decided to move into manual mode for the DDR settings and now I've been able to get a little ahead. I'm at 12.5 x 155.
I will try 160 tonight, I want to make sure I'm stable at this. I'm doing hardcore mallocs atm and the normal cpu lot.

So far, good temps, good uptime, no crash, no mash, kernel ain't complaining, no segfaults, I have a feeling I solved the problem.

Check here tomorrow morning, I'll try 160 tonight and if it lasts an hour of testing I'll push to 166 and that'd be good enough for me.

Still open to comments.

As I thoght and said, can't push the fsb any higher.

I think it's soyo's lack of options concerning mem-timing. My hardrive is not able to keep up and I need some sort of PCI latency or somthing but my mobo does not have it. =[

i dont like that bios version, imo it is very buggy, you might try the 2aa5 i have better overclocking luck with it.

With the peorformance modes have it on Normal

umm..

2aa5 won't even post for more than a few seconds, 2aa7 is flawless in that regard. They don't have support for the tbred in 2aa5, which is the chip I have now. I had a tbird before the tbred and when i bought the tbred i was on 2aa5 (factory flashed) and tried a handful of times to get the tbred working, i underclocked it even, it was clear it was the bios. 2aa6 came out, same thing, then 2aa7 which said "added support for lower voltage amd cpus" and ta-daa it worked, posted on first time and stayed up, never crashed at all for me even at the highst settings, but at high fsb i crash because of the mem-timings which i have set to turbo BUT in ddr settings have it on manual. my settings are 2-6-2 and 1T for cmd rate.

weird i have the 2aa5 and a tbred and it works great.

the Lite? I know it *shouldn't* make a difference, but in practice, things like this do happen.

Edit: just saw your sig, so you don't have the Lite. Anyhow, let's get past that as I'm telling you, 2aa7 is 200% better here. Not only is the cpu support better but it boots a bit quicker and *always* posts, while 2aa5/6 did not. Sometimes 5/6 would shut down and not restart until I turned off the PSU until the green mobo led turned off.

What mem-time settings are you running though? I'd like to compare, and anyone else with a Soyo Dragon (any type will do for now) Also. what Clk x FSB settings? Voltages and any settings you can give me.

Thanks.

166x12.5 1.52v My mem timings are the stock bios ones. I dont know what else to tell you, sorry.

I have the same mobo, but I have XP2100+ with 2 sticks of 256 MB Crucial DDR RAM. I'm a totla noob to over cloking, so I'm wondering how to overclock my CPU and how much could I do it?

I'm not understanding completely about the 13.0x thingie, it is better to have lower or higher of which ever you call it?
I know that I could change FSB in BIOS, but how much and what should do with it?
Thankful for anyone's help