asus P5PE-VM overclocking with conroe

has anyone trid this paticular board, it seems like a bargain and has the possiblilty of using my existing geforce 6600gt agp and my patroit ddr 533 memory. if anyone has any other suggestions that may be better that support agp and ddr please let me know

thanks in advance for your input and advice

help

has anyone out there used this board just wanted to see if it was able to overclock at all

thanks

How well does the P5PE-VM overclock Conroes?

Me too. Here are some more detailed questions.

Does anyone have experience in overclocking Conroes on the P5PE-VM?

The Asus info page for the P5PE advertises "CPU Lock-Free" with the ability to unlock up to 14x. It occurs to me that this may have been written with the prior socket 775 processors (Netburst) in mind. Details are near non-existent in the users manual. Haven't found any answers with a thorough Google scouring of the web.

1) Can we confirm that this board will unlock Conroes/Allendales up and down?

2) Also, what kind of FSB headroom does this board have? I understand that the 266 MHz (1066) FSB for the Conroe is an overclock already. Will it hit 300?

3) Are there CAS limitations to the memory used and is an AGP card required for the OC?
A similar board based on the same 865G chipset (ASRock 775i65G) says that: FSB1066-CPU is supported only when you install AGP VGA card into AGP slot. Besides, if you use a FSB1066-CPU on this motherboard, please adopt a DDR400 CL2.5 memory module. My Ram is DDR400 CL3. I wonder if this is an issue on the Asus P5PE.

4) What are the voltage and FSB frequency controls like?

I'd hope to be able to do something like 266 x 11 = 2.93 GHz with an E6300.
Or if there is the headroom in the FSB, 300 x 10 = 3.0 GHz with an E6300 and ddr400 at the stock 200 (400). This Conroe overclocking database (HardForum) suggests these speeds are likely comfortably reasonable for the CPU.

5) Any other comments? (I'm staying in a micro ATX case, no gaming, lot of video editing, don't want to replace my pricey AGP AIW card) If I can get that kind of performance from a (currently - USD) $55 board and a $185 processor, and not have to buy new ram to boot, even if the setup is not ideal (fast ram and fastest FSB, etc) - I'll be happy.

Thanks,
Ed

if it were to be true, it would fall into "that's bloody fantastic!!!" category. i am doubtful though - all this unlocking business feels fishy somehow...

plus, check this out:

ASUS CPU Lock Free
The P5PE-VM offers the CPU Lock Free feature, which allows you to adjust CPU multiplier to 14x. The reduction of multiplier value provides more flexibility for increasing external FSB frequency to raise memory bus bandwidth. CPU Lock Free boosts overall system performance by making synchronous modification possible. Enjoy better performance at the same CPU operation speed and improve your system without pushing the CPU to the limit.

No overclocking on P5PE - confirmed

Built the P5PE with E6300 today. No adjustments for overclocking at all. No ability to get to 14x on the conroe. If you use DDR400 (PC3200) then the E6300 comes up stock at 1.86 GHz.

To investigate some of the other claims of people being exasperated with an underclocked CPU, indeed when I installed DDR333 or DDR266 (PC2700 & PC2100 respectively) I did get a CPU speed of 1.4 GHz.

So, more specifically: no FSB adjustment, no 'CPU Lock Free' feature with this Conroe, no voltage adjustments of any sort. The only thing that you can do is manually adjust the ram timings.

Everything else about the board, I happen to like.

To get to 300 FSB that the ASRock might do represents only a 12% overclock. I personally think I'll hang with this gigabit capable board (I have other PCI cards to fill the available slots) and casually investigate other boards using ddr2 that have good overclocking capability. I'll just have to get a different AIW card.

nosliw, good info, thanks

to bad there's no fsb adjustment. have you tried new bioses, m/b those would help a bit?

Yep, sportin' the latest which is 0901. Started with 0604. No FSB in either. ( I do like their update utility that runs in windows).

P5PE-VM + E4300 pin modding

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=498167

I think E4300 + pin mod may be the best combination for this board. I speculate that with pin mod (FSB200 to 266) E4300 may boot up to 2.4G automatically. any one tried this?

nope.

try it, let us know whether it works with this board.

I know that this has been dormant for a while, but just in case anyone is still interested, this mobo will work with the E4300 and E4400. While it has no FSB adjustments, it can be changed using ClockGen. In the linked thread several guys have hit close to and including 300 FSB. A pin mod to the cpu can give you add'l voltage, if needed, for the higher clocks.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=111035

They look like they might be fun just to play around with, so I picked up a refurb from mWave last week (about $45 shipped...new are $70 at ZZF) and first chance I get I'll post some results. My plans are to pick up an E4500 when they come out in the 3rd quarter. With a multi of 11 and a chance at 300 FSB the resulting 3.3GHz on a C2D should provide some new highs for some of those old AGP cards that I have lying around.

that would be pretty sweet if that works.

Which part "if it works"?

ClockGen to raise the FSB? For sure works.

Pin mods (for FSB and for CPU voltage)? For sure work.

Using old collection of AGP cards? No reason for them not to work...can't wait to try out a C2D with a volt modded Ti4200 that I picked up a while back in the Classies...bound to eliminate any hint of CPU bottleneck, wouldn't you think?

My refurb board arrived (along with a new ASRock 4CoreDual) and I'm going to play with it some, using a Cedar Mill 641 (800 FSB) to see if I can get things figured out (especially the memory ratios available with an 800 FSB CPU), then later I'll drop in either an E4400 or E4500, whichever one is the highest multi that the BIOS will support. At the moment, it is the E4400.

I have an E6420 that could be used, but with only an 8 multi it doesn't really make alot of sense, other than to verify that the C2D will in fact work but, given that they are on Asus's list of supported CPUs, I have no reason to believe that it won't.

running 300 fsb stable without pci/agp lock; that could be tricky.

nosliw said:

Built the P5PE with E6300 today. No adjustments for overclocking at all. No ability to get to 14x on the conroe. If you use DDR400 (PC3200) then the E6300 comes up stock at 1.86 GHz.

To investigate some of the other claims of people being exasperated with an underclocked CPU, indeed when I installed DDR333 or DDR266 (PC2700 & PC2100 respectively) I did get a CPU speed of 1.4 GHz.

So, more specifically: no FSB adjustment, no 'CPU Lock Free' feature with this Conroe, no voltage adjustments of any sort. The only thing that you can do is manually adjust the ram timings.

Click to expand...

Bad! -VM motherboards won't let you OC in the BIOS!
Stay away from any Asus motherboard that ends with "-VM"!

mcoleg said:

running 300 fsb stable without pci/agp lock; that could be tricky.

Click to expand...

A valid point and one that is not addressed in the manual (or at least I couldn't find it), however, based on the following, I'm thinking that the PCI/AGP is locked by default.

1) The board supports 1066 FSB C2D processors with a 266 FSB by default. This means that if unlocked the PCI slots frequencies would be 266/6 or 44 and the AGP = 88 (PCI x 2). Both of these frequencies are outside the range that would be considered optimal for a stable system. This motherboard, by the way, requires the use of an AGP card (disable onboard) when running a C2D processor with a 266MHz default clock.

2) Several guys have run 280 - 300 in that linked XS thread...supporting my "theory" that the frequency is locked...at least with a C2D. In other words...it has been done (higher FSB), therefore this must not be an issue and the only logical conclusion would be a locked frequency.

Would appreciate your (and others) thoughts on this topic as it is a very valid question that has been raised.

I guess an email to Asus might also shed some light.

to be honest, i don't know what to say... the lock is either there or not, not a whole lot can be done about it.

not impossible to run with higher pci frequency though. the only problem i can foresee is the hard drives corrupting while running too far out of pci specs. a 66/33 add-on sata card should solve that though.

speaking of cheap cpus to stick in a cheaper board, have you seen this one:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=143549

i won't mind having one of these just to play with

But does the logic make sense...wouldn't you think that the PCI / AGP lock would be there in order for the board to support the 1066 C2Ds? I just don't see any other logical conclusion.

In any event, I'm going to put together a build with it this weekend if all goes well and I'll post back as soon as I can.

I tried to follow your link but it appears that XS is down at the moment. Is this, by chance, the Fry's deal for an E4300 and mobo combo for around $160? Saw that earlier today.

no, not the deal. it's a new cpu (well, new as in just released). 200 fsb, 1.6-1.8GHz, 1MB cache... suppose to cost well under $100 when released here.

i know it's suppose to have the lock, your logic is sound. on the other hand, you've been overclocking for a long time now so you should know - when it comes to motherboards, not everything is very straight-cut and logical .

You must mean the E2160 at 1.8GHZ (9x200) and the E2140 at 1.6GHz (8 x 200), with pricing at $84 and $74, respectively.

Saw this article not too long ago and these cpus are mentioned towards the end.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6484

These are definately going to be interesting to play with...won't work for me on this project because of the low multis...looking for the 11, or at the very least the 10 in order to get the cpu clocks to where I want them.

BTW, XS is back so I'll go follow your link now.

Read the thread that you linked...120% overclock on a sub $100 cpu is pretty cool.

I think that there is going to be one of those Intel Pentium E chips in my future plans...

There is also supposed to be a single core, Conroe architecture type Celeron available in the not too distant future.

Read about it here:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/conroe-l-preview.html