I am a noob again, need help.

[Yuriman]

Well, when it came to overclocking P4's and XP's, I knew my buisness, but I want to overclock an a64 now. I have an XPC with a 2800+, and I would like some help.

First, I tried 220x9(stock multi) with the ram locked at 200mhz. It wouldnt post. 210x9 was stable. Temperatures are fine. Now it gets complicated. I have an Nforce3 150 based board, which means no pci lock. Yet I can set the pci bus to whatever I want, in 1mhz increments. So does this mean this board does have pci lock? Also, about the HT bus. Will I have to lower it when I overclock, or is it fine? I can force 4x HT(800/1600mhz) but it performs worse than 3x. A little help please? I havnt felt like a noob in a long time....

 

[Gautam]

Yes, the board does have a PCI bus lock. As long as the HTT is set higher than spec in the BIOS, it kicks in. Do not force 3x. In fact, use 2.5x, or 2x if 2.5x is not available. Also, the memory is not locked at 200. This simply means that it will use the same CPU/mem divider as your HTT, which means it will run at the same speed as the HTT. Set the LDT multi down low, and set the memory low so that these won't get in the way, and try to overclock from there. Once you're satisfied with the CPU, work on increasing the memory.

 

[Yuriman]

Well, the ram can be set to 100/133/166/200. So at 200, its realy 220(when I overclock)? Also, I didnt know that nforce3 150's had pci lock, was it only some of them? I have 1.5x/2x/2.5x/3x/4x HT available, will setting it slower hurt system performance at all?

EDIT: If it doesnt have a pci lock, would having an SATA hard drive limit me?

 

[Gautam]

The memory settings are quite misleading. If you set it to 166, for example, it tries to roughly use a 5/4 HTT/mem divider, but no such thing exists, so if your CPU multiplier is at 9x, it'll use a CPU/11 mem divider. Changing the LDT multiplier barely hurts performance, but greatly helps stability. I'd leave it at 2x to begin with, and then maybe up it to 2.5x once you have a stable overclock established.

 

[Gautam]

btw, I just happened to write this five minutes ago, enjoy

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=306418

 

[Yuriman]

After inspecting my bios, I have noticed a few things. For one, where I had thought it was locking my ram it one speed(IE 200) it doesnt do that at all. It says "Max memory speed(100/133/166/200)" so I cannot go over 200mhz.

I have cpu voltage access from .8v-1.7v, multi's 4-9x, ram 2.7-2.9, chipset from 1.7-1.9 and LDT(ht bus?) 1.3-1.5. So, does raising the ram voltage raise it on the ram itself or the memory controller? Ive heard of A64's dieing from too much voltage on the controller. Chipset shouldnt need more voltage, because it isnt as important anymore, or does it mean the onboard memory controller? Also, does raising the LDT voltage help?

Btw I havnt read your guide yet, but I plan to read it as soon as I finish posting.

 

[Yuriman]

Ok, I read it. So what kind of HT clocks can I expect? Think I can pull 250 on my board, with mem set at 166? Will I need to raise voltage? Currently I cant go past 215. Setting the HT multi down and the ram to 166 allowed me to post at 220, but I couldnt get into windows.

 

[Yuriman]

Well, until I get the hang of this, stock speeds with 1.3v satisfies me.