Biostar TForce 550

funnyperson1 said:

Mind you even my SpeedFan temps might be low, I had a Rev1 mobo before this (rmaed when NIC died) and temps with that were around 50-55C load at 2.9ghz.

boostm3 (I just understood your username, heh) the CPU will heat up with overclocking whether you change the voltage or not. Although generally temperature increases from voltage changes are more significant, and it is more important to have lower temps when voltage is changed. BTW, what kind of cooling do you have?

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I know Im going to get criticized, cause its not a big name cooler.. As we all know, the 3600+/biostar Tforce 550 newegg combo comes with no cooling. So I bought a couple of HSFs that looked like some of the AMD ones that have come stock on their retail cpus, and which were not expensive. Before I tell you what Im using, keep in mind that, when I went through my Hifi phase, I was Very prone to buying all those parts were money is so deeply spent for gains that are very debatable.. Im talking mainly about things like $500 signal conditioners, $200 power cables, and $100 speaker cables and interconnects... So I have to keep close tabs on myself when it comes to buying technical stuff where marketing tends to goose people like me into Way overbuying.

I consider the HSF to be one of those things. Some of them go out of their way to look like V8 engines, or automotive intercoolers, etc, etc. And, they charge accordingly. One such minor comodity is the thermal grease. Even though the HSF Im leading up to comes with its own little injector full of white thermal paste, I went out and bought from compusa a $12 injector of Arctic Silver 5 because the newegg reviews and hype on it are so strong.. But my friend who very skeptical of marketing claims told me there's absolutely No reason not to use the white stuff that came with the HSF, and to return the Arctic Silver.. To prove his point, he directed me to a couple of comparo reviews, and sure enough, the Arctic Silver either performed the same as, or underperformed many of the others.

So, what HSF am I using? I bought two.. the first is:
http://masscool.com/masscool/Product.aspx?ID=202

and the second is:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16835103012

The first, ie, the one by masscool has a nickel plated copper mating surface, and, the cooling fins are much thinner. So, the one we installed was the Masscool. As I write this, Ive been checking out my cpu temps as measured by the biostar T-Utility Fan control, and theyre right at 27-28 degrees. And thats with the fan spinning at only 60%, which is where it stays when i have 'auto' checked.. IF I bump it up near its max, my idle temp comes down a few degrees to right around 24-25 degrees.. So, while not expensive, I think the HSF isnt totally useless. The other one, the Cooler Master RR-KEE-L8E1-GP is still in its box, and Ill probably send it back to newegg for a partial credit or something. Or, maybe Ill just keep it as a spare. I know alot of guys are going to probably tell me to rip my masscool HSF right out of there and replace it with a fancy, multi-piped affair, and Id be tempted to comply, except for the fact that this fan seems to be working. One other reason I went with the unit I did was Size. Going into this build, I was a bit paranoid about the closeness between the cpu socket and the first Ram slot that I had read alot about on the newegg reviews... Folks were saying that unless we use a small-ish fan, we'll render the first ram slot useless. Well, the masscool leaves enough room so that Im not giving up any ram slots. Also, with a Thermal Resistance value of 31, Ive seen alot worse (higher). There are also many with lower resistances.. Take the very popular "ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro 92mm". Has a thermal resistance of only 18. Yet, when you read the newegg customer reviews, you find comments like this: "This thing keeps the brisbane COOL. X2 3600 never creeps above 35C" Since no mention of OC is made, I have to assume this is running at stock frequency. Well, the highest Ive ever seen my masscool go is 34 degrees.. Once. When under load. Heres another with the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 pro: "ASUS software reports AMD 4800 CPU at 34C idle, not OC'ed, while the mobo is at 45C)." Again, that compares to my 27C at idle. So, I know there are better coolers than what I have.. But from the comparative reviews, my current temps Im achieving with my masscool dont look all that bad at all. I dont know what will happen when I oc. And, if there were another reasonably priced HSF that Id be sure would fit my setup without impinging on a ram slot, that produced consistantly cooler temps than what Ive got, Id certainly consider it.. With a current idle of 27 degrees, though, Im not at all sure Ill need it.

So, thats the story. btw, I also have a tool called PC Wizard 2007, which has a nice feature of, when you minimze it, it shows the pc's various temps in the upper right hand corner in real time. For some reason, the cpu temp there seems to fluctuate very little, while the cpu temp reported by the T-Utility fan control fluctuates fairly frequently. Ill probably get the 'speedfan' utility youve mentioned, as well as the other main oc support bm and stresser utilities before I begin. Im anxious to hear how horrible my current HSF is, or the Cooler Master one still in the box. It would be nice if I didnt have to change the one Im using.. But Im pretty sure that folks who spent alot more are going to say that what I have is completely inadequate to support ocing.. Whether its true or not, its almost impossible for folks to admit that, after spending all the bucks they did, something significantly less expensive would fill the bill, whether its true or not.. still, Im open to different opinions.

Keep in mind that everybody's temperature sensors are calibrated differently and I wouldn't judge temperatures for comparison purposes unless they are on the exact same motherboard with the exact same ambient temperatures. CoreTemp does give consistent temperatures (but doesn't work with Brisbanes yet), but only when ambient temps are similar.

Also thermal resistances and fan noise levels from the manufacturers are usually not comparable either since they all don't use the same testing methodology.

I certainly wouldn't tell you to throw the Masscool away and buy something else, because you have already invested $30+ in cooling, and theres no reason to throw even more money at it before you even know if this will be sufficient. My only criticism of your choice is that for the price of both of those heatsinks you could have gotten one of the better heatpipe based ones. However, now that you already have the Masscool, it should be sufficient for taking the Brisbane to the 2.8ghz range.

I also disagree with your friend about the AS5 not being better than the white stuff. It has been proven many times to be superior, but it certainly been overhyped to the point where people think its essential to a good overclock when it only improves temperatures 2-5C. Can you link me to the reviews where it underperforms the white stuff, because I have yet to see any. Now for one machine it does seem like using the stuff that came with the heatsink offers much better value for money. But considering that a single $6 tube of AS5 (its much cheaper online) will last you years and multiple machines so in the end its not a bad investment.

Now I certainly don't believe in buying $60 heatsinks because honestly it offers diminishing returns for the most part. Buying a $60 heatsink for a $100 CPU simply doesn't make sense to me. Now for people here who are overclocking $300 CPUs, it makes a bit more sense to get the best cooling possible. In the end your temperatures are only 5-10C better than a $20 heatsink anyways. Overall it isn't going to make a big difference to your overclocking. Spending an extra $40 for 100mhz doesn't appeal to me.

The heatsink I am using now replaced the stock heatsink in my old Socket 939 system and I saw temperature drops of 5-10C easily. This only netted me 50mhz extra, and with obscene amounts of voltages anyways.

I would certainly see how far your chip can go with the current cooler before you think about upgrading. It could be that you are very satisfied with the speeds you reach. Next time you purchase a heatsink though I would read reviews of it from a site that compares heatsinks using the same platform in a controlled environment. Newegg reviews are generally useless.

The heatsink rankings here are excellent:
http://overclockers.com/articles373/

i also like to go for "cheaper" heatsinks. Generally, the more expensive ones will let you OC farther, but sometimes the added cost isn't worth the small bump you can gain. 200mhz for $5 might be worth it, but 200mhz for an extra $40 might not. I like to keep my hsf prices below $30.

>>I would certainly see how far your chip can go with the current cooler before you think about upgrading. It could be that you are very satisfied with the speeds you reach. Next time you purchase a heatsink though I would read reviews of it from a site that compares heatsinks using the same platform in a controlled environment. Newegg reviews are generally useless.<<

Again, great advice.. When I get some numbers, then we'll have a better idea of what's what.. First I have to download my support software and bm stuff. Then Ill get to ocing (he says with teeth clenched..'

As I get ready to overclock in a few days now, Im getting my support programs lined up and becoming familiar. First was Speedfan.. Can you tell me why the 'core' reading listed by the configuration window as chip 'amd k8' reads just 16 degrees C while my CPU temp, called gets reported as 28? I assume its the 28 degree reading Im to use and keep an eye on? Also, I get an 'acpi' reading of 32. What is that? (that is, the Chip is called acpi, but the temp is listed just as 'temp 1'.

Did you need the socket adaptor for the ultra-90 or did the clip work with just the center hole?

For some reason AMD has changed the calibration of Core sensor on these 65nm chips and hasn't told anyone what exactly the calibration constant is. None of the tools previously used to read Core temps work with Brisbane.

ACPI also reports the CpU temps, the temperature you want to monitor in Speedfan is the one that corroborates with the Biostar utility. They should be within 1C of each other. For me Temp3 was my CPU temp in Speedfan.

Shroomer, the Ultra 90 clipped on fine to the center lugs. It is on there fairly securely, I wouldn't worry about getting an adapter.

funnyperson1 said:

For some reason AMD has changed the calibration of Core sensor on these 65nm chips and hasn't told anyone what exactly the calibration constant is. None of the tools previously used to read Core temps work with Brisbane.

ACPI also reports the CpU temps, the temperature you want to monitor in Speedfan is the one that corroborates with the Biostar utility. They should be within 1C of each other. For me Temp3 was my CPU temp in Speedfan.

Shroomer, the Ultra 90 clipped on fine to the center lugs. It is on there fairly securely, I wouldn't worry about getting an adapter.

Click to expand...

Hysterical Personage_1... So I might just as well uncheck the temperature responsible for showing the core temp of 15 degrees (i should be so lucky!) on the 'readings' page I guess. Im able to discern the true cpu temp and case temp from the biostar utility like you said and from PC Wizard.. And verify the HD temp from PC Wizard. Which, so far, makes the Speedfan kind of redundant. I can set cpu fan speed/warnings in the biostar utility, plus read the gpu temp which is not available in the others. Maybe Ill find other uses for it. Well, off to download more support programs... Do you get the sense that Im trying to procrastinate starting the actual OC? Hmmmm... wish there werent so many undocumented parms to set, or not, in the tforce bios. Ive printed out all your notes, but aside from that, and a few notes IVe picked up from others along the way, its kind of like sink or swim. I guess we always have the ability to restore the former settings, so its not as bad as all that, provided we dont fry the cpu, and I havent read of a whole lot of that happening thank goodness. I wish there were a way to read, or even set, the bios parameters from a windows application. I was wondering how somebody in another forum was able to include bios screenshots in his thread.. ITs probably easy, but to me, it seems like a catch 22. You cant access the bios parms unless youre booting up, and 'delete' into the bios. Once there, I dont see how you would make a screen capture since theres no application software running at the time.. just you and the bios utility during the boot.

I believe you said that you have used the Biostar bios Flash utility without problem, although in general, you recommended the Winflash utility instead from Phoenix/award .. but what about the Biostar T Overclock utility, where you can make bios changes to key OC settings right in Windows, using this utility.. Have you ever tried that ?

Yea if you don't mind using the Biostar utility then Speedfan is redundant. I just don't like the Biostar utility, mostly because its just ugly I guess.

Honestly all you really need as far as software is a temperature monitoring program, orthos, and maybe some benchmarking programs like SuperPi, 3DMark, and SiSoft Sandra to see how much performance you are gaining.

I found the Biostar overclock utility to be worthless, if you started it while already overclocked it freezes the machine.

They pretty much had to take a picture of it, there is no other way. It probably looks like a screenshot because it was cropped well.

Got a question about the Phoenix Winflash utility. There are some checkboxes on the left side of the screen which you need to check, or clear, for the following options:

Update Option
BootBlock
DMI Area
Update All

Cmos Option
Clear Cmos
Load Cmos Default

Do we select the 'Update All' option? And do we select load 'Cmos Default'? Or, select 'Clear Cmos'?

Yea, update All should be the ticket.

Hey... good read so far funny.

I purchased the combo (though I had to RMA the motherboard, the second one is perfect).

I flashed the BIOS to the 207 off of the RH page successfully.

I last OC'ed (this is only my second system I've tried it on) on a Socket A Barton on an Abit NF7-S V2.0. Admittedly the overclocking seems much more difficult on this new Brisbane...

I've read many of the stickies but I don't really understand what each mean when I look at my BIOS. For instance, where are the memory divider settings in this BIOS (they don't seem to be labeled "dividers" at all)? I also don't understand why my RAM is being clocked higher than it should (and seems to cause it to not POST - maybe if I find the memory divider this will help?).

Just to make sure I'm using the same BIOS, here are a few pics of my main BIOS screen and the memory timing screen:

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=493829

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=493830


I was able to get my "CPU Frequency" to 300 with the volts around 1.375 and 3x/4x on the respective multipliers. It ran in Orthos for quite some time, so it seems stable.

I know my system can handle it... I've got a Thermalright Ultra-120 on this bad boy and my temps are approx. 20C when running at 1.35v. I just can't figure out where to go once I get 300 (HTT?).

Any help is much appreciated.

"memory clock value or limit" is your memory divider. Set it too 400 or 533 and test how high your cpu can go, then go up on that and mess with your timings.

Edit:

I believe that if you set it to 400, then you divide your clock freq by 10 and at 533 it is 7.

so... If you can get to 3ghz then it would be 3000/10 (at 400) = 300 x2 for ddr = 600. At 533 it's 3000/7 = 429 x2 = 859

How can you tell if it is a v1.3 board as I am going to order it online? TIA

More questions before I do the deed... re memory timings, Im confused about where they get set, as Ive found two places.. The first is in the section called, I believe, 'Memory Timings' found, I believe, under the 'DRAM Configuration' section, which has all the usual suspects including: tcl, trcd, trp, tras, cmd, trr, async lat, trc, twr, tref, as shown in cyklone_kr's pics above.. But I see many of the same timings again, available if we set 'DDRII Timing Item' also found in the ''DRAM Configuration" section to [Enabled]. If we do Enable that setting, we see: twr, trtp, trc, trcd, trrd, trp, tras. This is very confusing to me. It even looks like we can set some of the same parms with different values in each section! So, which is the section we should use to set the 5-5-5-15 values in? Ive seen some Rebles Haven's bios shots where 'Auto' was selected for Every timing option! So I have no idea how to handle this, and in which of the two sections. When in doubt, I tend to think Id get into the least trouble by selecting 'Auto'. But I know theres a limit to that, like you DONT want to select any of the Auto Overclock pre-settings, because they needlessly raise core voltage values not justified by the smallish cpu frequency increases, with a resulting STEEP rise in cpu temps.

Couple more questions. I read somewhere last night that if we use the Winflash utility, once we do the update within windows, and reboot, we need to go into the bios and select the 'Load Optimized Defaults' I think its called. When you guys used your windows flashers, did you have to perform this operation?

FunnyPerson.. when you say, "set K8-SB (HT divider) divider to 3X", are you speaking of the 'K8<->NB HT Speed' which can take a '3x' setting as shown in cyklone_kr's pics above?

And what is 'NPD FID' control, and how does it relate to 'CPU Frequency', and the 'K8<->NB HT Speed' ? I think once I get these understood, Im almost ready to start..

>>I've read many of the stickies but I don't really understand what each mean when I look at my BIOS. For instance, where are the memory divider settings in this BIOS (they don't seem to be labeled "dividers" at all)? I also don't understand why my RAM is being clocked higher than it should (and seems to cause it to not POST - maybe if I find the memory divider this will help?).<<

Yea.. its not easy to newcomers to this board.. Choice is good, but it can be daunting if your new to overclocking like me.. At least youve got some experience with it if not here, than on other boards/cpus, etc. As for your ram question, I see youve selected 'Memory Clock Valule' as DDR 800. Wouldnt you be better to slow it down by choosing, say, [DDR 533] or less even? BTW, youre also welcome to answer my memory timings question above, about why it seems there are two different places to enter the timings parms..

>>I was able to get my "CPU Frequency" to 300 with the volts around 1.375 and 3x/4x on the respective multipliers. It ran in Orthos for quite some time, so it seems stable.<<

So would CPU-Z report your new cpu speed as 2850? (300 x 9.5)? And what was the name of the bios parm you set for cpu voltage..Was it Hyper Transport Voltage? And, again, what did you use NPT FID control for. .You filled in [x6 1200mhz] ?

For you guys using winflash, do you select 'Clear Cmos, or 'Load Default cmos'?

Cyklone_KY,

>>I flashed the BIOS to the 207 off of the RH page successfully<<

Feel free to pm me the answer if folks dont think it would be of general intestest to the board, but could you give me a detailed description of the procedure you used to reflash your bios? Heres what Im nervous about. This is the first pc Ive owned without a floppy drive. In the past, ive always flashed from a bootable floppy, so that if anything went wrong, Id still be able to reflash with a floppy boot. I figured Id be able to accomplish the same by selecting CD rom as my first boot device, and then making a Bootable CD.. But that seems to be easier said than done. Gone are the days when i could simply command, 'Sys A:'! So, Im having a bit of a problem finding out how to make a bootable CD, and then putting the bootstrap on it. Another option would be to make my USB thumb drive bootable.. But Kingston, my thumb drive maker, doesnt support that option, and I havent found any more luck in making that bootable than the CD. Id really hate to resort to swapping the floppy drive from my old pc to my new.

If you flashed from either winflash or the biostar utility, can you describe that procedure? Did you have to go into the bios after you did the flash in windows and rebooted, and load up any 'optimized defaults' or anything else, to complete the flash?

thanks.

Cyclone, the multiplier that you set to 4x (NPT FID Multiplier) is actually the CPU multiplier in disguise. So you are probably running something like 1.1ghz at 300HTT. From there you can't go any higher with the HTT? You memory is probably holding you back if you are still running the 800 divider. Try setting your timings to 5-5-5-15-20 and the memory divider to 400 while finding your max HTT overclock. That way you can eliminate the ram as a bottleneck.

apvm, you would have to call the seller and ask them to look. It's written on the board, I'm not sure how to tell from serial numbers and such. If you order from newegg you should get a 1.3 or 1.5 version though.

boost, leave DDRII timing option disabled. Use the memory timings page to change the timings.

Loading optimized defaults (or you can just press F9 while at the bios screen) is a good idea after any bios flash, but usually taken care of by the flasher itself (or clearing the CMOS if the flasher didn't do the job).

Yea thats the divider I meant, otherwise you would be overclocking the HT speed, which is of little to no benefit.

NPT FID Control is the CPU multiplier so if you set it to 4X and CPU frequency is 300 HTT, then your CPU speed is 4*300 = 1200Mhz. I keep this at auto, the only benefit of this adjustment for us is to see how high our board can go with regards to HTT. For CPU overclocking, auto is the best setting. Also behavior seems to be erratic when trying to run these even multipliers with a half multi chip.

Yes overclocking A64s is quite a bit more complicated the overclocking AXPs or any other chip for that matter, mostly because of the integrated memory controller, not so much because of any specific board or chipset.

boost, for making a bootable usb flash drive, there are two ways. Either the long way:
http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php
(You can do this on your old machine)

Or the easy way using this HP utility:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/download/23839.html

The HP utility worked fine for me.

Thanks for the replies!

The highest I've gone is 2.6ghz but again that's kinda dumb luck. I didn't really understand what each setting meant when compared to the overclocking guides I've read.

I'm not sure my memory is holding me back, but rather I'm not pushing enough juice to the chip. I didn't actually use the settings in the screenshots, I just wanted to take them off Auto (I just reset the CMOS because it didn't POST), I think I was able to get it to 462mhz (which is 924mhz I think?). In CPU-Z it showed the rating was 400mhz (this was with timings at 5-5-5-12) by CPU/5. I was clocked somewhere around 2.3ghz.

Flashing the BIOS was easy, in the BIOS that I have there is a flasher utility built in... I just put the .rh file from the zip onto a floppy, went into the BIOS, selected the flasher utility, and hit OK. It took about a minute and worked. I've never seen a BIOS flasher built into the BIOS menu before, and I was impressed with its ease of use.

Will mess with the BIOS some more in a little bit

On another note, since you don't have a floppy drive installed... it may be easier to just plug it in for this flash.

Just connect the cable and power, you don't even have to mount it. Compared to doing something you aren't used to (CD or USB), it may assure you don't run into a BIOS Fubar

As far as I can tell rated speeds for your ram are 5-5-5-12 at DDR2 800 with 2.0V. So anything above 400mhz would be overclocking your ram. If you were able to get to 2.6 without changing your memory divider, then that is really impressive (520mhz on your ram is excellent). If you are really trying to find the limit of your CPU then I would run a lower memory divider to rule out the ram as a limit.

The idea is to run the ram on the 400 divider, find the max of your CPU. Then once you do that bump up the ram divider to find the limit of your ram to define your overall total performance.

The inbuilt bios flasher is pretty cool, but it would be a lot more useful if it read USB flash drives.