Asrock Dual sata socket 939 agp/pci-e board

[steiner666]

Anyone else have this board? Prior to this i've owned hot running northwoods and prescotts so i havent even bothered overclcoking anything except the GPU to this point. I was wondering if anyone else has advice from experience on how to go about overclocking this board cause the advanced CPU bios on it are rather different than what i'm used to seeing.

currently i'm running

this board
Athlon64 +3700 San Diego
2gb OCZ Platinum PC3200 ram
X850xt pe AGP

 

[Urlyin]

Steiner... get the modded BIOS from the article W1zzard wrote here and he did a review on the board here

 

[steiner666]

thanks for the links. The prospect of using a soldering iron on my motherboard is rather intimidating so i'm hoping i can get stability with a somewhat decent overclock without possibly frying it

 

[Urlyin]

thanks for the links. The prospect of using a soldering iron on my motherboard is rather intimidating so i'm hoping i can get stability with a somewhat decent overclock without possibly frying it

You can do the vcore voltage mod with a conductive pen ... no soldering .. read through the article

 

[W1zzard]

it's REALLY easy to solder the vcore mod, but a conductive pen will work fine too

 

[steiner666]

i imagine someday i'll want to try it, but for now i think i'll just see how high i can overclock with the default voltage options. where can you find conductive pens? i've taken electronincs classes and havent even heard of them before. A hardware store or something?

 

[bim27142]

does this board really rocks? i'm eyeing on this one...

 

[W1zzard]

does this board really rocks? i'm eyeing on this one...

it rocks for me .. i really didnt expect that from asrock

if you cant find a conductive pen, try a rear window defogger repair kit, it's the same thing

 

[Urlyin]

i imagine someday i'll want to try it, but for now i think i'll just see how high i can overclock with the default voltage options. where can you find conductive pens? i've taken electronincs classes and havent even heard of them before. A hardware store or something?

Also known as a circuit writer, you can get one here

 

[Silverstone]

i imagine someday i'll want to try it, but for now i think i'll just see how high i can overclock with the default voltage options. where can you find conductive pens? i've taken electronincs classes and havent even heard of them before. A hardware store or something?

Are u in the USA?

If so RADIO SHACK has conductive pens...You can do the AsRock v mod, its one of the easiest ones out there.

 

[steiner666]

i got my +3700 San Diego overclocked to bout 2.8ghz now without any instability and with my max load temps stayin under 50 with stock coolin and with no volt mod yet. I'm pretty happy with it so far. only thing i dont really like is how the memory divider and CPU-Northbridge settings are set up. Liek right now with how i have it set with my overclcok my ram is at like 215 and my CPU-NB is at 1000 (the max i was told to go to for reliable performance) sinc ei stepped it down to 800 b4 i overclocked. Now if i want to overclock more and keep it between 800-1000 i gotta step it down to 600 and go up to like 3ghz which i imagine i'll need to voltmod and probably get better HSF for. Still a really good board for the price, but the layour sucks! (IDE on teh very bottom, right by the CMOS jumper, the pins for your powerswitch/LED and all that, and right in line with the AGP card so if you have say.. an x850xt PE with an AC silencer on it, it makes everythign very cramped down at that bottom right corner)

Thanks for the tip on where to pick them up. Thats awesome that Radio shack has them cause my one friend i just threw together a system almost exactly like mine (with this mobo) for just got a job there

 

[Silverstone]

LDT tranfer rate X FSB = HTT tranfer rate.

You LOWER the LDT rate as you increase the FSB.

(Ex. 240 fsb you want LDT rate at 4x, 240 x 4=960)

(Ex. 312 FSB you want LDT rate @ 3x= 936)

Keep end result as close to 1000 as possible BUT DONT go over 1,000. Unless u like instability.

 

[steiner666]

yeah i have mine clocked at 250 right and the speed set at 800 (4x) in the BIOS right now so its RIGHT at 1000, i was saying that to overclock further i would have to step it down from to 600 (3x) but that forces me to go to at least 267 x 3 to keep the CPU-NB speed at 800. What i wanted to know is is there a performance difference between it running at 800 (267x3) compare to what its at now 1000 (250x4)? I am not using PCI-E or SATA devices, does iit really matter then? Sorry if im gettin this all wrong and confusing.

 

[steiner666]

blah, set high OC:

273x11
ram 166
cpu-nb 600 (3x)

restarted and almost got back into the Setup but then screen went blank and had to shut off and restart and then the screen barely turned on b4 it turned off again. Had to reset CMOS with jumper which was a pain in ass. Would this be my voltage not being enough? cause i doubt its my temps not even letting me through startup. It could possibly be my RAM i guess.. but I dont think these sticks would crash so quickly at this speed. i would try more but jumper is a pain to reset. might have to stop at radio shack tomorrow..

 

[Silverstone]

blah, set high OC:

273x11
ram 166
cpu-nb 600 (3x)

restarted and almost got back into the Setup but then screen went blank and had to shut off and restart and then the screen barely turned on b4 it turned off again. Had to reset CMOS with jumper which was a pain in ass. Would this be my voltage not being enough? cause i doubt its my temps not even letting me through startup. It could possibly be my RAM i guess.. but I dont think these sticks would crash so quickly at this speed. i would try more but jumper is a pain to reset. might have to stop at radio shack tomorrow..

With a 166 ram divider & 273 fsb your ram is running at 227 Mhz if my math is ok, lol.

At 227 Mhz you may need to increase vdimm voltage (up.10 or .20 prolly), LOOSEN THE TIMINGS depending on ram quality & type (if 2,2,2 , 5 is normal default for your ram @ 2.6 Vdimm you may need cas 2.5, 3, 3, 10 @ 2.8 or 2.9 vdimm)

Oc'ing a bios is a fine art to master, everything depends on your components & how well you know the limitations of your hardware & the bios settings it runs best at. Its trial & error.

Nothing good comes easy they say.

 

[steiner666]

yeah these bios only offer a "normal" and "high" ram voltage so i'm not sure exactly what the voltage is, but i have it on high. The timings for these OCZ Platinum gig sticks is 2325 or somesuch. I guess i'll try upping the timings tonight and see if that helps. If it does the same thing i'd say it should be either the voltage to the CPU or RAM.

 

[steiner666]

good news I did the voltmod.. God that was terribly small and scary. I've modded a xboxs and other things by soldering onto their boards on solder poitns not much bigger than these.. but still. After I finished the mod i was a bit pissed to see that i still couldnt get my computer to post or boot xp at 273 (3ghz) so after a while of messing about i got the beta bios and now i'm finally running at 3ghz and all seems very stable thanks for the links!

btw, even tho i bought that circuitwriter thing, i ended up using soldering iron. The pen was impossible to get the stuff to come out in small ammounts, so i dont relaly recommend it for tiny, cramped operations like this was

 

[bim27142]

With a 166 ram divider & 273 fsb your ram is running at 227 Mhz if my math is ok, lol.

aaahmmm, may i ask how we arrived at 227Mhz? am new to AMD overclocking and might get an A64 soon... have to start gathering some info about how to OC an A64 by now...

 

[steiner666]

Sure, on AMD motherboards the cpu speed is, of course, found by multiplying the HTT by the Multiplier (on my +3700 its 200x11=2.2ghz stock). Most overclocking is done by raising the 200 higher which also raises the ram speeds at the same time. On this motherboard setting the RAM speeds down from the PC3200 stock speed of 200mhz per channel to 166mhz is the same as setting a 4:5 ratio divider between memory/processor (so for every 5mhz HTT is increased the ram only goes up by 4) cause the memory cant take as much of an OC as the processor of course. For all this i just use the simple formula of (Ramspeed/200) x HTT = actual ram speed. so my RAM, being set to 166mhz, and my HTT set at 273 fills out that formula like this: (166/200) x 273 = 226.59 which is roughly 227 and 4/5ths of the HTT). so even though my RAM is set lower than stock speeds in BIOS, with overclocking the processor it actually puts it back up over stock speeds. Hope this helps

 

[bim27142]

ok, thanks!

 

[Dynamic]

Steiner666,
What brand model PSU do you have, and what is your memory divider, timings, and speed? What settings are you stable to right now? I got the same board and i'm some what happy with it as far as the overclocking goes. For only $76 plus tax i guess this is what i get. Next time i'm shooting for a DFI board, but that's not going to happen for a very long time. This is my settings as of now, still in progress since i get freezes and lockups once in awhile.

CPU: 285x9 1.45v
RAM: (166) 2225-2T 3.5v "High" w/OCZ DDR BOOSTER
CPU-NB: (600)
Note: I had to use 2T inorder to maintain stable, board is wack with the MA-TIMING. 3DMark05 is stable and i get high scores compared to my settings before. I also ran Prime95/Memtest86 which are stabl;Prime95 for 5hrs and Memtest for 1hr. When i run 3DMark03 it either kicks out to desktop or the system actually locks up. The lockup happened after the score and only once because i think of my booster since the voltage fluctuates for some odd reason and the computer can't handle it. I don't think its suppose to do that, not sure if it was doing that before with my 2.43g settings. Also i got artifacts in 3DMark03 which i never seen before with old settings @2.43g. I'm using OCWBeta2 for now with these new settings and was also stable with 04XX bios at 270x9 1.45v mem:166 2225-1T 3.4v and CPU-NB @600 TEMPS: (IDLE/LOAD) CPU:30/43c GPU:33/60 and GPU Envir:30/43

 

[steiner666]

right now i'm running

255x11 at 1.55volts

ram 166 divider at "high" settings (need booster)
timings 2-3-2-5-1t (the default for my 2gb OCZ Plat)

CPU-NB speed 800
NB-SB speed 1000

and running OCWB1 bios

If i could get more voltage than 2.7 to my RAM i know it could keep up with me CPU at 3.0ghz but right now it doesnt have the juice to keep a stable 227mhz. I'm stable at my stock timings if i put a 133 divider at 3ghz and of course bump the CPU-NB speed down to 600.

If youre CPU-NB speed stays under 1000 with your overclock then you might just need more voltage to your core, thankfully the vcore mod was really easy to do.

as to my PSU its on my sig

 

[Dynamic]

My CPU-NB is @855x2=1710, so i don't think that is a problem. My ram is hitting 233MHz DDR466 with this booster at 3.5v which is fine right now. This is the highest i've reached rock solid. I just can't understand why 3DMark03 acts up when everything else is fine. Gay!

 

[steiner666]

whoa, 855x2? do you get better performance that way than having it the other way around with the multiplier higher and HTT lower? i never thought to try it that way really..

 

[Dynamic]

I don't know much about performance wise, but i know that i works and it's stable. I hope you know i got the 855 from using 3X for the CPU-NB and my FSB being at 285, so 285x3=855x2=that's right....
Anyway i actually had to go back to my old overclock cause the 2.56g didn't go so well. So i'm now back to 2.43g, besides i got my 1T ma-timing back which wasn't the case for the higher overclock.