Best Overclocking Winchester CPU - please comment

[PB]

As a follow up to an earlier question, what experiences have the folks
had with overclocking the various speeds of the 90nm Winchester AMD 64
CPU? The most readily available parts are the 3000, 3200 and 3500 models.

Several websites I have reviewed show good performance for the 3200+,
but I would like to solicit some additional input.

As always, thanks for the help.

PB

 

[Roy]

They all seem to max out anywhere from 2.5 to 2.7 ghz. Doesn't seem to
matter whether 3000, 3200, or 3500. The only difference really is what
multipliers are unlocked from the factory. So with that in mind do some
math and run some numbers and figure out what multiplier you need to attain
the speed that you desire. You may find that you only would ever need a 9
multiplier, which, coupled with some kick ass ram that has Samsung TCCD,
BH-5 or some high end infineon chips, will clock very high.
Your first choice in buying components for a Winchester setup should be your
ram. Get the best you can afford. OCZ and corsair have some very
affordable and high quality ram.
Next choose your motherboard based on the components you plan to use.
If you plan to stick with AGP that is fine and will probably be a good
choice for the next 2 or 3 years, considering that PCI-E is still a new
technology and affordable graphics cards that can actually take advantage of
the higher bandwidth (without going the SLI route) are still a ways off. I
think AGP has plenty of bandwidth for plenty of great cards for now.
Also be sure to get a board with an nForce 250 or nForce Ultra chipset or
better chipset. These boards enable you to lock the PCI and AGP busses
which you will NEED to successfully overclock. They are also known to
enable very high fsb/htt speeds. Many can go up to 300htt.
The other deciding factors that I emphasize is onboard ide RAID, sata RAID,
Gigabit LAN and Firewire. If a board doesn't have these essentials then
don't bother. I have two identical 160gb ide hard drives that I wanted to
run in Raid-0 and I have an iPod so I wanted and needed Firewire.
Onboard audio is up to you. My motherboard came with onboard audio. I also
own 2 other pci sound cards, one which is a very high end card geared toward
sound recording. But neither card is in my Winchester system. The onboard
audio is just great.
I absolutely love my MSI K8N Neo 2 Plat. Just don't use the bios it came
with if that's what the board you use. There are several good bioses out
there that are great - 1.36, 1.37 and 1.41 Beta. I use the 1.41 Beta and
love it. I had a hell of a time with 1.3.
Throw in a decent power supply and case and you are all set.
That all being said, factor in the cost quotient and price per potential GHz
and just get the 3000 since it is the cheapest and offers the best bang for
the buck. I did and mine hit over 2.7 Ghz. They might not all go that
high, but even if you are "unlucky" and get one that only goes to 2.4,
you've still done very well for the money that you've spent. Just make sure
that you buy a motherboard and most importantly ram that can fully take
advantage of the Winchester's potential.

 

[PB]

Truly the kind of well written response that made the newsgroups great!

Thanks.

I would ask these questions in my follow-up.

Does the VIA PCI/AGP lock perform as promised (presuming you have that
knowledge)? The KT800 Pro seems to have tackled that problem and Asus
has a nice board, too. Comments on the A8V?

Have you had any noise problems with the fan on the chipset of the MSI
board? The Neo2 you mention (nvidia) is also on my short list. I ask
as having been a user of Abit boards when nearly all those North Bridge
fans would begin to fail very soon after purchase and need replacing.

If you disconnect the NB fan, does the system protest or refuse to boot
or anything like that? I have used the Zalman and know other, active
replacements exist, which may or may not have a proper connector to the
Neo MB.

Again, thanks!

 

[Roy]

Truly the kind of well written response that made the newsgroups great!

Thanks. No problem.

Does the VIA PCI/AGP lock perform as promised (presuming you have that
knowledge)? The KT800 Pro seems to have tackled that problem and Asus has
a nice board, too. Comments on the A8V?

I have not tried that chipset but I have done quite a bit of research on 939
boards and read many reviews. Does the lock work for Via? The reviews I've
read indicate that it ussually does. The latest KT800Pro and KT900 series
seem to have made some good improvements in that area. My bias toward
nVidia remains, simply because Via's chipsets in the past have been more
buggy more consistently than nVidia's. (I have a via based MSI athlon xp
board that is halfway decent for a mid to low end board.) Historically
nVidia has simply outperformed Via in the chipset arena specifically
concerning pci and agp locks. I know a lot of people use the Via based ASUS
A8V or Abit's AV8 (hard not to get the two confused with such similar
names!) though and are happy. Manufacturer wise, normally I'd choose ASUS
or ABIT or DFI over MSI any day. Their service and support used to be much
better than MSI from what I've heard. They just seem to have put out a
better quality and more consistent product than MSI - normally. With the
K8N Neo 2 Plat, MSI seems to have redeemed themselves though. Apart from
the crummy stock bios, MSI has finally put out an outstanding product. At
first that was hard for me to believe since I had wanted my next board to be
either DFI, ASUS, or ABIT in that order. But I read a ton of reviews
comparing 939 boards and ALL of them gave the MSI K8N Neo 2 the overall best
rating with the features I wanted. That's the other thing. Do really good
and thorough research not just on existing products, but keep an ear to
future products that are in the pipeline and may be available soon.

Have you had any noise problems with the fan on the chipset of the MSI
board? The Neo2 you mention (nvidia) is also on my short list. I ask as
having been a user of Abit boards when nearly all those North Bridge fans
would begin to fail very soon after purchase and need replacing.

Haven't had any problems with noise or NB yet. I've never used Abit boards
before but I have heard good things about that brand. Their Athlon XP line
did well for many overclockers.

If you disconnect the NB fan, does the system protest or refuse to boot or
anything like that?

Not sure. Haven't tried. I'd be too scared to ruin a $130 board!

 

[Bob]

Where did you find the new bios files at?

Bob

They all seem to max out anywhere from 2.5 to 2.7 ghz. Doesn't seem to
matter whether 3000, 3200, or 3500. The only difference really is what
multipliers are unlocked from the factory. So with that in mind do some
math and run some numbers and figure out what multiplier you need to
attain the speed that you desire. You may find that you only would ever
need a 9 multiplier, which, coupled with some kick ass ram that has
Samsung TCCD, BH-5 or some high end infineon chips, will clock very high.
Your first choice in buying components for a Winchester setup should be
your ram. Get the best you can afford. OCZ and corsair have some very
affordable and high quality ram.
Next choose your motherboard based on the components you plan to use.
If you plan to stick with AGP that is fine and will probably be a good
choice for the next 2 or 3 years, considering that PCI-E is still a new
technology and affordable graphics cards that can actually take advantage
of the higher bandwidth (without going the SLI route) are still a ways
off. I think AGP has plenty of bandwidth for plenty of great cards for
now.
Also be sure to get a board with an nForce 250 or nForce Ultra chipset or
better chipset. These boards enable you to lock the PCI and AGP busses
which you will NEED to successfully overclock. They are also known to
enable very high fsb/htt speeds. Many can go up to 300htt.
The other deciding factors that I emphasize is onboard ide RAID, sata
RAID, Gigabit LAN and Firewire. If a board doesn't have these essentials
then don't bother. I have two identical 160gb ide hard drives that I
wanted to run in Raid-0 and I have an iPod so I wanted and needed
Firewire.
Onboard audio is up to you. My motherboard came with onboard audio. I
also own 2 other pci sound cards, one which is a very high end card geared
toward sound recording. But neither card is in my Winchester system. The
onboard audio is just great.
I absolutely love my MSI K8N Neo 2 Plat. Just don't use the bios it came
with if that's what the board you use. There are several good bioses out
there that are great - 1.36, 1.37 and 1.41 Beta. I use the 1.41 Beta and
love it. I had a hell of a time with 1.3.
Throw in a decent power supply and case and you are all set.
That all being said, factor in the cost quotient and price per potential
GHz and just get the 3000 since it is the cheapest and offers the best
bang for the buck. I did and mine hit over 2.7 Ghz. They might not all
go that high, but even if you are "unlucky" and get one that only goes to
2.4, you've still done very well for the money that you've spent. Just
make sure that you buy a motherboard and most importantly ram that can
fully take advantage of the Winchester's potential.

 

[Roy]

I googled it
search parameters:

k8n "neo 2" bios 1.4

here's the link: http://bilder.nogger.net/~xphaze/neo2_bios_141.zip
got it from http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=363177


good reference on overclocking
http://www.dugu9tweaks.net/index.html

 

[PB]

Just another quick question. I will likely get the MSI board as it
appears quite nice from my other reading. I plan to use my existing PC
3200 memory, 2x512MB Corsair. Now if I understand correctly, there are
ratios that I can set to pump up the HT bus speed but not stress the
memory I have, i.e., leave it running at or close to its 3200 level. If
that is correct, will this arrangement work, within, of course, the
uncertainty that always exists.

If I wanted to overclock the 3000, say, to just 2.2GHz (a 3500+
equivalent), what would you suggest as a starting point for the memory
ratio? Again, assume I will have the MSI with the updated BIOS.

Newegg has the 3000+ 939 90nm Winchester just in today, RETAIL, for just
$155US plus a dollar for shipping. I ordered mine.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-501&depa=0

Thanks once again, all.

Merry Christmas - Happy Chanukah -or-

Happy Year-end Secular Holiday Greetings...

 

[jacoby]

I am going to wait for nforce4 boards. I need a new vid card so I want pci
express Sli.
This might help
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2128&p=11

 

[PB]

I will anxiously await the completion of my system to try this out. The
wait is due to the motherboard will be a Christmas gift and Santa does
not arrive until the 25th.

If you are ever in Louisville, KY, let me know. I owe you a bottle of
bourbon, or your favorite high-octane beverage!

 

[Roy]

I may do that. I'm a navigator in the Air National Guard in West Virginia
(Charleston) and I fly almost every day and every so often we venture out
that way. I'm not much on bourbon, but I do savor a Woodchuck Cider quite
often! Glad to have been of service! You'll have to post your results
after Christmas.

 

[John Smithe]

I absolutely love my MSI K8N Neo 2 Plat.

Do the PS2 ports work?

TIA

 

[Roy]

Yes they did. But after I loaded windows I began using a USB keyboard and
mouse.

 

[John Smithe]

Yes they did. But after I loaded windows I began using a USB keyboard and
mouse.

Thanks for responding. I've read many complaints by MSI K8N Neo 2 Plat. users
that the Ps2 ports did not work. I'm interested because I want to get one of
these boards.

 

[PB]

From the MSI newsgroup, there is a thread regarding warm boot problems.
Have you had any issues with a warm reboot of your system? Below my
closing, I have pasted the contents of the initial message on this
topic. The poster refers to BIOS 1.3, which we know is now not the most
current. So, did 1.4 address the warm boot issue or is this an
unresolved issue, to your knowledge anyway?

PB

Hi, everybody!

After lots of reading, I finally decided to upgrade my home system. I
bought:
MSI K8 Neo2 Platinum motherboard (Rev.1, Bios 1.3)
AMD Athlon64 3000+ processor
2 sticks of Corsair value RAM (PC3200). They are in dual-channel mopde
in banks 1 and 2.
An old (but seemingly working) Adaptec AHA2940UW SCSI Adaptor
Radeon 9700Pro 128 MB video card
Antec Sonata case.

At this point almost all settings in BIOS are default.

After some problems with the case (power supply was dead) I put this
system together. It works more or less fine (WinXP Home installed with
no problems, I'm now typing on this machine), except for 2 issues:

1. ATI Control Center won't run.
2. Computer won't perform warm reboot (Ctrl-Alt-Del, or "restart" from
Windows menu results in motherboard being hung at the stage of
processor identification, according to these nice LEDs at the MSI
bracket). Pressing "Reset" switch or powering system on-off brings
things back to normal.

Is it a bad motherboard, processor, both? Or any other suggestions?

P.S. The PSU rails seem OK:
Vcore 1.42
+3.3V = 3.25V
+12V = 11.80V
+5V = 4.99V
Battery +3.19V
+5VSB = 5.05V

As reported by system's BIO

 

[Mitch Crane]

Thanks for responding. I've read many complaints by MSI K8N Neo 2
Plat. users that the Ps2 ports did not work. I'm interested because I
want to get one of these boards.

I used a ps2 keyboard on mine when I first set it up (not that you need to,
but I kept my old board running with the USB keyboard until I got this one
settled). Worked fine.

 

[Mitch Crane]

From the MSI newsgroup, there is a thread regarding warm boot
problems.
Have you had any issues with a warm reboot of your system? Below my
closing, I have pasted the contents of the initial message on this
topic. The poster refers to BIOS 1.3, which we know is now not the
most current. So, did 1.4 address the warm boot issue or is this an
unresolved issue, to your knowledge anyway?

My board came with 1.3. I had no problems with warm booting. I've since
updated to 1.4 and 1.41 and still have no problems with warm booting.

Cool & Quiet is disabled on my machine (I saw a mention that Q&C could be
somehwo involved in the warm boot problem).