A64 101

[Gautam]

I thought I said that?

 

[Catalan]

Originally posted by Guatam
I've got tons to update. If this guide is actually helping anyone, I may bother. But it doesn't look like it.

Anyways, I can't recommend mobiles anymore. They're just too iffy. A desktop CG Newcastle is sort of replacing it in my mind as the best choice, a good thing too because these are the easiest to find.

As far as motherboards go, I'd personally rank the Abit KV8 Pro, Epox 8KDA3+/8KDAJ, and Gigabyte K8NS Pro at the top. These are the three smoothest boards ATM. The MSI seems to be having voltage regulation issues and things of the sort. Note that the MSI is still the only choice for mobiles.

You could have posted it later I didn't look

 

[SuperDuper28]

Good stuff

 

[Hellion]

Ahem, i went from Intel know it all, to studying amd, now i know...BWAHAHAHA i master both now...no really, sweet. very in detail, ty.

 

[kurisu]

How's the K8N-E? I haven't heard anything about it.

Riddle me this and I'll tell you. Hint: 2.7v cap.

 

[Gautam]

This is all you need, my friend.

2.7v is the norm. I didn't do too badly with just 2.7v even with my BH5. I got low 220's, and that satisfied me. The above should slaughter that, though.

 

[Banyan]

jesus... i was just about to pick up a nf3 250 to start piecing together an a64 build and i caught this thread. i think i'll wait, let prices fall and try and let this info soak in. i had no idea how complicated a64's are (or seem) to oc.

 

[Gautam]

Well, there's an effort that backfired...

They're not really much more complicated than any other proc, once you understand what you're doing, which is the case with every other type of proc.

 

[Hellion]

exept, when over clocking a intel, its all FSB, VOLTAGE, and COOLING. were as with amd's its like for different things, PLUS voltage, and Memory, also cooling, its a lot more complicated COMPAIRED to an intel.

 

[Gautam]

exept, when over clocking a intel, its all FSB, VOLTAGE, and COOLING. were as with amd's its like for different things, PLUS voltage, and Memory, also cooling, its a lot more complicated COMPAIRED to an intel.

With Intel, you have FSB/memory dividers, with AMD, you have CPU/memory dividers. It's not a big difference once you get a hang of things.

 

[Lord_of_Decay]

Great info here. New to AMD 64's myself and in the process of building system 1 in my sig, just waiting for the processor to arrive.

 

[Super Nade]

Gautam,
Could you please update the 101 with answers to the Noob Q's I sent as a pm?
In case you missed them here goes:-

I can't find the LTD Multiplier on my BIOS (A8V). I asked my buddy with an ABit AV8 and he couldn't either. Could you please add these Q's to your 101? (I looked at my A8V and formulated these Q's)

1.Where do you see or in what form do you see the LTD multiplier in the BIOS?
2.Difference between the CPU Multiplier and LTD Multiplier?
3. Do you really need lower values of HTT frequency?
4. Difference between HTT Frequency {1000MHz on the A8V} and FSB (max of 300MHz on the A8V)? I thought AMD's didn't have an FSB.

The BIOS options does list a Hypertransport Frequency and an FSB. Very confusing.

Thanks a lot!

 

[Hellion]

i back that post up. Good questions. ^^^

 

[d]g[ts]

1.Where do you see or in what form do you see the LTD multiplier in the BIOS?
2.Difference between the CPU Multiplier and LTD Multiplier?
3. Do you really need lower values of HTT frequency?
4. Difference between HTT Frequency {1000MHz on the A8V} and FSB (max of 300MHz on the A8V)? I thought AMD's didn't have an FSB.

1:On those boards (AV8 A8V) LDT multi appears as HTT frequency. 1000=5x, 800=4x, 600=3x and so on.
2: CPU multiplier is multi to attain CPU speed I.E. CPUmulti X HTT= CPU speed in MHZ. LDT multi is used to attain speed of hypertransport bus. (speed between CPU and Chipset)
3:Yes , because there is a limit on how fast the hypertransport bus can run. and as HTT is raised, you start to surpass this limit, which causes instability from overloading the bus. to avoid this you drop the LDT multiplier.
4: HTT frequency on your board is LDT multiplier. thats just the way your bios is set up. And FSB on your board is the same thing as HTTspeed only worded differently. truthfully there isnt a FSB, because A64 uses the Hypertransport bus to communicate with chipset. It's termed that way to make things simpler for people to understand how to overclock it. ( apparently they dont think one can understand such new things. which you can if companies dont mess you up like this)


Hope I did not confuse you any more. D]g[ts

 

[Super Nade]

Thanks a lot d]g[ts for the answer (and Hellion for the backing ).

Cleared the confusion once and for all.

I guess I now know why my $5 56k modem is acting crazy and disconnecting at random. I did suspect it was due to OC'ing. Now I can play with the LTD and see if the situation improves.

 

[hitechjb1]

This link summarizes the relationship and settings between the various A64 frequencies of CPU, AGP, FSB (HTT), memory bus, hypertransport (HT) bus and CPU multiplier, memory to FSB ratio, memory divider.

Overclocking setting for various bus frequencies

 

[Super Nade]

Yep hitechjb1, I looked at your excellent sticky and have referenced it in my A8V specific thread. I have a suggestion:- Is it possible to make a sticky tree with sub stickys because then, it would be easier to navigate through your massive sticky (no criticism intended, awesome job! ).

 

[Papsomax]

Thanks dude for this threadie! It will allow me to better fine tune my current A64_3K and my new A64_3.2K.

paps

 

[amdking]

nVidia nForce3 150- Slightly lower in performance compared to the VIA’s, supports a max effective HyperTransport rate of 600MHz, but sports AGP and PCI locks in most boards, a huge plus. For the boards that don't have PCI locks, some SFF boards, PCI dividers up to HTT/9 are available, so even these shouldn't have trouble overclocking.

I am despiratly trying to get the PCI lock to engage on my Shuttle SN85G4 V2
it uses Nforce3 150 chipset and manually setting FSB to 201 or higher in BIOS doesnt engage it and higher then 66mhz AGP doesnt appear too either =(
any ideas?

oh and ClockGen is showing me in both cases the PCI still changes if I try to adjust HTT inside windows... so I assume its not locked.

Thanks

 

[Gautam]

From looking at your sig, it didn't seem to stop you much.

Yes, yours is one of those boards that doesn't have locked PCI/AGP. But like I said, it does have a wide range of dividers, so it shouldn't hinder you. If you must keep in spec, any multiples of 33 will work perfectly.