[dillinja]

hey, i'm pretty new to this so have a little patience. i dont really want to go crazy with overclocking, i just wanna get as much mhz as possible with stock parts. right now it is running at 1.5 ghz, i dunno if there is room for more? if so how do i go about doing this? im pretty familiar with bios, its just how to adjust the settings and whatnot im not too familiar with.
im running an athlon xp 2600+ (the one with the L2 cache of 512KB) also 512mb of ddram and an asus A7v8x-x motherboard. thanks in advance.


-kyle

[Maximouse]

Welcome to the Forums!

If you are using a 2600+ Barton and you say your Cpu speed is 1.5 Ghz then I would say you are underclocking your chip a wee bit.

A 2500+ has a stock speed of 1.8 Ghz so yours should be rated a bit higher. The mutiplier for a 2500+ is 11 and the Fsb is 166, so I guess yours should be 11.5 multi x 166 fsb stock.

If you have your manual for the board handy then take a look at chapter 2, page 15. That will explain how to make the adjustments to your multiplier/fsb.

Once you get it to run at stock speed, then you can experiment by raising the fsb a bit at a time, but watch your temeratures

You might want to get yourself a better heatsink as I found the stock one to be a little lousy, but you should be able to get a half decent overclock with the stock one.

Good luck
Al

[The Coolest]

Your CPU's default speed is 1913MHz (11.5 x 166). You are running it at 1.53GHz (11.5 x 133) this is like already has been said underclocking. If you have DDR333 (PC2700) or higher rated memory I suggest (if it's running async with the FSB) turning it back to 1:1 FSB:memory ratio and setting up the FSB to 166 at least to get to stock speed first.
When you do that you can start overclocking. You can either use the multiplier or FSB to change the CPU speed. As you only have a KT400 chipset I doubt you will get much higher FSB than 190ish even with good RAM, so you might want to involve a multiplier action when you reach the FSB limit.
go to google and do a search for Prime95. start upping your FSB, then playing a game to see if its stable. When you start crashing in games, lower the FSB about 2-3MHz and run Prime95 on torture mode, you should be able to run at least 12 hours to consider your OC at least somewhat stable. For me 24 hours of Prime95 define a stable overclock. You should keep your eyes on them temps, at full load under prime make sure they don't go much if any over 50C. I would say 53C is the highest you should go. If you see you're braking that mark, try removing your side cover, and consider a better heatsink. I'd recommend ThermalRight SK-7 for a cheap but very good heatsink, and you can select any fan to ur desire, if you don't care about noise much get a Delta/Tornado for best performance, or the Thermaltake smartfan 2 for adjustable but still an awesome fan.
If your temps are much lower than 50C and your OC is not stable you could up the CPU core voltage some, 1.7-1.75 is pretty safe if you have low temps, this will add stability and increase your CPU's headroom for overclocking, although as far as I know an ASUS board doesn't allow over 1.85v I would just want to note that I don't suggest setting it any higher anyway with these chips.
I hope this helps you.
One more thing when you overclock you might have to choose between higher FSB or higher multiplier, although almost always a higher FSB (with even a bit lower CPU speed) will get you better performance in games and applications as it increases memory bandwith, so make sure you get the best FSB:CPU speed ratio for best performance.

[Hoot]

The stock heatsink that comes with the retail 2600 can be improved upon for the cost of a sheet of 400 grit wet-or-dry paper and some Arctic Silver TIM grease.

Before I sold mine, I removed the four screws that hold the copper heat spreader plate to the aluminum radiating portion. The fit and finish between the two mating surfaces left a lot to be desired. So, I cleaned off the TIM compound that ships with the heatsink, lapped those two surfaces to a smooth, albeit not mirror finish, applied some Arctic Silver and screwed them back together. Then, I lapped the other side of the copper heat spreader since it is easier to lap when it is mounted. Again, just to a smooth, flat as possible finish. It bought almost a 6C reduction in temperature from the way it came from AMD. That is a good improvement and worth the effort if you don't want to buy another heatsink.

The whole effort took about an hour and it was time well spent. With adequate case ventilation and assuming you don't live in the tropics, with that heatsink and the appropriate other hardware, you should be able to run that PR2600 as a PR3200 at stock core voltage. 11x200 @ 1.65Vcore is easily attainable.

Hoot

[Maximouse]

Originally posted by Hoot
you should be able to run that PR2600 as a PR3200 at stock core voltage. 11x200 @ 1.65Vcore is easily attainable.

Careful now, the guys new at this. He is using an A78V8X-X motherboard which is a Kt400 chipset. Might give him a big problem if He tries for 11x200.

Al

[dillinja]

hey, thanks for the replys!!!!

ive gotten it up to 1.9ghz using 11.5x - 166/33 and setting my mem freq. to 333. (highest it goes)

my temp is runnin at at 53 deg. C, is that bad or what? just as a precaution im taking off my case housing untill reply. thanks again

[Maximouse]

53 isnt bad, I would begin to worry if it hit around 60.

Al