TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Ruru]

I had 2x256 HyperX BH-5 sticks back in the day, now that's what I call overclocking RAM. DDR540 2-2-2-5-1T and that's just with 3.3V (a jumper wire straight from the ATX connector), damn that I sold those long time ago, would be cool to try those with a motherboard (DFI NF4 for example) which could've given more VDDR.

RAM overclocking has been boring after those puppies.

 

[freeagent]

I remember watching everyone in envy because I could get nowhere near there. I tried though! I was there in spirit.

Edit:

I was able to get my 2500M to around 2800 with around 2.3v and a lot of fans.

edit:

could have been 2750ish

 

[Ruru]

That was with MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, one of the best NF3 Ultra boards IIRC, had no problems to go 300+ FSB, I had a 3000+ Venice with 50% 24/7 OC (9x300) and those BH-5s. Even though 512MB was pretty meh when playing CS Source (long loading times), the game run so damn smooth with those + soft-modded 9800 SE @ XT speeds.

I'm sure you guys remember those Zalman northbridge heatsinks? That silence after swapping the annoying high-pitched stock HSF for a Zalman.

 

[Bones]

Not the Zalmans but I do have a pair of Tt Extreme Spirit II chipset coolers.

 

[Ruru]

The Zalmans were the de facto replacements from those noisy little coolers (or improving from a small passive heatsink for OC'ing), in fact I had one also in my Abit KT7A back in the day. I was playing normally (Fahrenheit aka Indigo Prophecy for you Americans) and I heard a weird noise. The fan just died, quickly to the next checkpoint and had to get a Zalman. In fact the old Athlon 1GHz AXIA (not that which I own now) OC'd a little better with it, 20-30MHz or something.

e: Got that free HD 6870 which I mentioned, a HUGE boost from my 3rd PC's HD 6850 Too bad that the motherboard doesn't support Crossfire, I guess I'll try it one day in my main PC (and HD 4890 Crossfire too)..

 

[Ruru]

Let's be serious about OC'ing these older AMD chips..

That M4A77T & 555 BE is first. Then I need to swap the motherboard, dunno will I use that crappy Asus AM2+ board or Asrock AM2 AGP.. CPU testing anyway so which will OC better is my choice.

Win7 SP1 without any updates so R15 won't run :|

 

[Mr.Scott]

Let's be serious about OC'ing these older AMD chips..

How serious do you want to be?

This is on XP. Had it been on W7 the score would be much better.

 

[Bones]

Here's one of mine.

 

[Ruru]

Come on, that's not fair... I'm running only with custom loop and a basic-tier motherboard.

e: I was too lazy to put a dvd drive on that (or making a bootable XP drive) so I just put W7 since I had that on a USB stick.

 

[Bones]

Come on, that's not fair... I'm running only with custom loop and a basic-tier motherboard.

e: I was too lazy to put a dvd drive on that (or making a bootable XP drive) so I just put W7 since I had that on a USB stick.

Awwww.... OK - I'll ease off the clocks and cooling.

 

[Ruru]

Still unfair dammit you have a Sabertooth and my M4A77T isn't exactly on the same level.

 

[MaxiPro800]

A good freebie

ASUS EAH4850/HTDI/512M/A. Basically, a 512MB GDDR3 Radeon HD4850. Works fine, though I can tell you I have never seen a DVI-D to VGA adapter in my life. I've seen DVI-I adapters.

 

[Ruru]

Benchmarking a 6600 GT AGP (@ 600/575) with Phenom II X2 555 BE @ 4GHz. I need more AGP cards even though I have a HD 3850 already, haven't tested these with such fast CPU before. Radeon cards have problems with quad-cores on this motherboard (Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA) so a dual-core Phenom II is an excellent CPU for running 3dmark2001SE/03/05

I'll move to PCIe motherboard and cards after few more runs, that's going to take a while..

-Radeon HD 3450
-Radeon HD 4890
-Radeon HD 6850
-Radeon HD 6870
-GeForce 7800 GT
-GeForce 8800 GT

 

[agent_x007]

Try running slower HT link speed (600 instead of 800).
Should help with stability on Quads.

 

[Ruru]

Try running slower HT link speed (600 instead of 800).
Should help with stability on Quads.

It's a documented flaw in the MB's manual. https://www.asrock.com/support/note/AM2NF3-VSTA.html#Phenom

I have very high doubts that a HD 3850 would work. But I think that a fast dualcore like a Phenom II X2 would be more than enough for WinXP gaming with an AGP card.

 

[Bungz]

Can anyone confirm that the XP activation servers have finally snuffed it?

Phone activation doesn't seem to work either.

Hmm.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Just bought this quite old ASUS K70IC. Needs a new GPU (thankfully it's removable! - MXM slot) but otherwise it's in quite good condition, bar the bottom covers.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Can anyone confirm that the XP activation servers have finally snuffed it?

Phone activation doesn't seem to work either.

Hmm.

Confirmed. That happened a while ago.

It's a documented flaw in the MB's manual. https://www.asrock.com/support/note/AM2NF3-VSTA.html#Phenom

I have very high doubts that a HD 3850 would work. But I think that a fast dualcore like a Phenom II X2 would be more than enough for WinXP gaming with an AGP card.

You're using my method.
All my AGP's get benched on AM2NF3-VSTA and a 565 BE @ 4.5.
Any 3D bench that you would run on AGP is only designed for up to 2 cores anyway. MHz over core count will win every time on AGP cards.

 

[agent_x007]

@Mr.Scott 3DMark 06

 

[Ruru]

3DMark06 is the only one where more cores would help, but well, as 03 is still my favourite, clockspeed over cores there.

 

[Mr.Scott]

@Mr.Scott 3DMark 06

06 will use up to 4 cores, yes, but it's only 1 subtest. IMO, if you excel at the other subtests you can overcome the 4 core benefit of that single test.

3DMark06 is the only one where more cores would help, but well, as 03 is still my favourite, clockspeed over cores there.

03 is virtually all GPU. Even clock speed makes little difference as long as it's not an obvious ridiculous bottleneck.

 

[Ruru]

Yeah, there wasn't huge difference between 3.2GHz and 3.8GHz when testing 6600 GT, from 5% to 10%.

 

[Bungz]

Confirmed. That happened a while ago.

A shame I activated a computer using it last year.

Poverty GF4 Ti4200 with a rusted fan.

Dremel knock off to the rescue.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Wait, you actually dremeled that shape around the fan? It looks really cool!

 

[Bungz]

Ha no

The internals of the fan were rusted up ( fan solid ) so stripped it sanded the commutator and the magnets down with dremel and it works fine again!

Wish I had skills to make a shape like that however