Unofficial ASUS K8N-E thread

[LocutusX]

Originally posted by: jkresh
might post some benchmarks later, probably will stick with 10 * 240 or 9 * 270 (especialy if I can get some more voltage to the memory) thinking about buying ocz's ddr volatge booster, though i have no clue if it would work with this board. I am defintiely not running stock cooling, probably running best air cooling possible at the moment (6 case fans, 1 delta on side panel, one on processor), plus a dtr chip so it runs relaively cool anyway.

270mhz HTT ? how hot is the northbridge?

 

[jkresh]

havent tried 9 * 270 yet, at 10 * 240 with ht at 3 (will try it at 3 for 270, though may have to lower to 2) it is running at 34C

 

[darkswordsman17]

Could someone help educate me, I'm new to Athlon 64, and I picked this board up hoping to get a decent overclock out of it.

What I need to know is what kind of settings I should be aiming for to get the most performance. I know that the FSB, the HTT, and the multiplier are all now adjustable with the new BIOS. I just don't know how each correlates to the others and what I should be doing to get the most out of my overclock.

I'm not asking for you to straight up tell me (although I wouldn't mind that either), but if you could just tell me a site that offers a good guide for OC'ing Athlno 64 I'd research it on my own and go from there.

Some information in case it helps: 3000+CPU (Stepping A, did I get a good chip for OC'ing?).

Currently I have the BIOS set for automatic 10% OC, and its being recognized rightly at 2.2GHz. I was just using this to see how temps are with the current HSF. I'm going to upgrade to the Thermalright XP-120 soon (any recommendations on 120mm fans?) since the board can now OC better

This is what CPU-Z is reporting:
Core Speed 1100.1MHz
Multiplier x5.0
HTT 220.0MHz

Also, I have Kingston HyperX DDR500. What kind of settings should I be aiming at with this memory (voltage and speed, not timings)?

Oh, and last question what is everybody using to monitor temps? Does MBM work on this board? I could use the nVidia System Utility or the Asus tool thats on the disc, but MBM works so much better.

I don't mean to be such a moron about this, but I'm just making sure I understand everything before I do something stupid. Any help at all is greatly appreciated.

 

[jkresh]

is your chip a cg or co (use cpuz to figure it out) if it is cg you should be able to get to 2.4-2.5 with good air cooling, co will be a little les. Memory voltage is a major issue with the board so dont expect to get that high on your memory, also probably after 220-230 you will have to lower htt to 3 from 4. I would start with memory at 2.7v ands 333, start rasing fsb till you hit a number that is not stable in prime. Use clockgen so if you go to high you just crash windows and you dont have to worry about clearing the cmos. Once you figure out your top fsb at stock mutliplier, change memory back to 1:1 and drop mutliplier to 8 then keep going, see where that tops out. If you get to 240 or less then go back to a mult of 10, anywhere between 240 and 270 go to 9, higher then 270 and its questionable. If you are bring the fsb past 260-270 you might want to lower htt to 2, just to make sure thats not the limiting factor as currently i can hit 10 * 240 with ease (prime for 24 hours at 1.55 volts) but at 9 * 267 and 266 i am having issues, which i dont think are memory related, so i may drop the htt and see what happens.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Thanks a lot jkresh. I'll try those out and report back with what I'm getting.

I might have to wait on my new HSF to push it very much. I'm hoping for a nice stable 2.4 with decent temps.

 

[Kador]

In can't see my stepping on cpu-Z 1.23.1, it can't even read the model (newcastle) of the chip ! It's a 3200 512k newcastle (11x200) with stock amd fan&rad.

What I got yesterday :
- stable at 210*11 (2310) with mem at 1:1 (208) and HTT at 4 (base config)
- stable at 250*10 (makes 2.5 ghz !) with mem at 5/6 (208) and HTT at 3, CPU gets up to 55 after tests. Thiis newcaslte seems pretty good at oc !!!
- seems stable (didn't test that much) at 265*9 (2385) mem 221 HTT 795

I thik the wall is the northbridge/HTT which can't get further than 840/850 mhz (212*4, 283*3, *2 is pointless you wont put FSB at 425, will ya ?). With good RAM, NB cooling, I guess this board can make it !

My ballistix is on its way (pretty fast those crucial guys), I'll cross fingers so that I get good ones and that I can use 2 sticks with decent frequency. My goal is 275*9 (2475) HTT*3 (825) ram 5/6 (229), I may also try 250*10 (2500) HTT*3 (750) ram 1:1 (250)

Should be solid and give good results.

 

[jkresh]

probably will stick with htt of 3, need to get more vdim though as memory is realy hurting, otherwise board is solid. Strange thing is I can do 10 * 240 no problem at 1.55 volts, yet with 9 I am stuck at 265, if i go to 266 which is still slower in mhz then 10 *240 prime will crash. If i up the volts getting to 2500 shouldnt be a problem but since i have 1meg cache am not sure if the extra 100mhz is worth increasing the voltage and lowering chip lifetime. Though at full prime load at 2400mhz i am at 42/34c (proc/board), so heat certainly wont be a problem.

 

[Kador]

sure, with 1meg I woulnd go that high ... do you think that a slk948 would improve largely things for me (in comparison with stock amd cooling) ?

 

[Kador]

Crucial / UPS delivery kicks ass : order passed at 12:23 (24 hours tima yesterday), it should arrive at home (in france) this morning. 24 hours for order validation, packaging, shipping and delivery, AND for 7 euro, that's what I call efficiency ;-)

 

[LocutusX]

anyone know whats the performance impact of using lower than default (800) HTT frequencies and running the memory at 5:6? any perf. hit from using asynch memory?

 

[Kador]

I've read that A64 doesn't care about sync / unsync mem. As for the HTT, dunno !

 

[LocutusX]

Actually, didn't the nForce3-150 chipset have only 600mhz HTT? so i guess by looking up older benchmarks of NF3-150 boards, we can determine the performance hit of using slower HTT.

(too lazy to do that myself,

 

[jkresh]

with the slk948 vs stock you could see from 5-15C drop under load, maybe more depending on fan. I am running a 90mm delta (at 3300rpm so not that loud) and as I said before, i cant get temps over 43C no matter what is running.

 

[Kador]

will think about it, just need to get that RAM (arrived home but there was noone)

 

[Aagiants]

final OC speed is 255*9.5 3ht. This is the best performance i could get stable without pumping a lot of voltage in the cpu. Im at 1.55 still.

 

[Kador]

Never say final .... for me I'm running 267*9 very well, above (275) my current mem gets unstable. I guess I'll reach a stable 275 or 280 when I pick up the ballistix (of course at 333). I also tried A64tweaker, very interesting, with the 1T plus other recommended settings (see codered messages), I'm nearly 700MB above my normal configuration on sandra memtest. Stil can't brek the 40s on superpi.

 

[LocutusX]

Finished setting up my K8N-E last night, with my Newcastle 3000+.

So here's my mini-review.

The good:
- no motherboard-related issues whatsoever! (no issues of any sort for that matter, heh)
- 100% stability at stock speed from initial installation
- running 2 x OCZ PC3200 rev 2 @ 400mhz @ 2-3-3-6 (mfr's specs) with no problems
- tried up to 205mhz htt with 1:1 memory; ran fine, as expected. was a hot day so didn't try any OC'ing
- memtest86+ ran 2 passes with no probs; WinXP SP1a installed with no probs
- turned the computer on and off about 20 times over 3 days now; no signs of anything deteriorating, no DOA-ness

The bad:
- the location of the headers for the power LED, power switch, HDD led etc. is really bad IMHO. might just be because of my case
- the 2 USB headers seem to be custom made to work with the PCI bracket USB ports; i don't know how to make them work
with my Xaser Tsunami's front-panel USB (ditto for FireWire).
- bundled IDE cables are flat, not rounded
- never much liked AMI bios, preferred that other one (Phoenix?)
- BIOS rev 1004 is a bit of a clutter; overclocking options are spread out over 3 screens rather than consolidated into one
- Hardware Monitor (BIOS) doesn't list V_dimm
- is there a way to disable the Silicon Image SATA BIOS completely? I won't be using it

The strange:
- when BIOS CPU settings were left at default ("Auto"), V_core is set to 1.55v? is that right?
(at auto, Vcore said 1.536 - when I manually lower to 1.5, Vcore said 1.488)
- ASUS "Post-Speech" is amusing, seems a bit gimmicky though. I was startled when the computer first turned on
and a woman's voice said "Computer is now booting into Operating System!"
- ASUS "Instant-Music" is *definitely* a gimmick


Will update this with a final assessment after I play with it a bit more, and of course, try overclocking.

 

[Kador]

Got the ballistix Gig. Cuttently at FSB 240, HTT 720 (x3), RAM 240 (1:1) at 2.7V and 2.5-2-2-5 and some A64Tweaker opts, CPU 2520 (10.5, should try 11 to puh this babe) at 1.6V. I'd say this ram is very nice for the price. Couldn't do 250 2.5-2-2-5, I need more voltage, ASUS it's in your hand (I'll write a second email I think !!). Still its very good for me, taking in account I use 2 sticks.

 

[Kador]

Off topic : Don't you have difficulties reaching anandtech ? I always have to retry several times before reaching the site / forums.

 

[Maximus96]

how is the audio on this board? i'm going to buy one soon and was wondering if i should buy an audigy 2 as well. i plan to buy logitech z-5300 speakers, if the on-board audio is good then i can save a bit of money. thanks

 

[LocutusX]

zaku,

i`ll let you know in a few days. i was using a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz for the past 3 years, so i am pretty used to the sound. i`m going to try the K8N-E with just onboard sound for a while to see how much of a difference there is. Since the TBSC is still considered superior to the Audigy2 in some ways, I think this should be an easy comparison.


Kador,

2 questions. (1) Northbridge too hot to touch? Or is it ok? (2) What`s A64Tweaker?

 

[Kador]

(1) yes it's hot, but I can't make a difference between hot and very hot ;-) besides HTT is x3 only.
(2) go to xtremesystems forum, it's a small tool to tweak A64 settings, usually not available in bios (most of them I don't understand what they do, but still it works !)

 

[McArra]

Originally posted by: LocutusX
Actually, didn't the nForce3-150 chipset have only 600mhz HTT? so i guess by looking up older benchmarks of NF3-150 boards, we can determine the performance hit of using slower HTT.

(too lazy to do that myself,

It should be better on the ASUS since it is 16/16bits and not 16/8bits as NF3-150. Anyway, the difference between NF3-150 and Via 800 in performance was almost null, so there shouldn't really be a performance lost between 4x and 3x.

 

[LocutusX]

I think I have to say to everyone; get this board, it r0x

Having NO PROBs whatsoever running my Athlon64 3000+ CG newcastle @ 2400mhz with the following settings:

HTT = 240
CPU = HTT x 10.0 = 2400mhz
MEM = 240 x 0.83 = 200mhz
HTT multiplier = x3
HTBus @ 240 x 3 = 720mhz
Mem timings @ 2.0-3-3-6-1T CMD

Vcore = 1.55v, Vdimm = 2.7v

My ram isn't that good: OCZ Performance Rev.2 PC3200. I'm sure with better RAM I could leave the divider at 1:1 and possibly improve timings. But for now, these settings are running perfectly.

Temps: CPU Idles @ 36 degrees C. Full load @ 52 degrees C.
Using stock retail heatsink/fan!
Cool n Quiet disabled.

- memtest86+ stable
- Prime95 stable
- haven't tried Doom3 or 3DMark yet...

One thing that I have to say is that a 20% overclock on air using stock components makes me VERY happy. My old AthlonXP 1600+ paired with a copper ThermalRight SK-6 and the Epox 8KHA+ could barely manage a 8% overclock!

Wonder how far I could go with some premium RAM and that nice Zalman cooler!

Hopefully Asus will soon release a BIOS capable of adjusting Vdimm, making the purchase of premium RAM much more worthwhile. Go Asus!

 

[LocutusX]

Originally posted by: Kador
A64tweaker, very interesting, with the 1T plus other recommended settings (see codered messages), I'm

BTW Kador; you don't need A64Tweaker to enable 1T CMD. You can do it in the BIOS (in 1004). Same screen as where you choose CAS and RAS latencies.

And yes you're quite right; by enabling 1T CMD you can improve SiSuck's memory bandwidth score by at least 600MB/s! Haven't tested real-world impact yet, though...

A64Tweaker is still a very nice program though, I hope he continues developing it.