Upgrade Advice Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P

[Tyerker]

There's a 270x in the Classifieds right now for $75 USD. Even with shipping, should be well below your budget. It's too bad you just joined, but it does open up the possibility of a used GPU well within your price range. You might even be able to find a 280 in the 110 GBP ballpark, if you look hard enough.

 

[knoober]

Is there no option to overclock the cpu? Poor cooling limiting potential or something? I know the board you have has decent options for overclocking in the bios(its the bigger brother to mine and I looked at it for a minute or two) and I have one of those chips (but I haven't tried to overclock it ) and I know the multiplier goes up pretty far....

So unless theres some reason not to OC, I think I would spring for the gpu and OC the processor a bit. That might push the cpu upgrade back a little further.

One last thing: historically my advice has been bettered by.... just about everyone here

 

[EarthDog]

One last thing: historically my advice has been bettered by.... just about everyone here

But you keep on posting...!

Being serious, that is solid advice to overclock...

 

[ATMINSIDE]

With a budget this low, finding used parts will maximize your upgrade potential

 

[Zoue]

yes, I'm considering that, thanks. One of the reasons I plumped for this board. Haven't done it before but happy to face the challenge!

 

[knoober]

When you push your processor up a few hundred mhz you know it was worth it. Then you wonder how much more you can get and the obsession begins! Muahahahaha!

Seriously though, you'll be impressed I think. Good luck

 

[Dlaw]

I'm loving these random bots around here. Losers need a life...

Back to the subject, yea, I could comfortably push my old 220 to 3.3GHz (where using the 1066 memory multiplier caught up with 1333MHz, the 220s have upward-locked CPU multipliers, so overclocking has to be done with the base clock) on the stock cooler with near-stock voltage on a sub-par motherboard. They sing beautifully.

 

[Zoue]

it's good that you mention coolers. Would I need to get an after market cooler before I overclock or will the standard work OK with this chip?

 

[EarthDog]

You will get some overclock out of it with the stock cooler. I would try, and if it realyl handcuffs you, then look into an aftermarket cooler.

 

[Zoue]

OK, thanks. Just having a little battle first with my replacement memory which arrived from Crucial this morning. 2x4GB DDR3 PC3-12800: It's causing the system to crash repeatedly and I've no idea why

I've taken out the old RAM, so I'm not mixing anything. I always use a wristband to avoid ESD. I've put the RAM in slots 1 & 3 as per the mobo instructions. I've checked the BIOS and it's running correctly at 1.5V. Sometimes it boots, sometimes it doesn't even get that far. After booting, it will randomly freeze irrespective of what's running. No rhyme or reason. I've updated the BIOS as I got a message indicating that could be an issue, and have checked Crucial's site to confirm that the memory is indeed compatible with the motherboard. Who knew new RAM could be such a pain? Grrr!

edit: an error message in Event Viewer which seems related appears as follows:

The platform firmware has corrupted memory across the previous system power transition. Please check for updated firmware for your system

But I've updated the BIOS and the sytem still crashed again

 

[EarthDog]

Did you reset the bios to stock values and then put the sticks in?

 

[Zoue]

I haven't actually changed anything on the BIOS (well, apart from updating it) because the settings looked OK. I haven't in fact changed any BIOS settings since I initially installed the motherboard around a week ago, so everything should be stock anyway?

 

[EarthDog]

Understood. Please try resetting the CMOS and see if that helps.

 

[Zoue]

Appreciate your time on this, thanks. I just reset the BIOS anyway and am in the process of running Memtest just in case I've been sent dodgy RAM. Once that's finished I will reset the CMOS as you suggest

 

[EarthDog]

You already did... right?

I just reset the BIOS anyway

....

I will reset the CMOS as you suggest

Same thing.

 

[Zoue]

well, the BIOS is recommended to reset to defaults within the software, whereas the CMOS reset requires resetting jumpers. Thought perhaps this did something more extreme?

 

[EarthDog]

Same difference friend.

 

[Zoue]

Learn something new every day! In that case I will put my screwdriver back in its toolbox and just play with the software. Memtest has been running for 21 minutes now and is at 75%. So far no errors reported.

Any thoughts on why it doesn't appear to like this RAM?

 

[EarthDog]

Random incompatibility? It happens. Is your bios flashed to the latest version?

 

[Tyerker]

IF the "restore to default values" BIOS option doesn't work, however, removing the CMOS battery and/or jumper will be more of a hard rest.

Also, the Athlon x2 doesn't produce all that much heat. You should be able to get 3GHz on stock, I would think.