NF7-S What should I expect?

I just put together a new system with an NF7-S 2.0, Barton 2500+, 2 512 MB sticks of Buffalo PC3700 with Winbond BH5 chips, Maxtor 40GB 7200 rpm hard drive on SATA. Results are pretty disappointing so far, the best I've been able to do is 200 x 11 @ 1.75vcore w/ conservative mem timings. BTW cooling is a Thermaltake Silent Boost, temps in the low 40s load, love that "silent fan"...remember what your hard drive sounds like?!?

On my old rig (see sig) I've no problem running 166 x 13.5 for 2250 @ stock volts with Corsair Value Select PC2700.

I'm wondering what kind of performance I should be expecting and what settings more experienced users might make for FSB, mult, and mem timings. I really don't like to over-volt so I'm not looking to squeeze the very last mhz out of this rig, just a good, stable long-term performer. I'd also appreciate an explanation of the FSB/DRAM ratio setting as I've not had that option on prior boards. I understand it is the ratio of the FSB to system memory but i can't understand the difference between the 3/3, 5/5, 6/6 settings as they all seem to yield the same results.

Any and all advice is definately appreciated!

Newbie, but I've pretty much got the exact same setup (see sig). Basically in my hands 11x200 at stock voltage is stable (ran P95 for ~16hrs), at 215FSB I can't boot into winXP no matter how high I set the Vcore (up to 1.9). Never tried raising VDD. You're results might vary but I'm going to keep playing around to see if I can get higher than that.

In the L12 mod treads login211 (IIRC) states that he did a different mod to get 166FSB Bartons to read/run at 200FSB. Not sure if this mode is any good or not, but he states he was stucj at 181FSB and was about to jump to 220FSB.

The FSB/DDR ratio is in sync at any 1:1 ratio, so 3/3, 5/5 and 6/6 are all the same (I use 6/6 for no really clear reason).

BTW your posts says NF7-S but your sig says KD7-S

3/3, 5/5, 6/6 all run mem in sync with FSB

As much as you love the silent fans, your computer likes the really loud ones that will dice your fingers and keep your CPU temps real low, and really big heatsinks that take up 2/3rds of your motherboard. They also love real good cooling on the Northbridge, ie not the stock cooling. At your voltage my temps were 5 or 6 degrees lower. If you want more FSB add some AS3 or 5(it's out now yay) to the ramchips on your DIMMS and stick some copper heatsinks on there if you have aluminum. Set your DDR SDram settings to 2.9. In fact make sure everything is set with AS3. That may help.

Or maybe one of your ramsticks are mojo'd and just won't give you what you want. Then, I'd say return them if they aren't giving you what the manufacturer says they should be giving. Your Barton may have bad steppings (it'll happen).

Remember: You get what you pay for. You cheap out on anything and you're not likely to get what you want out of your computer. You can always give the L12 mod if you feel inclined; It may help.

-Overcrocked

Why 200x11 when you can do 220x10? High FSB low Multiplier, even if it means sacrificing a few cycles per second.

About the ratios, are you on Bios 19? Or 18 even? Anyways. They control the speed at which the memory runs 6/6 at your setup would yield a ram speed of 400mhz, but 5/6 would be less, 333 I think.

tom10167 said:

Why 200x11 when you can do 220x10? High FSB low Multiplier, even if it means sacrificing a few cycles per second

Click to expand...

As simple as that sounds it may be too much FSB for his ram, or board to handle. You can't always go from 200x11 - 220x10. If I set my ram to 245x10 it will not work. Also, tighter ram timings can be more important than a higher FSB.

Thanks for the help guys. I'd also appreciate any info you could provide regarding speciffic mem timings, FSB/mult ratios etc.

Vejita: My other rig is the KD7-S...the one that runs 166 x 13.5 = 2250 I wish I could get this NF7 to perform as well!!

Tom: I'd love to run a higher FSB but can't seem to get above 210 (and not stable there) no matter what I try. I read so many good things about the NF7-S I sure expected better results than I've gotten so far! BTW: I'm running the latest bios: compile date 10/9/2003

I bought the Buffalo RAM based upon recomendations on this and the CPU and Memory forums...did I make a mistake?

Thanks for the help, please keep it coming!

Personally, when I did a ram upgrade I didn't look in the memory forums, I looked here, in the Abit forums. What I found was that people were getting consistantly better FSBs with Twinmos and OCZ ram.

-Overcrocked.

Try to turn up the volts to the ram. When i set mine up to 2.9 can get about 215 to 220 with buffalo ram. Also at 5 2 2 2.

I'm using bios 19 and it's worked better for me than 10, 14 and 17 so I'd say it's a fine bios to use. Also, even if your hitting 200fsb, but your computers only running at like 2.05 or 2.1 ghz I garauntee that it'll perform faster than a computer with 166fsb @ 2.2ghz.

Personally I think a lot of people go for the Buffalo ram because it's on the cheaper side, but generally expensive ram is better garaunteed to give you higher timings. I don't know whether Buffalo comes with heatspreaders if they do put some AS5 on all the ramchips on your DIMMs and reattach the spreader. If they don't come with a spreader, buy some copper ones and repeat as mentioned above.

...and don't forget to get some better cooling for your northbridge [vedy vedy impotent]