How best to O/C an FX-55 / A8N-SLI

[codeus]

Hi,

This is my first post here and I am fairly new to overclocking. I have just upgraded my PC and would really appreciate any suggestions on how to get the most out of it!

Hardware Spec is as follows: -
VapoChill XEII
Asus A8N-SLI (Bios 1003-005 Beta)
AMD FX-55
2 x XFX6800GT 256MB PCI-Ex Graphics Cards (SLI Mode On)
4 x Corsair Twin-X PC3200PRO (2-2-2-5) 512MB Chips (2Gb Total)

Bios Settings: -
Max MemClock - DDR333
1T/2T - 2T
CAS# Latency (Tcl) - 2.0
RAS# to CAS# Delay (Trcd) - 2
Min RAS# Active time (Tras) - 5
Row Precharge Time (Trp) - 2
Master ECC Enable - Disabled
HyperTransport Frequency - 3X
CPU Frequency - 232Mhz ( = 3016Mhz )
PCI Express Clock - 100Mhz (33Mhz Locked)
DDR Voltage - 2.8v
CPU Multiplier - 13X
CPU Voltage - 1.575v

So far this overclock seems stable but could I go much further?

I took a screeny of the settings and performance so far in case it helps: -
Screenshot1

Any comments or advice on what I am doing right or wrong and how to improve on these (amateur) settings would be great.

Thanks!

Codeus

 

[drpootums]

cool, good job

 

[drpootums]

oh wait, i just saw that ur running the memory at 2T, that'll slow it down a lot. Put it to 1T to speed it up.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

1T will not work with 4 sticks of ram. You must keep it at 2T

Over 3ghz is a monster overclock! Since you are running vapochill, you may be able to get more I don't know. If not at 3ghz you are running faster than 99.9% of the world. I'm very jealous

 

[zakee00]

you can surely get it faster. i would try and get the ram running faster, i mean, it is corsair. 186MHz is a shame you shouldnt need a devider until like 250MHz, im pretty sure the ram could handle it. might have to relax the timings a bit though.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Keep going; heat shouldn't be an issue and your ram should have plenty of room. Bump it til' it fails then give it some more voltage

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Yeah, Zakee00 is correct! That ram should be able to run 232mhz no prob.

Loosen up your timings. or just set to auto and up the volts to 2.85. My OCZ is running 233mhz 2.85v and auto timings gives me 2-3-3-5 (2-2-2-5 if I boot stock). If auto timing doesn't work, start with 3-3-3-10 and work backwards. And up your HTT multi to 4x as long as you don't increase HTT over 260-270, this will also give you a small perormance increase.

Without increasing the CPU mhz, maximizing you ram and HTT will give you several hundred extra points in benchmarks and noticable real world performance increase.

And don't be afraid to push the CPU, with that vapochill rig temps shouldn't be a problem. And 90% of the time pushing to far will only cause the system to hang or reboot. Worst case senario is something gets corrupted on you harddrive and you have to repair or reinstall windows. Very worst case is reformating the hard drive if the boot sector gets corrupted.

Try different multis and dividers, just keep your ram speed at 240 or less. This board currently has trouble running ram over 240, hopefully a bios issue that will be addressed

14x 220= 3080mhz DDR400 220 HTT4x
13x 238= 3094mhz DDR400 238 HTT4x
12x 258= 3096mhz DDR333 215 HTT4x
11x 278= 3058mhz DDR333 232 HTT3x
10x 310= 3100mhz AUTO 207 HTT3x

 

[codeus]

Thanks for all the advice guys!

I played around some more and have got it a good bit faster.

I also upgraded the bios to 1001-008 Beta which seems very stable, ALTHOUGH, if you set the vCore to 1.65 (current maximum for the bios) it acutally sets it down to 1.525! Therefore my setting of 1.635 is the current *working* maximum.

I took some advice and set my CPU to run at a really low Multiplier (8x). I dropped out the second pair of memory and put the timing down to 1T then cranked up the FSB speed until the RAM failed. I got to a memory speed of about 210Mhz fairly stable in memtest.

I then did the opposite and set the RAM down to 200Mhz MAX in Bios and Cranked the CPU up until Prime95 fell over - that happened at about 3150Mhz.

Finally I chose a setting which made the best of both of the 210Mhz Memory limit and the 3150 CPU limit. I then tested with Prime95 again with both maxxed out and ended up dropping back the timings a little more to those below.

Screenshot2

Going back to Guitar Daddy's post, would I get better performance with slower memory timings and a higher clock? I hadn't thought of that and kinda 'assumed' that lowering the timings and raising the clock would cancel each other out? Like I said though, I AM fairly new at O/Cing and don't fully understand the way these things go together yet.

Thanks!

Codeus

 

[imported_Xtreme]

WOW! Nice score on 3DMark!

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Wow! Thats the best overclock I've seen for an FX55. Way to go!!

To answer your question. I don't think timings are nearly as important as clock on the A64 platform.

For example 238mhz 2.5-3-3-10 will beat 210mhz 2-2-2-5