Dually Advice.

[Col_Loki]

Hey guys, have been thinkin about building a dual cpu system for a long time now and have been putting it off waiting for the operton to come down in price and have better overclocking results...... am tired of waiting and i think ill upgrade.

I have 2 systems at the min, and wont need many parts.
Have a 480w Antec True Power, Water cooling, case, hard disks, graphics card, sound card, screen, speakers.... etc.
I also have 2 x 2500+'s (unlocked) and a spare Xp1800+.

I guess what im wondering is ....

1) What is the best motherboard out there (Socket A)

2) What is the Max FSB (roughly, and is there a board that supports slightly higher than normal) - I know the MP's are 266mhz FSB so theres not really any need, just incase??

3) I know your suppose to use reg ram, will standard work?

I would strongly thing about getting another CPU cooler and keep my water cooling in the dually, mabye cool the graphics card that way aswell. Really dont want a loud system.

I use my PC alot, its always on when im home. Am sick of waiting while the pc is ripping a dvd and i very often stop it half way through to play a game... etc. I think a dual system would be very nice, any other advise is very welcome.

Cheers, Loki

 

[Xaotic]

Most of the information that you'd want is in the Stickys located above:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=221503

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=89236

The Iwill board is supposed to allow slightly higher FSBs(150 is normally the max on most boards, YMMV), but you'll be modding the multiplier anyway with the Bartons(333FSB) and I don't usually prefer running the PCI and AGP too far out of spec. Non Reg/ECC normally works in the first two slots.

 

[wquiles]

Col_Loki,

1) Higly recommend that you follow the sticky above and get the MSI K7D Master for your project. I just finished putting my own AMD dually and cmcquistion's guide is awesome.

2) On the K7D, max is 150Mhz (default is 100 or 133Mhz)

3) Yes, but only in the first two slots. I have two 512MB sticks of "regular" DDR memory (1GB total).

You will LOVE having a dually !!!

William
(who also came from a single CPU world - now with an AMD dually!)

 

[Col_Loki]

Yea i am thinkin the K7D is the one to go for alright. Good to know i can use my old ram with it (until i have the money to get more) . 150mhz is the max setting?? So around 140-150mhz should be achievable??
Have read the guide a while back, will print it out and go over it again.

One other thing im unclear about, does the K7D have voltage options in the BIOS or Jumpers or any?

Cheers Guys - Very helpfull

Loki

 

[aftermath]

voltage is setable by bios.

 

[David]

Yea i am thinkin the K7D is the one to go for alright. Good to know i can use my old ram with it (until i have the money to get more) . 150mhz is the max setting?? So around 140-150mhz should be achievable??
Have read the guide a while back, will print it out and go over it again.

One other thing im unclear about, does the K7D have voltage options in the BIOS or Jumpers or any?

Cheers Guys - Very helpfull

Loki

150MHz may not be achievable due to the lack of available dividers, the best being 1/4. This means that at 150MHz the PCI bus will be at 37.5MHz and the AGP bus at 75MHz. You will only hit 150MHz FSB if your PCI and AGP buses can handle the higher bus speeds.

 

[Col_Loki]

Yea thats risky teritory.

Read this from LostCircuits review of the K7D master and got the impression the PCI could be locked to 33mhz....

The K7D-L uses a standard Award BIOS but except for FSB options listing 133, 138, 140, 144 and 150 with the PCI bus showing up as ¼ of the FSB, there are no tweak options. Since the MPX chipset offers the option of locking the PCI bus at 33 MHz regardless of the FSB setting, the PCI frequency as a function of the FSB is somewhat surprising but with the limited range of overclocking options it is almost a negligible point.

(From ... http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/amd_mpx/7.shtml )
This would be pretty sweet to say the least.

Well anyway im set on the K7D master, will prob get it in a week or 2. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[David]

Yea thats risky teritory.

Read this from LostCircuits review of the K7D master and got the impression the PCI could be locked to 33mhz....



(From ... http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/amd_mpx/7.shtml )
This would be pretty sweet to say the least.

Well anyway im set on the K7D master, will prob get it in a week or 2. Thanks for the help guys.

Looks like the chipset has the option, but not the BIOS.

 

[Col_Loki]

Well ill see how it goes anyway, will lock down the PCI and prob take a chance on the AGP , will be upgrading that soon aswell.

 

[attack]

bah, 37.5 and 75mhz arn't anything bold. I've ran tons of components at much higher frequencys and they stood up fine. The only time i've had trouble is i did get OS corruption around 172fsb with a 1/4 divider (8k7a board). I ran my K7D at 150 without a hitch for over a year....i'e itnerchanged a lot of parts too.

 

[vscg13]

from my own adventures, you are going to have problems with to 2500+ bartons because of the 166fsb that it uses, the k7d, and other boards dont support this bus and the k7d is the only one that gets close to 166, which is 150. do what i did is using the pin mod found at oc-inside.de you change the multipler to i forgot what, and it runs at 2100mhz but it is a pain in the ***, also you have to unlock the L5 bridges, dont know when you said onlocked you ment this or the L1 because my chip has no need to unlock the L1 it comes unlocked. just some advice.

 

[errol]

Hi!

Col_Loki, from what I gathered, you can't lock down the PCI-bus with the K7D. It's like David said: the chipset has merely the option, only MSI did not implement it in the BIOS. Sure, no big deal, probably, but, anyway, just to put things straight...
In Hindsight, it looks like the NForce 2 is the only chipset offering a usable PCI-lock, so what for a short while might have locked, urh looked , a bit outdated, namely PCI and AGP frequency being a function of the FSB, is still pretty much the standard.