ASUS A7V333 - Athlon XP 1800+

[vatoDETH]

ASUS A7V333 - Athlon XP 1800+ - A Few Quick Questions

I have had my PC for a little over 2 years now. I spent some pretty good cash to buy a killer system at the time. It is now time to overclock.

The system is a good quality system. My friend selected the components for future overclocking and he worked at the computer store.

I bought a CPU (Computer Power User magazine) dedicated to modding, so I understand quite a bit. I am figuring this out, but I need a little bit of help. I have an engineering background, so I am technically proficient.

First off, I will list my hardware:

Motherboard: ASUS A7V333

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (Thoroughbred or Palomino? I dunno)

Graphics Card: nVidia Geforce FX 5600 Ultra (upgraded from the Radeon 8500)

RAM: 1 x 512MB PC 2700 (333MHz)

CPU Fan: Global Win. I dunno what model number.

Case Fans: Four case fans in a Lian-Li case, cranked to High! Good circulation?

Power Supply: Enermax, I think a 350 watt? Maybe only 300 watts though? With a UPS to prevent power surges and brownouts.

Sound Card: Audigy

BIOS: Fully updated to the latest version 1018.


Second I will list what I have done:

1.) I pushed the FSB to 142 until it crashed booting into Windows XP.

2.) I progressively pushed the multiplier as high as possible to 12.5 to get a total of 1775MHz.

3.) I nudged the CPU Voltage up to 1.775 volts from 1.75 volts.


Third, using ASUS PC Probe (monitoring utility), I observed the following:

1.) CPU temp is no higher than 52 degrees celsius, which is pretty safe?

2.) Motherboard is 35 degrees celsius.

3.) Fan RPM is 5800... does this even matter?... lol

4.) Voltage. Confusing to me... but I will write what I see:

13.376v +12 volts
5.08v +5 volts
3.392 +3 volts
1.84 vCore​

Questions:

1.) Even thought I calculate the new clock speed to be 142*12.5=1775MHz, it is only showing a clock speed of 1.63 GHz in my System Properties. Why? Is the CPU clocked at 1.63 GHZ, or 1775MHZ? Is this just some kind of glitch in the report?

2.) Why is my multiplier maxed out at 12.5? Is this a limitation of the BIOS? Or can I unlock the motherboard or CPU? I remember buying some conductive paint stuff, that I was told I need to unlock my motherboard. I think that the new BIOS unlocked my motherboard though? What do I need to do, to push this unit into the stratosphere?

3.) Why is my vCore reported at 1.84v when I have only nudged it up to 1.775 volts in the BIOS?

4.) How do I tell if have an Athlon Palomino or Thoroughbred? Can I tell with the stock vCore of 1.75 volts?

5.) What are all of the voltage readings? I know that vCore is to the CPU, but what about the others?

6.) How fast should I be able to get the FSB? 142 is not that high, is it? I have an ethernet card and the Audigy on the PCI bus. I have heard that Creative soundcards are bad for their FSB, is this true?

7.) I am considering getting a watercooling unit. Any suggestions? I know that getting a faster CPU would be better, but I can use the water cooler with a faster CPU at any time.

I don't want to spend a lot, otherwise I'll just get a Barton. I want to push this chip for now and then grab something faster when the faster cheaps are even less expensive.

After overclocking my CPU, I want to overclock my graphics card and max out my RAM. The articles and guides are in my CPU PC Modder magazine. I have the basics of what I need to do with the latency and so forth, but I will probably have a few more questions. If you have any suggestions, or comments I would much appreciate them.

Thank You for your assistance!

 

[vatoDETH]

Can anyone answer a question or two for me please?

I know my post is long, but I would like some answers and assistance please. Thank you.

 

[Lance Thornton]

A7V333 ideas

Hi,

(I did miss it reading it the first time, sorry), but do you have the latest bios from Asus for the motherboard? I would suggest getting that first. Secondly, I had a barton 2500+ in my wifes' computer running the same mb with no problems. Third, The Palomino core was square, the Thoroughbred were rectangular and Barton (512 level 2 cache) are extremely rectangular. You can get a Barton core from tcwo.com for $82.00 + tax and shipping. If you have any problems or more questions you can pm me and I'll try to answer them.

 

[Lance Thornton]

Also, welcome to the forums!

 

[vatoDETH]

Thanks Lance!

Thank you for replying Lance! I was wondering if I would get any answers.

I am running the latest BIOS. I also just purchased an Athlon 2500+ Barton for $56US on E-Bay!

I was trying to get my multipler to go higher than 12.5 for my Athlon 1800 XP. It is not available in the BIOS. Also I want to know why my Clock Speed is being reported as 1.63 GHz when it should be 12.5*142=1775 MHz.

When I get my new Barton chip I want to OC it hard... do I need to unlock the motherboard or chip???

Also my current CPU is a Palomino. I can tell because it is 1.75 volts. The Thoroughbred is 1.50 volts. As shown in this chart:

http://tech-report.com/cpu/

It's a good chart to have, so that you can tell how your CPU compares to another AMD Processor's stock clock when you overclock.

 

[Cheator]

1. That is no glitch. Your cpu is most likely a pal meaning it is most likely locked at a multi of 11.5. If you multiply 11.5 by 142 (your FSB) you get 1633. I think thts whats happening. Meaning the only way you can get further is unlocking the pal or FSB which means you gota balance your ram:fsb ratio. I can't remember if that is possible in my A7v333 but I don't think it is.

2. As I remember it 12.5 is the max my bios will do on my a7v333 but then again I haven't rebooted in a while (its a server ). Uh..check the manual.

3. This is either a crappy sensor or a crappy Power supply. Or you have your overvoltage jumper set. I would recomend checking the manual about the overvolage jumper. if it is set, set it to the default quick cause that pal won't like 2.0 volts running though it.

4. As mentioend before the core looks square if pal and rectangular if t-bred. I could tell by cpu-z (download at www.cpuid.com ). IT told me that I was running an 1800+ t-bred.

5. I think the 5v one is the one that provies power to the mobo (I am a newb at those things) 3.3v is the fans and 12v is your 12 volt rai for hard drives and crap. I could and probably am very wrong but I like to sound smart

6. remember that your FSB also directly dictates the speed of oyur ram. If your ram cannot go that fas, isn't well cooled, or sucks to the max, you cannot bring the FSB that high. If your ram speed to FSB ratio is 1:1, then currently your ram is running at 284 mhz (double the FSB since it is DDR). That is close to the 333 mhz that it can run at but obviously not there. IF you can, increase the voltage to the memory by 1 step to see if it can go al ittle farther. But technically your FSB can go up to 166 mhz without too much trouble.

7. In my opinion water cooling is nice but too expensive right now. If you get an SLK-900a with a 92mm tornado (like I do) you can actually somewhat compete with water colled systems. I run an athlon mobile 2600+ (or CAN run) at around 3000 mhz. sometimes more depending on the day. Water cooled systems can usually bring this chip up to about 3500 mhz at a max. So its not bad. And the sound can be controlled though I don;t care about sound. I'm no wuss

To get it father I would recomend at least getting a better CPU. That motherboad isn't very good for overclocking but DAMN is it stable. I use it as a server board and I never have problems and I run a windows server. which is incredible.

Welcome to the boards and forgive my spelling. I hope this helped.

 

[vatoDETH]

I installed my new Barton 2500 XP+ and overclocked it. It appears to be doing the same thing. In Windows XP it does not report the calculated CPU speed that I should be getting from the BIOS settings. It is not allowing the multiplier to go past 11 (11 * 166 = 1.83 GHz). I was able to get the FSB up to 187, but it was unstable...

Also when I did crank the multiplier, it appeared that the PC was blazingly fast. I personally think it is just an error in Windows XP reporting. I am going to run some benchmarking programs from Mad Onion or something to see if there is a difference in score.

I also have some Samsung RAM. It is most likely normal quality and nothing too high.

The power supply is Enermax, which is supposed to be good. Maybe it is just the sensor? I have not had any problems which I can trace back to this in the last 27 months of owning this. The voltage is off for the new Barton CPU also.

Maybe I will get a different Motherboard some day. What is a good Motherboard from Asus? The A78N-E Deluxe (I think that is it's name?)? Good ot hear that this board is stable, as I plan on using the new system for gaming and this one for productivity eventually.

Thank you for your help Cheator, I was beginning to think that these forums were not going to be too helpful for me.

 

[Lance Thornton]

As it turns out, I just purchased an A7N8X-E deluxe board from a local store and it rocks! No stability problems, other than losing my XP home cd and having to revert to 2000. I am running an Athlon XP 2500+ 1.83 gHz and 1024 mB of Crucial in dual channel with absolutely no problems. The board is a good one with both firewire and usb2.0 as well as soundstorm and 2 onboard lan. Again, good luck.

Lance

 

[vatoDETH]

That's supersweet Lance!!!

Now you can be my techie and let me know all of the secrets on every board I buy! LOL! I bought ASUS, because I had heard they are the best. I will continue to do so!

Congrats on getting my dream board!

 

[Cheator]

NP vato. Aer you using CPUz to check the multiplier and stuff?

 

[MastarPete]

*cough* http://www.cpuid.com *cough*

once you get that, try setting every multiplier in the bios, then use cpuz to confirm the multiplier is what you set it.
if you can set any multiplier you want, then you've got an unlocked cpu.
if you can only set lower than stock multis then it's partially locked and you'll have to compensate with more fsb.
if I had found this thread sooner I would have recommended you get a mobile barton, less heat, lower voltages, higher overclock, and they come unlocked.

but you'd still be limited by that board.
I know that for sure, cause I was able to post my pally at 200fsb with my current board. unfortunately, the unlock failed when I tried another burn-in session , so I wasn't able to test if windows was stable. and I haven't been able to re-unlock it yet (silver got in the pits when I cleaned it )

btw, I have/had an A7V333 rev 1.01 until about a month ago. I was never able to push the fsb very high. I think that board just can't handle high fsb/cpu speeds. (check the asus cpu compatability chart )
when I unlocked my cpu back in feb. the highest fsb I was able to post at was ~193 with the memory in async 5:4 and the multi was at 5x.
I think I may have even tried windows but it wasn't stable. so I ended up at like 9x183 and on cool days I was able to set 186.
anything past 1650mhz and heat becomes a problem very fast (for me at least). I was able to get into windows at like 1700mhz once, but it locked up while loading my desktop.


just keep in mind that there is no PCI/AGP lock on the A7V33, so you'll be overclocking your PCI/AGP bus if you increase the FSB past a certain point.
if you have a few of PCI cards installed, chances are one of them won't like the higher speed. my hardware modem would lock up if I tried to dial when the fsb was in the 180s.

good luck.

 

[vatoDETH]

Thanks Master Pete!

Yes, I know that the Mobile MP CPU's are topdpg, but I got my Barton 2500+ for $56 (new on Ebay). The Barton 2500 is a good CPU to OC still and I do have wallet limitations. So bang-for-the-buck I took this immediately!

Are there more multipliers in the BIOs, than the FSB and Multiplier to adjust? I changed both.

Nonetheless, I am reporting a speed of 2 GHz and calculating a speed of 2.1 GHz. I still need to run my benchmarks, but I am getting okay increases with speed, which is satisfactory at the moment.

 

[MastarPete]

it's mastArpete.. learn how to read!!! hehe j/k

ok, I wasn't sure if you knew about the mobiles.

the only adjustment that affects clock speed is in the bios. multi and fsb.
though your memory timings could have an effect good or bad.

post your final results/settings, cause I'm curious what I might be able with the board if I ever decide to make another system using it.

 

[JimmyG]

Here is just a minor correction to an answer above about voltages:

The 5V leg provides power to the mobo and partially to some drives.
The 3.3V leg provides power to the mobo and CPU
The 12V leg provides power to drives and fans

 

[Bigdogbmx]

I thought the CPU is on the 12v nowadays.

 

[JimmyG]

All CPU power is provided by the 3.3 leg with some from the 5V leg. If you think about it logically, CPUs run at about 1.5 to 2 volts. If you stepped down 12 Volts to that level, you would have to have a super efficient switching power supply in order to not waste alot of power in the form of heat.

 

[MastarPete]

so what is that extra square 12v connector on P4, and now some Athlon/A64 motherboards used for?

if it's not for powering the cpu.. is it just to give the board an extra source of 12v?

 

[JimmyG]

I don't know what it is used for. But, Hoot may know. Try PM'ing Hoot.