HELP - what's holding back my TBred2400+?

i recently upgraded my system, replacing my old TB 1.2GHZ, CodeGen 350W PSU and PC2100 DDR. this my new system specs:

• Athlon TBred 2400+
• 512MB KingMax PC2700
• Antec TruePower 380W
• ePox 8K7A+
• ATI Sapphire 9500 hardmod 9700
• 2 X IBM 40GB 120GXP RAID-0
• Greative SB Live 5.1
• Windows 2000 Pro SP4

the TBred was give to me by a friend who was able to oc it to 2.427GHZ (11.5x211) on his ePox 8RDA, 100% stable.

because of my 8K7A+ i can't change the multiplier, it's stuck on 15. so i can only up the FSB when overclocking. everything runs fine at default 133MHZ FSB, 100% stable. when the FSB is set to 140, the system freezes after running it underload for few minutes. when the FSB is set to 150, it hangs at windows loadup screen, get the blue screen saying some file is corrupt or can't be read.

i've tried to up the vcore to 1.85v and relaxing the ram time to 2.5. but the system still freezes at 140MHZ FSB after running underload for few mins.

the CPU should be able to goto 2.4GHZ and the ram is PC2700 so it should goto at least 166MHZ. so what's holding me back? the mobo? the RAID chip? please give me some suggestions.


thanks,
fu bo

Save some time and money, and invest into a nforce2 motherboard... check the prices on the v2.0 on ABIT (NF7/NF7-S), ASUS (A7N8X Deluxe) or EPOX (8RDA+) theses boards have been used widely here on these forums, and you can do yourself good by researching and pricing them within what your budget permits. If however you're going to stay with your current system board, be advised that you're going to hit a wall and not get the same speed achieved by your friend.

Does AMD 760 chipset have a /5 divider?
If so, wouldn't you have to hit 166 FSB for it to kick in?

You know, you didn't list your cooling... but it's probably the chipset. Can you find anyone with this chipset here through search or on other forums? How did they do with T-Breds?

RedDawg41 said:

If however you're going to stay with your current system board, be advised that you're going to hit a wall and not get the same speed achieved by your friend.

Click to expand...

yea, i knew from the beginning the chance of me getting 2.4GHZ (160MHZ FSB) with my 8K7A+ was slim, but not able to get pass 140MHZ FSB is just too strange.

If it has a /5 divider, you may be able to post at 166 FSB, can you?

Here's a quote....

"The Epox 8K7A+ is equipped with a very complete Award v6.00PG BIOS. There are many tweaking options available and control for all of the on-board accessories. CPU multiplier and Voltages are adjusted via DIP switches and jumpers, but the FSB can be altered from within the BIOS, all the way up to 250MHz in 1MHz increments. We used the 1711 BIOS release on our 8K7A+. Many users claim this BIOS release incorporates 1/5 and 1/6 PCI dividers, which should allow for very high FSB overclocking, but we were unable to verify this. (Sandra reports a 1/4 PCI divider) We asked Epox whether or not these other dividers are available but have not received an answer yet. We'll let you know as soon as we find out."
this comes from the following site...
http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/Motherboards/epox_8k7a(2).shtml

http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/Motherboards/epox_8k7a.shtml

THis may explain why you can't get over the 140mhz FSB zone.

c627627 said:

If it has a /5 divider, you may be able to post at 166 FSB, can you?

Click to expand...

i'm using a beta bios (2923), as far as i know it's the only on that identifies the TBreds. with any other bios, the Tbreds shows up as "unkown CPU".

i know AMDMB has some older 8K7A+ bios with 1/5 PCI Dividers , but these bios are pretty old.

but even with out 1/5 divider, it should still be able to oc to 140MHZ FSB.

if your board doesn't allow you to adjust the multi, then it's useless to kick it up to the 166FSB and see if the 1/5 divider kicks in. unless, you get a cpu that runs at the 166FSB, you're pretty much running up a very steep hill and not getting anywhere.