A8N-SLI official overclock thread

[oompadroonka]

I been reading thru a lot of post on overclocking on this mobo. I just wanted to put it all in a neat thread.

I request GuitarDaddy and other active forum overclockers to help me out here, it would be greatly appreciated.

In this thread i want to have the tried ways of overclocking in this board. Also the equipment used, i want to turn it into a newbie come to place to check on how to overclocked. This thread should include what parts give you the mroe bang for your buck in overclocking and the steps on how to.

Thanks and let the thread begin.

 

[Plasmah7]

I will be posting my data here saturday as I am buying the last piece of my system.

My new system specs:

Athlon 3000+ Cpu
Asus A8N-Sli Delux
2x256 Kingston Value DDR 3200
Maxtor 160 gig Ultra Series IDE drive
Antec 480 watt True Blue PS (20 Pin)
Geforce 6600 GT 128 meg (Manufacture not known as thats what I'm buying =) )
Lite-On Dual Layer Dvd Burner

As long as all my parts are good I should have my build info up saturday night sometime.
Wish me LUCK! =)

Talk to you all later...

 

[Plasmah7]

ok...

Got her up tonight!

I have her overclocked to 2430 mhz at 1.52 v 61c under prime95 load
270x9 HTTx3 memlocked at 333 default volts.

will give more info later =)

 

[zakee00]

61C is quite high for a load temp..your mobo is probably exagerating though.

 

[Plasmah7]

I figured it was =)

Its staying steady at 61c

I'm using Asus probe is that acurate?

Well I checked sysoft temp readings against Asus probe:

Asus probe reports 61c
Sysoft Sandra reports 49c thats strange.

Anyhow thesystem is running very good I'm very happy with the 2430 overclock!
The only problem I had in the beginning was that I did not heed the warnings of the post about not installing those damn Nvidia Harddrive drivers. I actually had to install windows a second time and not install them. The first time I was having stability problems and my virus scan would not intall. After not using the HD drivers all is perfect. I'm using the latest beta bios version 1004.

 

[discworld]

I managed to get 260X9=2340MHz with my Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe without adding more volts to the CPU or RAM
If I tried to raise the FPS more then my system crashed (BSOD and boot up errors).

I have PC3200 memory so I had to but the memory to DDR266 (2:3). But when overclocked to 250 X 9 then I used the DDR 333 (5:6) and memory ran @ 208 MHz without problems (used default volts).

Only thing that I cant figure out is what toes this HTT means? I have this set to auto in bios. Could anyone explain me what that Hyper Transports Frequency setting means or toes?


The strangest thing is that the temps are exactly the same as they where before the overclocke. It?s between 30 and 43C.

 

[Big Bunny]

I have been working hard on overclocking my system, but my results have not been as good as some others have posted. Here's my current info.

Hardware
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Memory: 2X 512 MB Crucial Ballistix PC3200, in slots 1 & 3/dual channel
Power Supply: Antec TrueBlue480 480W, 20 pin connector direct to MB
Graphics Card: 1X eVGA 6600 GT 128 MB RAM
Hard Drive: 1X Samsung SP1231C 120 MB SATA, on SATA port 3
CPU HSF: Zalman CNPS7700-Cu, controlled by SpeedFan
GPU HSF: Zalman VF700-AlCu, hard connected to 5V (silent mode)
Chipset HS: Zalman ZM-NB47J
Case: Coolermaster CM Stacker
Case Fans: 1X 120mm front, 1X 120mm rear, 1X 80mm side, 1X 80mm top

BIOS Settings
DRAM:
Max Memclock=DDR333
1T
Tcl=2.0
Trcd=2
Tras=8
Trp=2
All others=Auto
Hypertransport Frequency: 4X
Jumper Free:
CPU Frequency=240 MHz
PCIX Clock=100 MHz
DDR Voltage=2.90 V
CPU Multiplier=9.0X
CPU Voltage=1.525 V
PCI Clock Sync=33.33 Hz

GPU Overclock Settings: 559 MHz Core/1.18 GHz Memory

Software & Drivers
Windows XP Pro SP2
nForce4 6.39 (no firewall or NAM)
GeForce 75.90

Results
Core Clock Speed=2160 MHz
Memory Frequency=196 MHz
CPU Temp=32 C idle/41 C load
Chipset Temp=30 C idle/41 C load
GPU Temp=32 C idle/45 C load (haven't checked this much when gaming tho)
Prime95 & memtest86 stable
Benchmarks=still need to run some, been playing HL2 ;-)

After some fits & starts, I went through Zebo's quick & dirty A64 overclock procedure this week. I found my max HTT to be 340 MHz, max chip speed to be 300 MHz, and max memory frequency at 2-2-2-8 to be 215 MHz. I wanted to keep low latency settings on my RAM, so I was hoping that would mean I would be able to run at DDR333 with HTT at 250 and a 4X multiplier or DDR266 with HTT at 285 and a 3X multiplier. Both settings ran OK through memtest86 and Prime95, but FRIGGIN HALF-LIFE 2 would always give me a BSOD. I had to back down to 240 MHz and install the ethernet driver from the MB CD to get this to stop happening. Other games (UT2004/EQII) ran fine, just HL2 that was the fly in the ointment.

So, you can see I am not getting anywhere near the numbers others have posted. Great idea for this topic, I would love to see how others have gone about tweaking their rigs and what they ended up with!

 

[Framelord]

Hi!

My results are in the sig!Very happy with it so far!But when I get XP90 will do more!

 

[akugami]

Plasmah7, try lowering the cpu voltage a bit. I initially had set my voltage to 1.5v but wasn't able to get much higher than my current speeds. I then started testing with lowering the cpu voltage until I hit a stable overclock. Currently stable with 1.4375 on my cpu. Lower voltage will help cool down your cpu even more. Asusprobe reads it as 46C under load, this was read after about 27 hours of Prime95. But it's winter here and about 40F outside the last few days. When I had the cpu voltage at 1.5v my load times were 54C after about 23 hours of Prime95.

For my memory, I opted for tighter timings rather than higher mhz since both seem to perform about the same in terms of performance gained. I can probably get better performance out of the ram by a bit but with the tricky way that Asus handles overclocking the memory it's all I can get out of it at CAS2 and 1T timings. I have the divider at 266, the next step up 333 doesn't boot into Windows. Maybe if Asus comes out with a 300 divider it'd help in overclocking memory. With the way memory is overclocked on these A64's it'd make sense to have smaller incremental increases in memory (maybe by 33mhz) than the official JEDEC ratings.

I have run EQ2 on it and it runs just fine. I haven't installed HL2 and do have a completely new and unopened HL2 waiting for my new system but haven't found the time recently to sit down and play it.

HTT = Hypertransport bus which is sorta like the FSB of traditional mobos. It's also used for chip to chip connection (dual or more processer mobos) along with the chip to I/O like a traditional FSB does. The HTT bus is also DDR which is why you will see mobo makers all list the boards as 2000mhz. On Newegg they list this as the FSB. I have this a 1140mhz which is 285x4. On older AMD mobo's it was set at 800mhz but newer boards like the nForce4 based boards have it at 1000mhz. I think the upper limits is having it set to 1200mhz after which it will start getting buggy. From what I've read there is minimal differences between having it at 800mhz and 1000mhz. A single core processor probably doesn't max out the bus yet. I believe Intel's highest FSB is a figure achieved after quad pumping so the physical speed of the bus is 266.

 

[Big Bunny]

I am kinda disappointed they haven't enabled a 3:4 divider also, it would work out really well for my hardware. Hopefully in the future they will add it in...