Basic info needed

Alphatronix

Alphatronix

New Member
Praetor, Respect man.. I read through most of the forums, your one smart human... How big is your head??

Well, i didnt see to much about AMD Athlon XP 2400 but enough to get a basic feel for overclocking...

I have the ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard, 1 gig Kingston ddr ram, 420w ps, 2 hard drives, cd-rom drive, burner, 128 mb nvidia chip, Audigy LS card.

Im pretty sure i can OC my comp and it will handle it. I just want to have a general idea how much to change setting in BIOS...


Also, anyone know where i can get a free BIOS that will be easier to play with for OC?
 
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Praetor, Respect man.. I read through most of the forums, your one smart human... How big is your head??
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Thx. Not big enough :P

Well, I didnt see to much about AMD Athlon XP 2400 but enough to get a basic feel for overclocking...
I have the ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard, 1 gig Kingston ddr ram, 420w ps, 2 hard drives, cd-rom drive, burner, 128 mb nvidia chip, Audigy LS card
Click to expand...
1. An interesting novelty about that mobo is that regardless of what the box, manual, website, bios, etc says, it supports Dual Channel. If you run a battery of memory bandwidth tests, theres not a chance in hell of scoring in the ballpark of 6000MB/s without Dual Channel :P So thats kinda a freebie (of course I could have had a fluke motherboard)

2. The XP2400 you've got there is most likely a TBredB but regardless, here's the breakdown of it's specifcation

Performance Rating: XP2400+
Clock: 2.00GHz [133MHz x 15.0]
L2 Cache: 256K On-die
Vcore: 1.65v
Process: 180nm
Vcore Max 1.80v
Max Temp 85C

Im pretty sure I can OC my comp and it will handle it. I just want to have a general idea how much to change setting in BIOS...
Click to expand...
Ok its been a few weeks since ive had my A7N8X-X but here goes (from memory so some things might be a bit off)
[1] Advanced
[2] Advanced Chipset Features (or something like this)
[3] Play around

Play Around - CPU
- You can change the 'CPU Frequency Multiple' (most ideal because doesnt affect anything but the CPU)
- You can also change the 'CPU External Frequency' (which is a fancy way of saying FSB) ... changing this will also affect RAM/PCI/AGP so its not so ideal and how far you go depends slighly on the capabilities of your mobo/ram

Play Around - RAM
- If your OC isnt very agressive and/or you have very good memory, you can set the 'CPU Interface' and 'System Performance' to Agressive
- If you really want to push the machine and/or have very nice parts, set the 'System Performance' to 'Manual' and tinker around with the memory clocks independenrtly

More Stuffos
- A decent technique for OCing involves first loosening the memory timings (either by setting 'Memory Timings' to Optimal or manually setting them higher). This allows you to worry about OCing the bandwidth without running into (potentially) artificial overheads and ceilings. Once you've got your RAM/System OCd to your satisfaction, you can then trim the timings bit by bit.
- The motherboard manual can be found here: http://www.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A7N8X-X .. also make sure you grab the latest BIOS and stuff
- Make sure your CPU can handle the additional heat that *will* be generated from the OC

Also, anyone know where I can get a free BIOS that will be easier to play with for OC?
Click to expand...
No need. The nF2 is very open and very clean :)
 
Praetor, not sure if you knew or not so I thought I'd let you know just incase. The motherboard he was talking about was the A7V8X-X not the A7N8X-X. I'm not sure if you noticed it or not, because in your post you refer to the A7N8X-X.

Just thought I'd tell you incase you didn't realise.
 
Good point ... the fact that its a A7V8X-X (which I also had prior to upping to the A7N) adds a minor complexity in that the KT400 chipset isnt so OC friendly. Regardless we can make an attempt .. now this is *really* going from memory (upwards of a year):

[1] Advanced
[2] Change 'CPU Speed' to Manual
[3] Now you have access to the "CPU Multiplier" and the "CPU External Frequency" (aka FSB)
[4] You can also change "Memory Speed" from Auto to, say 400MHz. This is only useful if you dont have PC3200 memory as users with PC3200 memory will automatically clock at DDR400 (like I said, the A7V isnt an OCer's platform of choice)

Notes
- You can and should increase the Vcore if you decide to do significant FSB speed bumps .. try to avoid going more than 0.2V-0.3V over spec'
- You should also consider bumping the Vdimm up by 0.1V if you decide to OC the memory
- Yeah .. not much to say for a KT400 board simply because nto a lot of features are made available
- Latest BIOS and manuals and such can be found from http://www.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A7V8X-X
 
Glad I pointed that out to you ;)

Does this mean that I can use the above guide Praetor If I fancy having a go at OCing (you know I have the A7N8X-X)?
 
Yes indeed. Like i said before, the guide isnt the be-all, end-all type of thing (I'm working on some stuff like that but thats later) and yes, common sense and caution do need to be added to the ingredients list but yeah, its a decent guide to start from :)
 
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