First day with Opty 165

Hello,

complete system specs:

Abit AV8 3rdEye BIOS 26(latest)
Opteron 165 CCBWE
2 x 1Gb Corsair VS /w Samsung UCCC
Sapphire X800Pro ViVo(1.6 ns mem)@16 pipes@XT PE bios@550/510
Adaptec 2940AU
Enermax 550 watt Fan-Control
Hitachi 7K250 200Gb PATA
LG DVD

2 x Papst 84cfm 120mm case fans
Revoltec 3.5" fan controller
Boxed CPU cooler
Arctic Cooling ATI 4 rev2 gfx cooler

The upgrade is from 3400+(2.2 Ghz, 1Mb, s754) and MSI K8N neo platinum.

First off, I should say that I am running Windows X64. With only 5-6 hours of use, I would still recommend using another OS. The version I have is the released one but comes with loads of bugs as it seems.

What did I do? I played FEAR. I was told this supports dual/dual-core cpu's and it seems to be correct, the game reports my cpu as being "high" instead of "minumum" even though its clocked lower than my old one. Unfortunatley it makes no difference visually or game-wise in the game. The video card is what is holding it back so the added cpu power made no difference whatsoever. I can run everything maxed out at the "performance" tab(cpu settings) but it still looks the same.
Whats intresting is the CPU load; I checked the task manager and it sortof splits up the load between the cores evenly. It never goes up to 100% on any of them, more like 65-75% This shows off in CPU temperature aswell cause the CPU temp does hardly raise above idle at all while playing fear. It has a very high idle tho, with dual 84 cfm fans blasting thru the case its at about 40-43 degrees celcius.

I also tried to run Quake 4 and Half-Life 2, but I cant get them to run as of yet.

My overclock is very mild sofar, only 9x233 = 2097 Mhz, but its stable and good enuff for a slow burn-in. I tried doing 9x250 at the same settings, but X64 freaks out then and starts asking for passwords noone has.

The mobo seems fine, but Im guessing I wont get as nice results as some other people. How far do I dare raise the Vcore? I feel like Im all at very high numbers already just to get this 233 Mhz fsb stable. Im at 1.5v Vcore, 2.8v Vdimm and I also raised NB and HT voltage a couple of steps each. BTW what is HT voltage? I havent found a way to lock the memory either, or set it to a diveder without unlocking PCI, I need to look into this further.

The worst sofar is that my Alpha 8150 doesnt fit on the mobo. A few capacitors is too close.

I am sure u dhould be able to hit that speed at stock voltage, even my X2 can and opterons need much less voltage.

i'm surprised you need the vcore that high just to reach 2 GHz. Most 165's seem to get to 2.4 easy on stock voltage.

Okay, I tried 266 Mhz FSb, that resulted in the weirdest one yet. The screen became a mesh where you could read all text, but the rest was all jibberish. Didnt boot, couldnt enter bios. CMOS reset. Now running 240x9 = 2160 Mhz.

Maybe its the RAM holding me back sofar? Maybe Im not doing something right, but I cant find any option to run mem other than 1:1 against FSB. Sure they are UCCC's but still Im already running it at ddr480, alot more than its specified to.

EDIT: DOh, dumb me, found it. Put DRAm to ddr333, now running 9x250 = 2250 Mhz. Updates coming.

EDIT2: 9x266 = 2400 Mhz. DRAM = 218 Mhz

Ended up at 266x9 for now = 2400 Mhz. 1.45 Vcore, 1.60 NB, 1.25 HTT, 2.7 Vdimm. 218 Mhz DDR. No boot at 280 or 273 Mhz.

EDIT: well, nah, instant reboot when put under load. 250x9 that it what works

In FEAR my x800 xt pe comes up as high for vga.

Are you by any chance using the 3x LDT multiplier? Because it's buggy on that board. Use 2x instead. Also disable AGP fast write and disable AGP 3.0 calibration.

hmm okay, I will try that Doesnt disabling agp fast write have a negative effect on performance tho?

Awright! Now Im getting somewhere, thanx GML3G0!

LDT was set to x5.

Settings are now: No fastwrite, no calibration, x2 LDT, ddr333, 1.475v Vcore, 2.8v vDimm, 1.65v vNb, 1.30v vHTT, locked PCI/AGP.

290 x 9 = 2610 Mhz DDR 237 Mhz



300 wont boot and cant tell if this is 100% stable yet, but playing fear works fine anyway.

Also, you mentioned Half Life 2. I know Valve just released a 64bit version of the game across Steam. If you have the original, 64bit is free.