Northwood 1.6a, any OC difference between Malay or Costa Rica? Updated-Some Early Conclusions

[WheelsCSM]

What BIOS version are you using SpongeBob? Mine used to work when I was using 1003, but I just upgraded to 1004 to get 3DMark to work, and now, my Asus Probe doesn't seem to work at all. It used to not go below 40, then jump to 49 when I ran Prime95. Now i just stays at 40, and when I run Prime95 it will fluctuate between 40 and 41. I'm pretty sure my AS3 didn't kick in and help that much. I wish Asus would fix that. Other than not knowing my temps, I like this board.

 

[vspt]

Finally got around to installing my parts, since I was waiting on my ram from Mushkin. Crucial w/ tax is just the same cost and does not have the nice heat spreaders that Mushkin provides on there ram. Anyways, here's my parts:

P4 1.6A- Costca Rica A709 chip
Asus P4S333
512mb DDR mushkin high perf. (purple heat spreaders =P)
Cooler Master 210 case
Comp USA 300w power supply
Radeon 8500
Net Gear Nic
Lucent modem
80gb maxtor ata133 hd
ata 133 controller card
Lite-on 24x10x40x
Iomega to Plex 12x10x32

Results:
133 fsb /default voltage - Ran prime for 10minutes no problem, got impatient a
141/default - Same thing, no problem at prime95 for 10 min, before got impatient.
150/default voltage. Win98 did not bootup,
150/1.55, with win98 successfully loaded. Prime95, however crashed within a minute.
150/1.60, Prime95 ran for over an hour, before I got tired and had to sleep.

But, before sleeping did try 150/1.575, but Prime also crashed. I did treak the memory settings to 2-2-2 CL 2, and windows was completely stable. Going to try 4:5 ratio next, tonight and dual boot xp. Pretty happy with my results, just now thinking if I want to find that sweet spot where the default voltage can still handle prime95 or keep my settings.

Btw, any P4S333 experience their onboard secondary ide controller not working. Tried moving everything around and it seems my secondary controller is busted?!!! Not too big of a deal, since my maxtor hd came w/ the 133 controller , but really irks me since I might use it one of these days. Anyone experience the same. NOTE this is with NO overclocking, since I was trying to partition my hd.

Thanks.

 

[Flatbroke]

vspt, Woot.., you have the same FPO/Batch chip that I have. Diff MB tho, P4b266-C. Glad to see your OC results. I am at 1.65v, to top out at 140fsb. I got Mushkin ram, but acted stupid, and bought the 2-3-3 ram with (after I got it to see) Nanya chips. I regret that decision now.
EDIT: I see where you bought it, from Mushkin. Missed that in the first read. I may try some of that HPerf Mushkin ram, Crucial shipping diff chips now and then on their ram has me a little concerned about buying from them and expecting 150fsb with whatever chips I get.

 

[vspt]

Flatbroke,

I was pretty happy with the mushkin ram. Forgot to mention that it's PC2100. I debated getting mushkin vs crucial, but calculated that even with anandtech's 15% discount (while it was alive), the mushkin would come out the same. Plus, they have the heat spreaders, don't know about they're functionality, but they look cool.

Anyways, really happy with them, especially since they give out a timing of 2-2-2, even though they shipped as 2-3-3.

vspt

 

[SpongeBob]

What BIOS version are you using SpongeBob? Mine used to work when I was using 1003, but I just upgraded to 1004 to get 3DMark to work, and now, my Asus Probe doesn't seem to work at all. It used to not go below 40, then jump to 49 when I ran Prime95. Now i just stays at 40, and when I run Prime95 it will fluctuate between 40 and 41. I'm pretty sure my AS3 didn't kick in and help that much. I wish Asus would fix that. Other than not knowing my temps, I like this board.

I'm also using the 1004 bios. Mine came with the 1003 bios and i flashed it right away before I even tried overclocking so I don't know what was working as far as PC Probe in the 1003 version.

 

[hoihtah]

i know this thread deals with 1.6a...
but i just thought i'd post this as well.
my 1.8a
has this marking
PROD CODE: BX80532PC1800DSL63X
MM#842169

this baby just went up all the way to 2790.
with retail hsf + crucial pc2100 ddr.



i have it set at 2700 just to be safe... but this baby rules.


i'll post my 1.6a later today.

 

[WarCon]

Just got mine in today and reloaded. I loaded at stock at 2133 (133fsb), no problem. I am currently doing Prime95 @ 145fsb but my voltage is at 1.6vcore. I watercool and have the waterblock rigged in there with springs, but want a better holddown or a block designed for one of these brackets. Anyway its running at 35C right now with a Costa Rican chip. It has been running prime95 for about an hour, so I guess it is ok. I need help optimizing my Ram settings though, I think. At this fsb can I up any of the memory timings? Does upping the DDR voltage help with the overclock?

Thanks for any help. But if it continues to be stable here. I may just be happy with it....................not

 

[cyberizer9]

<< CPU: P4 1.6A Costa Rica (Newegg), Batch 3149A726, SL668
Pack Date: 1/25/2002
Cooling: Stock Retail fan and Heatsink
Board: Asus P4B266-C
RAM: 512MB Centon PC2100 (Hynix/Hyundai) [Sandra says it is ECC!]
Graphics: Gladiac geForce2 Ultra (not overclocked)
Drive: 72000 RPM 40GB
CD: Sony 32x CD-ROM
Power Supply: 300W Enermax

Running Prime95 since last night.
Internal Clock : 2133.5
System Clock: 133.34
System Bus: 533.38

Voltage

12V : 11.968 - 12.0963
5v: 5.026
3.3v: 3.264
1.5v: 1.488 - 1.536

Temperature 40c (Idle) and 50c Max (running Prime95).

Should I worry about the temperature and go for AS3 or this will do?

I am planning to let it run at this speed for atleast 24 hours and then
try upping the FSB. >>



133FSB went fine. Prime95 stable for days.
Upped the FSB to 140 today with Turbo1 optimization mode and 1:1 CPU/memory Frequency Ratio. Prime95 has been running for
more than an hour now. And one thing more, upped the VCore to 1.55.
Will try 150FSB tomorrow if everything goes fine.

Edit: Spoke too soon! Prime95 failed after around 90 minutes!!! Any suggestions? Will increasing the VCore to 1.575 help?
Any other ideas? Thanks.

 

[lastig21]

You guys might want to check this thread for some info on whether malays are better than costa rica's.

 

[pm]

Just to clear something up, the markings on the back of the CPU refer to the packaging site - not the manufacturing site of the actual silicon chip itself. Intel has no fabs in either Malaysia or Costa Rica, they are packaging facilities. The silicon die/chips are manufactured elsewhere in the world and are shipped to either of these two packaging sites. In addition, Intel manufacturing has a goal of running a "virtual fab" - meaning that, among other things, products from one fab are statistically indistinguishable from those manufactured at another fab. So even if, for example using fake names, Malaysian packages used chips only from fab #1 and packages marked Costa Rica use chips from fab #2, there should be no difference statistically between these two.

I saw these discussions back in the Celeron days, and I commented back then, but this time around it seems a little different. I have started seeing some sites charging more for parts from a specific packaging site and this disturbs me. There is no difference between parts from these two packaging sites. Just as you can have 6 head/tails coin tosses come out heads, there may seem to be a correlation that heads is more likely than tails, but there isn't. In reality the odds are still approximately 50/50.

The silicon is what defines the speed of a CPU, not the package. And the silicon comes from multiple fabs.

If you are considering spending more, or buying from a shadier vendor, in order to get a specific package, I would urge you to reconsider. There is no difference and you are only wasting money.

Patrick Mahoney
Microprocessor Design Engineer
Intel Corp.

 

[manko]

Thanks! Great info, pm. Can I hit you up for a little more info? (Unofficial of course...)

Is the great overclockability of these things any surprise to you folks? Is there any truth to what I heard about some of the 1.6A's possibly having passed the tests for a higher speed rating, but being marked down to fill market demand for lower end/priced chips?

Finally, are we all going to burn out our chips in a few months, by running them at 2.4Ghz?

I'd love to hear any hints you can give us about these questions. I hope you can help to further dispell the rumors and speculation that has been floating around hardware forums like this one...

(sorry, I also posted this in the other thread in case you missed it)

 

[WHQLbob]

Seems like everyone in this post likes the Asus P4B266-C for OC'ing, Is the TH7-II not has good ? I was looking at getting the P4 1.6a and that abit TH7-II, is it the RDRAM that no one likes ? if so, why ? I eventually want to get a water cooling system for my new P4 once its all setup, I'm trying to find the best Mobo/Ram for the job.

 

[tigerbait]

<< Is the TH7-II not has good ? I was looking at getting the P4 1.6a and that abit TH7-II, is it the RDRAM that no one likes ? >>



from what I read,
the TH7-II, RDRAM, and a northwood is a great setup, but there are more intangibles dealing with overclocking this setup than a P4/DDR solution. Some people get the motherboards with an older BIOS than cannot recognize Northwoods, and since most of us are going from AMD systems to northwood, we don't have a willamette lying around to flash the mobo with. Also, there are some different versions of clock generators in the boards that affect how high the FSB and memory can go. but once it is and setup and running, its performance is top notch.

 

[Spydc]

Def, I just want to let you know that the epox 4BDA2+ and 4BDA2 are in stock at newegg now. I had already purchased it a few days ago from accessmicro.com because i couldn't wait

 

[Thrifster]

Help!!! I have NW 1.6 CR w/ asus p4s333 and a 512mb stick of crucial pc2100...i keep getting the "system failed due to sever overclocking" as soon as i try past 140 fsb...does anyone have this same set up? What are your memory settings? Can anyone help?

 

[KK]

<< Help!!! I have NW 1.6 CR w/ asus p4s333 and a 512mb stick of crucial pc2100...i keep getting the "system failed due to sever overclocking" as soon as i try past 140 fsb...does anyone have this same set up? What are your memory settings? Can anyone help? >>



I am having the same experience. I also have a NW1.6 CR w asusp4s33 but with corsair 512MB PC2700 ram. I get the system overclocking error if I go over 140 too. Once I did get it to post I believe at 150, but once the operating system shoulda loaded, it gave some funky characters at the left side of screen. When I tried rebooting at stock it wouldn't go into windows XP. Finally after some cussing at myself for not making a system restore disk, it did finally go back into windows. Right now I believe I'm at 133 FSB, It seems like if I go up to 140FSB it's work fine and everything but, if I reboot, when it automatically restarts it says memory fail, but if I hit the reset button myself it will boot up no problem. have you had this happen, I'm at a 4:5 ratio.

KK

 

[Thrifster]

[/i] >>

I am having the same experience. I also have a NW1.6 CR w asusp4s33 but with corsair 512MB PC2700 ram. I get the system overclocking error if I go over 140 too. Once I did get it to post I believe at 150, but once the operating system shoulda loaded, it gave some funky characters at the left side of screen. When I tried rebooting at stock it wouldn't go into windows XP. Finally after some cussing at myself for not making a system restore disk, it did finally go back into windows. Right now I believe I'm at 133 FSB, It seems like if I go up to 140FSB it's work fine and everything but, if I reboot, when it automatically restarts it says memory fail, but if I hit the reset button myself it will boot up no problem. have you had this happen, I'm at a 4:5 ratio.

KK[/i] >>



KK. Right now I'm at 140 fsb and rock solid just like you. I don't have that problem when i reboot. It just wont boot at anything past 140. Man this sucks. I'm at automatic settings for memory and 1.5 vcore. Good luck KK.

Thrifster

 

[Dink]

I'm getting the same problem pretty much as you guys. 140 FSB is as far as I can go without getting some errors with the OS loads. I'm using a ga-8SRX mobo (SIS645) chipset like the p4s333 is. I'm wondering if the SIS chipset is holding us back. I know it's not my memory, I can run it at 140/175 with out any problems. Once, I go over that, even with the memory synched like 145/145, it will fail, and no amount of voltage will improve this. Also, I'm water cooling and temps are very low. Also, I've upgraded to a 400 watt PSU, and adjusted the voltages up so they don't drop below spec...I'm gonna put some mad cooling on the northbridge next to see if that is the problem cuz they HS on the chipset is hot enough that I can't hardly touch it. What do you guys think? Look like the sis645 hittin some limits on some boards?

 

[F155mph]

<< I'm getting the same problem pretty much as you guys. 140 FSB is as far as I can go without getting some errors with the OS loads. I'm using a ga-8SRX mobo (SIS645) chipset like the p4s333 is. I'm wondering if the SIS chipset is holding us back. I know it's not my memory, I can run it at 140/175 with out any problems. Once, I go over that, even with the memory synched like 145/145, it will fail, and no amount of voltage will improve this. Also, I'm water cooling and temps are very low. Also, I've upgraded to a 400 watt PSU, and adjusted the voltages up so they don't drop below spec...I'm gonna put some mad cooling on the northbridge next to see if that is the problem cuz they HS on the chipset is hot enough that I can't hardly touch it. What do you guys think? Look like the sis645 hittin some limits on some boards? >>



Have you updated your bios yet? I got the same board as you and I am running at 148 fsb with 1.7v. What chip and batch do you have?

 

[Sanitarium]

Here is my overclock

1.6A@2.510
costa rica batch 3202A124
MSI AR Ultra
Kingston value ddr 256mb

16x157fsb

Hi, I was wondering if the cover on the chip suppost to come off I see a hole in it I just put as3 and put on the heatsink
also was wondering about the hs I took off the black stuff but left that square looking metal take on the heatsink just wondering if should have taken off my temps are 40c full load about 58c

John

 

[SFang]

Someone please answer Sanitarium's question. I have the exact same situation here, "a hole in the black stuff", "whether to take off the metal plate", same thing happened to me. I am really curious and hope to know the answer.

Also, a dumb question , I just got my CR 1.6A chip from Newegg, with FPO/Batch# 3204A495-1346, why everyone else got 31 but I got 32 (same for San), what does that mean?

 

[WheelsCSM]

Sanitarium -

As far as that metal foil on the HS goes, I would take it off. From a Heat Transfer perspective any time you have contact between two materials, you get contact resistance from microscopic asperities in the materials. With the foil on, you have 2 contact surfaces (CPU-foil-foil-HS) with it off, you have only one. I took mine off, and it runs at 47C under load (150 FSB, stock voltage) with AS3. I don't know about the chip though, I don't think I'll mess with taking the heat spreader off of mine.

 

[Dink]

<< Have you updated your bios yet? I got the same board as you and I am running at 148 fsb with 1.7v. What chip and batch do you have? >>



Yeah, I'm running bios F8 now.

P4 1.6a
Maylay
L149A544-1419

 

[JellyBaby]

The only item to remove is the black thermal interface material. There is nothing metallic leftover. I'm not sure why you'd want to remove the chip's heat spreader (the CPU cover with a small hole).

 

[SFang]

JellyBaby,

It is not the heat spreader on the CPU. It is a very thin metal plate at the bottom of the heat sink fan. On top of the metal plate, it is covered with black thermal paste. I have never seen any metal plate on any other hsf before. I guess this is in the new packages of Northwoods. BTW, also, on the P4 box, I have slightly different image than the regular one posted on newegg.com's website. There is no big "1.6a" sign on the right top of the box, only a small "1.6a" at the left bottom of the box, also no manufacture site listed too. I guess they use different package this year, also slightly different hsf.