A7N8X (rev2) AGP Frequency setting

[blazer99]

For Overclocking, should this be set at auto or 66 or ...?

cheers

 

[DOHCrazy]

66

 

[hangten]

Doesn't make a difference unless you want to overclock your video card and pci bus as well. I set mine at 72 and it increases my bench scores by a good 500 point on 3DMark2003.

 

[blazer99]

O/C the video card ... yes
O/C the PCI bus ... not that I'm aware of? Do I want to?

I'm having some issues with 3dmark2001. It crashes far too often. Sometimes just crashes to the desktop ... other times just freezes mid-test. It never used to do this. Bizzare. I have tried it at auto & 66, but it doesn't seem to make a diff.

cheers

 

[hangten]

Try different positons on the ram.
Try timings 11-2-2- CL2 in that order from top to bottom with a FSB of 210+

Depending on your temps my Barton 2600+ 0341 runs unstable with 1.7 on the vcore but at 1.8 its rock solid its on a shuddle board but just to point out it might need more vcore. Temps are 45C on full load with sandra2004 looping its stress test and then some Gaming like hit and run ect but if you don't game then don't be to concern. Just use prime and pie fast to test out your stability as i also find overclocked video cards stress the machines stablility when gaming and it was not anything to do with the processor for crashing the machine.

Well on other things that may surprise you but running high vdimm 2.9-3.1 should get those last mhz out of your ram but you would need to do the vdimm mod.

Cooling your chipset may help as well
Powerful power supply
list just goes on and on but back the AGP/PCI just set it to 66 and be done with that.

 

[blazer99]

k ... agp will be back to 66.

you suggest timings that are "tighter" than what I already have aren't you? If my 2-2-3-6 timings might be causing any instability, wouldn't 2-2-2-11 be worse? I haven't messed with the timings yet at all, but I would have thought trying something like 2-2-3-11 or 2-2-3-11 or ... would've been the place to start?

This computer "feels" completely stable ... At my current 10x200 vcore @ 1.725 (so I could try some higher setting here, although I'm worried about additional heat), vdimm @ 2.8 (thats the highest vdimm this bios will go). 0-Errors in memtest (ran 5-passes only), Ive run Sandra tests and successfully completed burn-ins (using the sandra wizard) ... its just 3dmark2001 has all of a sudden created crashes.

2-days ago at these same settings, it ran just fine (even with my vid card o/c'd). 2-days ago I had it up to 11x200 (with a touch more vcore) and it passed memtest no errors, passed burn-in, stress tests...but again caused 3dmark to crash! weird and puzzling.

Cheers

 

[mfjonny]

The whole point of having AGP/PCI lock is to avoid having to alter those settings - meaning changing the settings from 66/33 to anything else leads to vid/HD/PCI corruption.

So yes, leave it on AUTO or 66 and don't set it to anything else. (Hangten, i'd recommend ditching the measly 500 pt gain and setting yours back to 66 as well. OCing your vid card has nothing to do with changing AGP bus speed and you should stick with upping IQ/mem speed of the vid card alone).

About your 3dmark crashing, have you tried running Prime95? Its a very good proggy to test stability and I would highly recommend it... If you are having problems with Prime and 3dmark, then I would venture to say that your rig is not quite stable and requires a tad more tweaking (or part adjusting).

Here's a link...

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

 

[blazer99]

It seems this cpu needs voltage. At a mere 10x200, I now have the vcore at 1.775v and the ddr at 2.8v (locked agp at 66...thanx for the good advice!).

Ran memtest for 5-passes with zero errors. Burned with Sandra burn wizard...passed it ... ran some sandra benchmarks...so all stable there! Ran 3dmark at my vid card's o/c settings, and voila...it made it through! I ran it a few times to be sure and all is well. Tomorrow I'll try for higher/faster, tho I may need to raise the vcore to 1.8v. Voltage seems to make this processor more stable. However I must add, I did back my timings off to 2-2-3-11. But I believe I reached stability with voltage and not the timings (wishful thinking on my part?). I'm dying to try 2-2-2-11 (but scared).

Although 3dmark is used for benching the video card, it is notorious for being heavily cpu dependant (and a major reason it gets a bad rap as a video card benchmark). It is my belief that if an o/c'd cpu is unstable, it may cause 3dmark to crash. That's just my humble (and somewhat uneducated) opinion. I don't benchmark with 3dmark (comparing the numbers are fun tho), I use it as another kind of torture-test.

Wish I had a cpu like yours mfjonny. 2200 mhz with only 1.65v...wow! At 1.775 Vcore and stock cooling (with AS-5) I'm ok so far ... idle temps (using MBM5) are 46c (socket) and 43c (diode) ... following the burn-n the temps had risen to 54c (socket) and 56c (diode). High but not outragious.

I started this whole upgrade, feeling like a "tweaker" ... I'm not sure if I like it, but I'm beginning to feel like an "overclocker"!

Cheers

 

[hangten]

The whole point of having AGP/PCI lock is to avoid having to alter those settings - meaning changing the settings from 66/33 to anything else leads to vid/HD/PCI corruption.

So yes, leave it on AUTO or 66 and don't set it to anything else. (Hangten, i'd recommend ditching the measly 500 pt gain and setting yours back to 66 as well. OCing your vid card has nothing to do with changing AGP bus speed and you should stick with upping IQ/mem speed of the vid card alone).

About your 3dmark crashing, have you tried running Prime95? Its a very good proggy to test stability and I would highly recommend it... If you are having problems with Prime and 3dmark, then I would venture to say that your rig is not quite stable and requires a tad more tweaking (or part adjusting).

Here's a link...

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

My Radeon 9700pro is overclocked using the Omega Drivers set at 366/317 and stable but whats the wrong in running higher agp/pci? Back in the day of KT266 chipset I was always told that running the bus faster than 133FSB would overclock everything and that goes for the video card as well.I'm aware that even a divider did not exist on the MSI board i was running back then. I sure loved unlocking my pally and running it with a mad overclock of 100mhz or over (1533mhz to 1686mz) not bad for a chip that was called an XP Athlon. Remember standing in line on the first day Fry's Electronics sold them.

I'm running RAID as well but no file corruption even when going as high as 78 but my harddrives(Seagates 80gig SATA) benches increase as well.Just always room to learn from people. I can also run past 220fsb but at a CL of 2.5 (corsair pc3500 512) but figure tighter is better. My vdimm is modded as well as vcore and vdd on my rev2.0. Just pointing out what i have and my own set up and not to say this is concrete but each his own and if you like it and it works great.

This can help others understand the BIOS and alot moreIF YOU ENJOY LEARNING my fragile little mind is melting

Heres my overclock with a 1800+ or the 2100+ from awhile ago so i don't know which it was. And this chip is currently still running just fine. I sold most of my stuff (have built 5 of A7N8X Deluxe) have only the rev2.0 left. Sorry but my ego may have been hurt on the idea i didn't know what i was doing.

 

[7keys]

Overclockers have been running the PCI and AGP out of spec for years, you had to if you wanted to overclock. You just don’t want it too out of spec where it will cause you trouble.

 

[blazer99]

for now, at least, I'll keep my agp freq. locked at 66.

cheers

 

[blazer99]

See my edited sig below ...
System stress tested and stable

Temps are a bit high, but still quite ok ... according to MBM5...
Diode - idle @ 43 ... load @ 57
Socket - idle @ 47 ... load @ 55

Thanx to all ... tonight or tomorrow I'll be trying 11x200 with a little more vcore (1.8v) ... gonna be watching my temps closely, but I gotta tell ya, this amd hsf works ok (just ok!).

 

[mfjonny]

My Radeon 9700pro is overclocked using the Omega Drivers set at 366/317 and stable but whats the wrong in running higher agp/pci? Back in the day of KT266 chipset I was always told that running the bus faster than 133FSB would overclock everything and that goes for the video card as well.I'm aware that even a divider did not exist on the MSI board i was running back then. I sure loved unlocking my pally and running it with a mad overclock of 100mhz or over (1533mhz to 1686mz) not bad for a chip that was called an XP Athlon. Remember standing in line on the first day Fry's Electronics sold them.

I'm running RAID as well but no file corruption even when going as high as 78 but my harddrives(Seagates 80gig SATA) benches increase as well.Just always room to learn from people. I can also run past 220fsb but at a CL of 2.5 (corsair pc3500 512) but figure tighter is better. My vdimm is modded as well as vcore and vdd on my rev2.0. Just pointing out what i have and my own set up and not to say this is concrete but each his own and if you like it and it works great.

This can help others understand the BIOS and alot moreIF YOU ENJOY LEARNING my fragile little mind is melting

I applaud your accomplishments and I'm glad your knowledge overflows with successful application... But the point remains that upping AGP/PCI buses introduces the RISK of frying the AGP card, hard-drive corruption, and problems with other PCI bus peripherals.

I am glad that you've never experienced these problems on your own system, but the danger remains for others and when giving advice to others, you should be careful and explain completely.

Before the current system in my sig, I was on a via kt400 which only had a 1/5 divider. OCing that system was always limited by the danger of getting system corruption from AGP/PCI push... It was one of the main reasons for moving to a nforce2 board.

Thanx for the links to BIOS settings but I couldn't understand what that was for.

 

[ThePCGuy]

On a nForce 2 based motherboard there is no need to run the AGP/PCI frequency out of spec. Simply leave the Frequency at 66Mhz for AGP.

- ThePCGuy

 

[Hell-Fire -XS-]

You wont get much performance increases when running higher pci/agp clocks than standard...not to mention you better like reinstalling your OS alot if ya run em outta spec often.

Lock that puppy at 66 and be done with it. Only time to run em outta spec is when 500pts on 3DMark would get you into first place...then its worth it. There are far to many things that can be done to get the best performance before you start worrying about overclocking the agp freq.