Originally posted by: flawlssdistortn
Ballistyx, please keep us updated on your progress... Have you run prime95, 3Dmark, ect? Now could you go into further into detail about the HT bus not taking kindly to being overclocked? I am not overclocking anything, but whenever i open up the Nvidia system utility, it says the HT bus is at 1005MHz and i believe the memory is a bit above 200MHZ itself. You dont think that could be causing problems do you? And could you explain a little more about what you did - whats FSB?? I thought that the HT bus replaced that. So how could you tweak HT frequency and FSB?
OK... here goes.
The FSB I'm referring to really isn't the Front Side Bus speed, but the base CPU clock speed that the Hypertransport bus runs at (which is then multiplied by 5x for the HT link, and by your CPU's multiplier to give you the final CPU speed). You can find the setting under the M.I.T. Overclocking menu in the BIOS. If you go into the Chipset options, you can change the multiplier that the HT bus uses to multiply the base HT frequency by.
Basically, what I did was change the HT multiplier to 4x, and then set the HT frequency to 250Mhz. 250x4=1000. The only problem is that when you do this, you'll overclock the hell out of the CPU. Sooo.. you need to lower its multiplier. Thankfully, while you can't INCREASE the CPU multiplier, you *CAN* decrease it (unless you splurged on the FX-53 ). The multiplier on the 3800+ is 12x. Since I wanted a mild overclock on the CPU, setting it to a 10x multiplier would yield a final speed of 2500Mhz (or relatively close in my case). I bumped up the vcore to 1.65 to make sure it would be stable at this speed. I wasn't concerned about the extra heat this might generate, since I'm watercooling my system.
I don't remember exactly which message board I read about the HT link not liking speeds over 1Ghz, but apparently the poster of the message wasn't lying about it. I think the only reason I'm able to go a little over 1Ghz in speed (at least initially) is that I don't have stock cooling on the NF3 chip. I adapted a Swiftech MCX-159 heatsink to fit it. It's a tight fit next to the vid card, but it DOES fit.
Will this fix your issue? Hard to say for sure, but there's no harm in trying it really. Set your HT multiplier to 4X and see if it makes your system more stable. It's true that your HT link will only be running at 800Mhz, but if it's the only way to make it stable, it's a small tradeoff. Besides, you could then try to OC it and get as close to 1GHz as you can while keeping it stable.
I have run 3DMark, as well as Memtest86 v3.1. Both tests complete without any errors. At first 3DMark03 was dropping frames badly when I had the system set to a 255x4 HT link speed. After dropping it down, it seems to be a little better. I'm going to have to fool around with it over the course of the upcoming week to be certain though.
Here's what my system consists of, and what I have set in the BIOS. If there's anything you want to know, just ask.
Gigabyte K8NSNXP-939 Rev 1.0 - F3 BIOS
Athlon64 Socket 939 (obviously) 3800+
Enermax 550W PSU (outputs 36A on all power rails)
Corsair TwinX 2048-3200 memory kit
Geil 512MB PC3200 ValueRAM x 2
ATI 9800Pro 128MB
Two 72GB WD Raptor SATA HD's (attached to nvidia PHY. NOT set up in a RAID config)
Two 120GB WD SE PATA HD's (connected to the SilImage controller with PATA->SATA adapters). Configured as a RAID1 mirror.
Swiftech MCX-159R heatsink slightly modified to fit onto the NF3 chipset.
Swiftech MCW5000A waterblock, modified with Swiftech's A64 retrofit kit.
Swiftech MCW-50 VGA waterblock
Swiftech MCP-600a water pump
Dual Blackice Micro radiators
Custom fill n' bleed setup
Lite-On DVD-ROM drive (attached to primary PATA controller)
Plextor 8X DVD burner. (attached to secondary PATA controller)
Mitsumi double-speed USB FDD drive (I don't have an internal FDD drive, since I rarely use it).
Memory timings set to 11/4/4/3. The TwinX kit isn't exactly high speed memory.
Memory voltage set to 2.7v. I set it this high since I'm running four DIMMs, and I have a mild OC on them as well (almost 415Mhz DDR).
HT voltage set to +0.2
CPU VCore set to 1.65v
CPU Multiplier set to 10x
HT link multiplier set to 4x
Top Performance is TURNED OFF.
Serial and Parallel ports are disabled in the BIOS.
NVRAID is disabled in the BIOS.
NVNIC is disabled in the BIOS (I use the Marvell NIC instead).
Humm.. I think that's it. If theres anything else anybody wants to know, just ask.
-B