HT speed above 260 wont work.

[Basard]

Well, really what I'm trying to do is get my RAM speed up a little bit. It's 533Mhz DDR2... right now its running at 488Mhz. HT is at 255x4 and CPU is running at 2681Mhz. Everything works just fine at these settings. But I try something like 275x3, with a lower "NPT FID Control" (thats the cpu multiplier, right?), to try to get the RAM speed up a little bit, and everything goes to heck--barely even posts.

The BIOS in the Tforce550 has chipset, cpu, and HTT voltages, do I need to raise one of them when I raise the bus from 255x4 to 275x3? Is the "chipset voltage" what were talkin about when we talk about bus speed, or is that HTT voltage?

Really, my goal here is to keep my slightly above 2600Mhz if possible, AND also have my RAM somewhere around 533Mhz. But I cant. My ram ran fine in my old mATX motherboard at 590Mhz@5-4-4-13.

 

[sneekypeet]

If I remember corectly the Tforce is a bit picky on settings, just like the older uGURU's from ABIT.

Try this, boot with the Tforce Clock utility and see where it sets things , then transfer those settings to bios. If it runs warm like I think it will, just slowly lower the voltage and test for stabilty until you attain the lowest voltage needed!

 

[Basard]

Hmm. After like 5 no-boots, I tried the "V-6 engine" And it set my cpu 200Mhz faster, and upped the volts on the damn thing from 1.25 to 1.6... Immediately after load it jumped to 65 after about 5 seconds of stress, so I stopped that right away. I'm really scared to see what the V-8 or even the V-12 engine would do.

Should I just TRY 290x3 with a lower FID Control?

 

[Wile E]

With AM2 cpus, the ram divider changes when you change the cpu multi. The ram isn't directly linked to the fsb, it's linked to cpu speed. What speeds are you trying to achieve?

 

[hat]

Don't you have any RAM dividers? I know in my RAM timings section of the BIOS, I have 4 dividers:
200MHz
266MHz
333MHz
400MHz

 

[Basard]

Yeah, I have the option for 200, 266, 333, and 400. But, I have 533Mhz RAM, I just want the ram to run faster than 500Mhz.... I've had this ram at 600Mhz before on a different, cheaper mATX motherboard. I cant set the ram to run in 266 mode though, because my overclock is too high. I have to set it at 200.

I've seen almost everywhere that people are setting HTT spead at 290 or so with no problems, with a 3x multiplier. I just cant get past 260, do I just need to raise the HTT voltage, or chipset voltage? Sensors say my Northbridge is at 29C constantly. Will upping the chipset voltage help stabilize the higher HTT spead, or do I have to up the voltage on HTT itself.

Also, since ram is linked to CPU speed, am I just doomed to a low ram speed, unless i have 3Ghz coming out of my cpu? Or can I just raise HTT speed to like 300x3, then lower the NPT FID Control to like x8.5 or x9, so my cpu speed stays the same, while ram speed goes up? But, if what Wile E is trying to say is that when i lower the NPT FID Control, the ram speed will also go down too, then its all pointless--so I may as well wait till I either get better RAM, or a better CPU cooler, so I can raise CPU speed enough to get ram back to 533?

I'm trying the sneekypete method right now.

 

[Wile E]

Yeah, I have the option for 200, 266, 333, and 400. But, I have 533Mhz RAM, I just want the ram to run faster than 500Mhz.... I've had this ram at 600Mhz before on a different, cheaper mATX motherboard. I cant set the ram to run in 266 mode though, because my overclock is too high. I have to set it at 200.

I've seen almost everywhere that people are setting HTT spead at 290 or so with no problems, with a 3x multiplier. I just cant get past 260, do I just need to raise the HTT voltage, or chipset voltage? Sensors say my Northbridge is at 29C constantly. Will upping the chipset voltage help stabilize the higher HTT spead, or do I have to up the voltage on HTT itself.

Also, since ram is linked to CPU speed, am I just doomed to a low ram speed, unless i have 3Ghz coming out of my cpu? Or can I just raise HTT speed to like 300x3, then lower the NPT FID Control to like x8.5 or x9, so my cpu speed stays the same, while ram speed goes up? But, if what Wile E is trying to say is that when i lower the NPT FID Control, the ram speed will also go down too, then its all pointless--so I may as well wait till I either get better RAM, or a better CPU cooler, so I can raise CPU speed enough to get ram back to 533?

I'm trying the sneekypete method right now.

No, your not doomed. Sometimes lowering the cpu multi actually raises your ram speed, as the divider becomes numerically lower.

What's the stock multi on your chip? Is it a Brisbane with a 10.5 multi, or a Windsor with a 10 multi?

 

[Basard]

It's Brisbane with a 10.5 multi. I've tried every setting down to 8x, with every HTT speed under 290, it won't boot over 265x3. Do I need to raise HTT voltage? What chip exactly is HTT located on? My BIOS gives me options for HTT voltage, and chipset... I dont know which one actually controlls the bus speed. It doesnt even call it HTT speed, it calls it "cpu frequency".

 

[suraswami]

Disable Cool'n'Quiet. With C'n'Q you can max up to 260 HTT. Disable it and you can go more. Thats how it works. And try to keep the multi at full numbers like 10, 9 etc. I would say keep the multi at 10 and keep pushing until the board locks up. that board should have auto-reset options right?

 

[Basard]

Well CNQ is off right now. I'm not sure about some of the other times (I've been pulling the clear cmos alot). It has some sort of auto reset, sometimes, I guess, not sure on that one. I'm gonna try it out right now with CNQ off....

 

[hat]

Yeah, overvolt the chipset. I know mine won't boot at 260 (and it's a high-end DFI!). Although I don't know what isn't booting. :F

 

[Basard]

K, so it is the chipset then. I just got back, tried a lot of settings, I got it to boot at 270X4, but it wasn't very stable, orthos gave errors after less than 2 mins.

I really wouldn't mind keeping it at 260x4, but my RAM speed is kiling me, less than 500Mhz... I'll try overvolting the chipset, see what that does... but for now, I'm done messin with it. thx

 

[hat]

Can't you just run it at 333MHz and be done with it? I think good settings would be 260x10 with 333MHz RAM.

 

[Basard]

Well, my ram is 533Mhz, so 333Mhz would put it somewhere above 700Mhz--not good... you mean 266Mhz?

I was messing around more with the automatic overclock engine (there are V-6, V-8, and V12 engines) I have it set at the highest V-12 for "extreme performance" and it sets it to 250x4, with some new ram timings, 4-4-4-12 @ 238Mhz. But the voltage on the cpu is at 1.55, but it runs fine at 1.3, so I'm going to turn that down and see whats up then.

Yeah 260x10 is a good overclock for me, especially on stock cooling. I just wish I could get my ram speed up more. I'll post back, I'm going to try some new settings.

 

[Basard]

Yeah.... Ok, I'm done with this crap for a while. I need new RAM, screw Nanya, lol.

I'm beginning to think this board was open box because some dude RMA'd it due to it's crappy overclock ability. It's not soo bad, I can get 2700Mhz from my cpu, which is good, compared to 2100Mhz.... but, the RAM is just killing me.

I'm going to wait until I get some decent 800Mhz RAM to push this thing further, the status LEDs on the motherboard SEEM to be pointing to bad ram every time the thing resets itself, so yeah.

Thx for your help you guys.

 

[suraswami]

ha ha ha Nanya - the worst overclocker. My corsair has Nanya and its DDR and doesn't want to go beyond DDR432. Its at 2.8V.

never the less, some cpus would not go past 260 HTT. I have many like that. It reaches that easily without any issues and just stops there or needs enormous voltage.

So don't bother.

If it runs cool leave it alone. Come summer you will see the heat difference.

 

[Wile E]

Disable Cool'n'Quiet. With C'n'Q you can max up to 260 HTT. Disable it and you can go more. Thats how it works. And try to keep the multi at full numbers like 10, 9 etc. I would say keep the multi at 10 and keep pushing until the board locks up. that board should have auto-reset options right?

The last thing you want to do on a Brisbane is use whole multis. It severly effects ram performance (well, at least it does on my board) Windsors are the opposite, if I use a half multi, my ram performance drops drastically.

Try it back to back and see for yourself.

@Basard- Have you tried running more volts to the ram? You might be able to get 667 out of them with more voltage. It does sound like it may be your ram that's limiting you. Set it to 2.15V (that's the highest in BIOS, right?)

 

[Basard]

I had the ram all the way up to 2.1v, that's the highest in the bios, although there is a jumper on the mobo to set it up to 2.4 I believe. This is the only ram I have and I don't want to fry it, I'd die without my computer. This stuff came out of a Dell, so I really have no faith in it whatsoever. I suppose it also doesn't help that both sticks run at slightly different timings. One is samsung, and one is nanya, both have nanya chips on them though.

As far as heat goes, winter is the worst for my computer because the heat in our "historic" apartments is just nutso sometimes. I mentioned this before, we have giant radiators in here. It's either 85 degrees in here, or its 45. Summer is a little better from my computer because I can have the AC on.

And if the cpu wont go above 260htt, without high volts, then that would mean the cpu vcore controls the overclockability of the HTT? not the chipset? I don't get it I guess. CPU vcore, Htt vcore, chipset volts.... what does each actually control? What do they all work together? does the cpu have seperate vcores in it? Stuff is getting nuts these days.

 

[Basard]

No luck with more RAM volts, tried 2.1 and set the memclock to 533, no boot. I did, however, get a 9.5 multi to work, heres a cut and paste of everest info. As you can see, my ram is pretty bad. RAM divider went from cpu/11 to cpu/10 with the 9.5 multi.

CPU Properties
CPU Type DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2
CPU Alias Brisbane
CPU Stepping BH-G1
Engineering Sample No
CPUID CPU Name AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4000+
CPUID Revision 00060FB1h

CPU Speed
CPU Clock 2477.7 MHz (original: 2100 MHz, overclock: 18%)
CPU Multiplier 9.5x
CPU FSB 260.8 MHz (original: 200 MHz, overclock: 30%)
HyperTransport Clock 1043.3 MHz
Memory Bus 247.8 MHz
DRAM:FSB Ratio CPU/10

CPU Cache
L1 Code Cache 64 KB per core (Parity)
L1 Data Cache 64 KB per core (ECC)
L2 Cache 512 KB per core (On-Die, ECC, Full-Speed)

Chipset Properties
Motherboard Chipset nVIDIA nForce 550, AMD Hammer
Memory Timings 3-3-3-9 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)
Command Rate (CR) 1T

SPD Memory Modules
DIMM3: Nanya NT512T64U88A0BY-37 512 MB DDR2-533 DDR2 SDRAM (5-4-4-12 @ 266 MHz) (4-4-4-12 @ 266 MHz) (3-3-3-9 @ 200 MHz)
DIMM4: Samsung M3 78T6553CZ3-CD5 512 MB DDR2-533 DDR2 SDRAM (5-4-4-11 @ 266 MHz) (4-4-4-11 @ 266 MHz) (3-3-3-8 @ 200 MHz)

 

[Basard]

Ok, here... I got 270x3 outa this bastard, and ram speed actually went up, now I need to get my cpu back up.... hopefully....

CPU Speed
CPU Clock 2295.6 MHz (original: 2100 MHz, overclock: 9%)
CPU Multiplier 8.5x
CPU FSB 270.1 MHz (original: 200 MHz, overclock: 35%)
HyperTransport Clock 810.2 MHz
Memory Bus 255.1 MHz
DRAM:FSB Ratio CPU/9

The even multipliers do pretty much suck for this brisbane. I try the exact same settings with a lower, even multiplier, and the thing wont boot. I'm still messing with this thing, cpu overclocks well, I really just need faster ram to get the performance up a bit.

 

[Wile E]

Ok, here... I got 270x3 outa this bastard, and ram speed actually went up, now I need to get my cpu back up.... hopefully....

CPU Speed
CPU Clock 2295.6 MHz (original: 2100 MHz, overclock: 9%)
CPU Multiplier 8.5x
CPU FSB 270.1 MHz (original: 200 MHz, overclock: 35%)
HyperTransport Clock 810.2 MHz
Memory Bus 255.1 MHz
DRAM:FSB Ratio CPU/9

The even multipliers do pretty much suck for this brisbane. I try the exact same settings with a lower, even multiplier, and the thing wont boot. I'm still messing with this thing, cpu overclocks well, I really just need faster ram to get the performance up a bit.

Set your ram on the 200MHz setting, and your multi to 9.5. This should give you a cpu/10 memory divider. You should at least get almost 2.7 out of it, with ram at 540Mhz, give or take. Also, slacken your timings to 5-5-5-15 for now, until we find a good cpu clock. You shouldn't have to raise your HTT voltage at this point.

What are your extended ram settings in your BIOS?

 

[-=CrAnSwIcK=-]

find your HT multiplyer, at 250mhz HTT you only need a multi of x4, x5 is default, i think...my mobo is socket 939, but if i set the HT multi to x3 i can go to 400mhz HTT...then you can add a few more mhz to the CPU and bring the RAM up to par with it...i wouldn't go much past 1200mhz though...unless you got decent cooling on your chipset...

 

[Wile E]

find your HT multiplyer, at 250mhz HTT you only need a multi of x4, x5 is default, i think...my mobo is socket 939, but if i set the HT multi to x3 i can go to 400mhz HTT...then you can add a few more mhz to the CPU and bring the RAM up to par with it...i wouldn't go much past 1200mhz though...unless you got decent cooling on your chipset...

He already has HT set to 3x. The HT isn't the problem here, it's ram.

 

[-=CrAnSwIcK=-]

loosen up the timings, and increase vDIMM...also try 2T command rate...or buy faster RAM...

 

[Basard]

I've had a lot of weird re-booting out of nowhere lately, not caused by overclocking, It's been on stock settings for a while now. I switched the PCIX power connector the the slot over in my PSU, and re-seeted my cpu power connector, havent had a problem since (crossing my fingers, knocking on wood.) I also ram Memtest for 20 mins and didn't have a problem there. So far so good though, after changing the cabling around to keep everything off one rail... we'll see how it goes.

Really, I'm just going to wait until i get some new RAM.... Thanks again for your help guys, but It's getting to the point to where its not even worth the headache.